Category Archives: Wedding Industry

Anatomy of an Image – Angel & The Fretz

August 11, 2011

It’s been years since I decided to pull back the curtain a little bit and let you see what goes into making some of the images you see here on my blog. I decided to do this today simply because I’ve posted a few images recently that are perfect examples of the kind of work that goes unnoticed (hopefully) but can sometimes take hours to compose and composite. So without further blabbering from me, let’s jump right into the first image.

A few blog posts ago I posted Angel & The Fretz’s engagement session where we pulled off our take on the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World imagery… The Most Interesting Groom in the World…

A number of you didn’t catch on immediately that both of the girls in the shot above are, in fact, Angel: Black Angel and Turquoise Angel. And that my friends, is what this post is all about.

Once I decided on a pose, we grabbed the first shot. I originally intended this to be a landscape shot, hence the angle of view, and I also needed to give myself a little room to crop and move things around so I shot a little wider than I needed to.

RAW Shot #1

While Angel ran off to change, I told Fretz to just sit still and chill… and when she returned we captured the second image.

RAW Shot #2

Now the astute among you will notice that the bottle in his hand above is a Bud, not a Dos Equis. Who would have thunk that there wasn’t a Dos Equis in sight at the 5 Paces? The bar staff searched high and low and eventually went out to find a Dos Equis for us. They actually LEFT to go and find one for us! How cool is that?!

So they returned with the right brew and I grabbed a third shot solely for the purpose of swapping out the beer bottle later.

RAW Shot #3

This is where the fun begins… I needed to decide which Fretz I wanted to keep. I chose the Fretz from RAW Shot #1 above which meant the only thing I need from RAW Shot#2 below is Turquoise Angel, and here she is.

Then I layered RAW Shot #2 above it…

… and proceeded to “paint in” the Turquoise Angel using a layer mask to “reveal” the layer below it (i.e. the Turquoise Angel). Here is what the mask looks like when it is complete.

Now it was time to deal with the beer bottle. The first thing I did was take the Dos Equis bottle and match the size and angle to the master shot. Here is a shot of the [rather sloppily cut out] bottle side by side with the first bottle so you can see where it’s going to be placed.

And here it is in place. Keep in mind that we are zoomed in over 200% so the artifacting and edges you see (a) will not show up at normal size and (b) are exaggerated by the sharpening that is part of my blog posting process.

By far, the hardest part of this image was getting the beer bottle to NOT look like it was floating out there in space. One thing that I know from old Mickey Mouse bits was that one of the primary visual clues the brain uses to determine spacial placement is the presence of shadows. So the answer was adding a near-black shadow right below and to the left of the bottle.

So I put it all together, add a little more photoshop magic to give it the overall emotion and feel I want, and we have…

If you have any comments or questions, please let me know in the comments below!

Also posted in Post Process, eSessions – 1 Comment

Occasions Magazine Summer 2011 Issue Behind the Scenes

June 23, 2011

If you’re a regular reader of my blog or part of the wedding industry in Atlanta, you probably know that I work pretty closely with Occasions Magazine as a photographer and outside of that, wherever I can. For the Summer 2011 Issue we did a series of shoots for the magazine and I always try to get as many behind the scenes shots as I can. Of course, the really funny ones won’t get posted… but I’ll hold onto them for later in case I need to blackmail somebody.

Here’s the publisher, Heather Vreeland, laying down some last minute ideas to paper.

Below is one of our models, Taylor, in the makeup chair and the ever-fabulous Raney O’Keefe (AGAIN!) striking a pose. Note to photographers: in both of these shots, I was playing with my new Lensbaby Muse lens with the f/5.6 aperture ring insert thingy. Boy is that thing hard, but FUN! I could have picked up one of the newer versions, but honestly, I kind of enjoy the fight you have to go through the find and grab your focal point. So in case you were wondering, aside from the coloring and contrast bump, these two shots are straight out of the camera. Shot with a Nikon D3, of course.

Here’s a shot from a whole series of images we ended up not using but it was too cute to not show someone!

Taylor showing off her shoes — but nevermind the gorgeous Vera Wang (style: Delaney) she’s wearing! That’s Taylor’s mother, Tina Rowden, who also happens to be a great local photographer. The image on the right is what ended up in the magazine.

The last shoot we did was just to tie up loose ends for the content we needed for the issue.

Some of you may not know this, but Heather is actually a pretty incredible photographer. She has an amazing eye for composition so whenever we shoot I always (well, sometimes anyway) let her shoot a little bit with a “big boy camera.” I think if gives her a sense of power and world domination. Just a guess.

Also posted in Commercial, Published – 3 Comments

Carrafina – Bridal Shoot + Behind the Scenes

June 22, 2011

It’s photoshoot day on the blog today. First up, we have a catalog shoot for a private-label dress designer, Carrafina. At the end of last year I was approached by Carrafina who was debuting their latest line of wedding gowns and was looking to “step up” their imagery. We brought in a few models and naturally, I brought in the ever-fabulous Raney O’Keefe to handle the hair and makeup. We ended up shooting about 65 dresses and various accessories over the course of the shoot at Ambient+ Studio.

