Weddings: Where not to cut costs…

Prime wedding season is only 8 or 9 months away and if you haven’t already, now is the perfect time to really get deep into your planning and your budget for the big day.

I have many people ask me about cutting costs in their wedding budget and if having a friend or family member do their wedding photography is a good idea, or if they should just put a disposable camera on each table at the reception. Well, as a professional photographer what do you think I’m going to say to that?

Would you have your friend provide the centerpieces and bouquets from their garden? How about just planting some seeds on the tables in the hopes that something beautiful grows? Or maybe your friend with a sewing machine and a bedazzler can make your wedding dress…seriously?

In all seriousness and honesty, if your friend or family member has the equipment and experience to do your wedding, then great. However; there are other questions and considerations to take into account when making this choice. Does this person have the discipline to do your wedding? They can’t be a guest. They must be alert at all times to avoid missing a shot and they will not be able to drink, dance and socialize. Would you rather have your friend be a guest or be your photographer?

Next, what if the pictures don’t turn out? You will have to re-live that every time you see that person; every holiday or birthday will only serve to remind you of those ruined photos. Keep this in mind as well, there are no do-overs when it comes to a wedding. If you miss the shot…you miss the shot. Is your friendship strong enough to survive that? Are you willing to take that chance?

As for using disposable cameras on each table…that’s a great idea if you want every 8 year old or every drunk to get their hands on them and take close-ups of chewed food, multiple shots of the cool chandeliers or daring men’s room photos. Not to mention the fact that this method accounts for no one to be taking photos during the bride getting dressed or the ceremony. Disposables on the tables are a nice idea in addition to a professional photographer, not as a replacement.

Now, we haven’t even covered how post-production editing will be handled, the availability of professional lab printing and designing a wedding album. Add all that in and the above ideas get really scary!

The point I really want to hammer home here is this; A wedding is a once in a lifetime event, never to be repeated. Some people may get married more than once, but each wedding is unique and by definition that makes it special. What a professional photographer offers you will outlast everything else on that most special of days, except for the marriage itself. After your wedding is over and the flowers have wilted and the food has been eaten, no one will remember what music was played or exactly who was there. Other than your new spouse, you will take 4 things with you into married life; your wedding gown, your wedding rings, your credit card bills and your wedding photos. Just about everything else is consumed in the party or lost to time.

Choose wisely and…Never Compromise Your Memories…

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Jennie & Larry Are Married…

On May 28th Jennie and Larry were married at Stone Manor Bed & Breakfast in Lovettsville, Virginia – a beautiful venue for a wedding with very diverse and eclectic architecture in the main house and wonderful patio area with stone steps leading up to a separate reception hall.

Jennie and I have been friends for several years, so there was some added pressure to really deliver for her and Larry on their wedding day. Larry is former U.S. Navy and a current member of the Fairfax County Virginia Fire & Rescue Department.

The weather was beautiful and the wedding, a simple and elegant affair, was equally gorgeous. The bride and groom were stunning and the entire wedding party was a blast to work with. We were honored that Jennie and Larry placed their trust in us to photograph their wedding.
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Weddings Part III: Looking Your Best in Wedding Photos

Welcome to the third part in our series on photography and your wedding. In Part I we explored posing mistakes and in Part II we discussed how to choose your wedding photographer. Today we will explore some things you can do to help everyone look their best in your wedding photos.

Very few people truly enjoy having their picture taken and even fewer enjoy the amount of picture-taking that happens at a wedding, especially if you’re the bride, the groom or a member of the wedding party.

Since you have no choice, you might as well look your best, right? Here are some easy things you and your wedding party can do to make sure that happens. Let’s start at the base with some physical things you can do and work our way up.

1. Wear comfortable shoes, or at least as comfortable as possible. You may be on your feet for most of your wedding day, so don’t make yourself any more uncomfortable than necessary. Also, try to remember when posing for photos to keep your weight on your back foot and your front foot pointing towards the camera.
2. Turn your hips at a 45 degree angle to the camera and away from the light source if possible.
3. Keep your bouquet down at waist level and facing outward and slightly up. This will show off more of the gown or the dresses that you have put so much thought and money into.
4. Remember that keeping your arms in tight at your sides or behind your back will accentuate any upper arm heaviness and make your shoulders look more broad. Hold your arms just slightly away from your body, just enough to give your biceps / triceps some breathing room, and your arms will appear thinner.
5. Try to elongate your neck slightly and raise your chin slightly to avoid double chin and creasing in your neck. It also helps if you press your tongue against the roof of your mouth just behind your front teeth.
6. Close your eyes, relax your face and count to three if you feel like you just can’t smile for another second. Ask the photographer to count down to snapping the photo and at the last moment, open your eyes and light up that winning smile.

Now, let’s look at some things you can do in preparing for the wedding day that will help in looking your best:

1. Try to get plenty of sleep and drink plenty of water in the week before the wedding. This will go a very long way towards making your eyes much clearer and brighter and also is very helpful to your skin tone. Let’s face it, tired dehydrated people rarely look appealing.
2. Go easy on lotions and skin creams the day before and the day of your wedding. You don’t want your face to look oily or sweaty in your photos.
3. Also, go easy on toning make-up. It may give you that bronzed appearance, but often that will confuse camera settings and you end up looking orange in your photos. Consider hiring a professional make-up artist for your wedding day.
4. Make sure you have any facial treatments, waxing or hair coloring done at least a week before the wedding to avoid any red patches of skin or any reactions to the hair dye.
5. Make sure that anyone who will have any need to adjust or move your gown gets a manicure before the wedding. This means your Maid of Honor, your Mother, maybe the bridesmaids and, yes despite all the protests…the groom. At our studio, we always get a manicure before working a wedding because we will often need to adjust the wedding gown and any ragged edge on a fingernail is very easily caught on most wedding dresses. Also, consider how much better those wedding ring close-ups will look if both you and the groom have a fresh manicure.
6. Relax and be yourself. If you are stressed it will show and your photos will capture it. Don’t worry about why the cake table is where the gift table was supposed to be. Enjoy your day and focus on having fun and relax.

There you have it. Wedding photos made easy and beautiful…well at least you have some of the needed information now. Let us know what you think about this article or if you have any other tips we may have missed and watch for Part IV coming up soon.

Weddings Part II: Choosing Your Photographer

Welcome to the second part in our series on photography and your wedding. Today we will explore some suggested criteria you can use to choose your wedding photographer.

Let’s begin by agreeing on one simple truth; for most couples, after the wedding is over, you will only have 4 things left to take with you from your big day. Your wedding gown, your wedding rings, your wedding photographs and your credit card bills. You had better make sure that you like the first three and that you put an appropriate amount of thought into choosing all three.

Many people get so caught up in the fun of selecting the wedding items that their family and guests will see, the cake, the gown, the decorations, that they almost choose a photographer as an after thought.

Why is choosing your wedding photographer so important? That person, or team, will potentially have the greatest impact on how you remember the most important day of your life. Consider that once the cake has been eaten, the DJ has packed up and the flowers are gone all you will have left are your memories, which may very well be just a blur of moving from table to table, and your photographs. After your spouse, this may be the most important person you choose to make a part of your wedding day.

Style & Quality

The first thing that you want to consider is the style and quality of the photographer’s work. Be sure to look