Here are a few of my favorites featuring one of our models, Kristi Ryczek…

Here are a few behind the scenes images:

Chelsea is so fun to shoot with because she’s always playing jokes (you may remember Chelsea as the cover model for the Summer 2010 Issue of Occasions Magazine) … and you can always count on Raney for a pose!

Also posted in Commercial – 2 Comments

Published: Occasions Magazine Fashion Feature, Part II

January 23, 2011

Photo shoots are a funny thing. Sometimes when you have a very controlled environment and a well defined goal, the images you get at the end are just what you envisioned. Other times, you just wing it and hopefully your ego doesn’t take too bad of a hit when the editor sees the images. This shoot for Occasions Magazine was closer to defined than winging it. Danny Wilson from The Savage Garden, Heather Vreeland and I met beforehand and discussed a few ideas and mapped out the day. Since the brunt of the work fell on Danny to provide all the florals, he needed a strong idea of how to prepare. And prepare he did!

But let me back up a little bit. When I think of the beautiful, historic Swan House, this is what I see in my head:

I think of the rich history and all the stories this building could tell if it could talk.

Remember what I said above about photo shoots? The image above and the next two didn’t even make the first round of cuts. Yet, fast forward a couple months and there it sits… a big, beautiful two-page spread to open up the fashion feature. This is quite easily my favorite image from the entire shoot.

And now I’m going show you something to make your jaw drop. I say that in complete humility because it really has nothing to do with me, but everything to do with our stunning model Madison Olson and the fabulous makeup by Raney O’Keefe. This image is basically straight out of the camera. No photoshop actions. No retouching. No fixing. No nothing.

I took the image out of the camera in RAW format, adjusted my color and exposure in Lightroom, and exported it. In fact, I didn’t retouch Madison in a single image in the entire magazine feature. Just amazing.

Remember what I said above about photo shoots? We had a little bit of free time (by “free time” I mean that we had 7 minutes and 35 seconds) and I said “Madison, let’s play.” So I grabbed Heather Vreeland’s new 50mm f/1.4 lens because I was really curious how the lens would perform and I wanted to play with it. In fact, a number of the images in the magazine were shot with that little 50mm lens she carries around with her in the camera bag she got from Target. So Madison and I ran around in the grass and came up with Heather’s favorite series of images from the shoot. This is just two of them…

Have you been paying attention to the beautiful floral headpieces Danny created for us?

Yes, she is IN the fountain. By this time, it was pretty much dark and we had to get creative with the lighting sources.

Here’s Danny with one of the props he brought along for the shoot — ya know, just in case — and Raney doing a little touch up work.

One more behind the scene’s shot, complete with my assistant hard at work in the background. He was probably tweeting about how hard I was working him.

Also posted in Bridals, Commercial, My Favorites, News, Published – 6 Comments

Featured: Elizabeth Anne Designs (& #marketing 2)

January 22, 2011

Some people I know in the wedding industry occasionally chide me for being so bad at marketing my own business. Aside from some of the practical matters involved — finding time to blog, editing and retouching images that sometimes might never otherwise see the light of day (in the case of personal posts), creating wedding slideshows, finding the perfect music, tracking down vendors for proper credits, etc., — you (or at least I) also have to deal with the strong aversion I have to being “sold”, to people who are always seem to have their sales hat on, and people who generally seem to have no problem with talking about themselves endlessly. And I mean END. LESS. LY.

Let’s face it, I’m a photographer because I love being the outsider looking in and experiencing the lives of others through the lens. I adore the idea that I can immortalize a moment and at the same time create a work of art. It’s just amazing that I can do that and at the same time remain relatively invisible. I like being invisible. I like it when people to look at me and see my work. Not me.

And that, my friends, is the problem. I don’t much like promoting “me” because I’m afraid I’ll come off like an attention grabbing narcissist. See, marketing in the photographic industry, with the help of the social media sphere, has rather swiftly morphed into the race to be the most liked, have the most fans and create the most buzz… and relatively little of that has anything to do with your work. In fact, a few of the photographer rockstars (the term “rockstar” is used in a derogatory way as much as it’s used in a complimentary way these days) have been to more workshops than they have shot weddings. Unfortunately the average bride would never know that.

So all that blabbering above is the reason I sometimes don’t like posting about my personal life and how great I am for shooting Usher, or Brian Littrell from the Back Street Boys and his wife, or this or that photoshoot. I love doing what I do and in the end I just want you to see the work. But I promise that I’ll try to do a little better in 2011.

All that said, this falls into the “stuff I never blogged” category…

Back in November we were featured on the Elizabeth Anne Designs blog for a photoshoot we did with a number of other vendors, all coordinated by Jeannine Kennedy with FAVOR Events. The shoot was at a private residence north of Atlanta and the blog featured a bunch of the images from the shoot…

In addition to a few larger images of ones that she featured on the blog, here are a number of my favorites they didn’t blog:

Here is a list of vendors that participated in the shoot:

Event design/styling: FAVOR Events
Florals: Tulip
Venue: Privately owned farm in North Georgia
Linens: BBJ Linens
Rentals: Classic Party Rentals
Invitations: Southern Fete
Jewelry: Anthropologie
Gowns: Chaviano Couture
Model: Angela Wolff with CLICK Models

Also posted in Bridals, Commercial, Published – 6 Comments
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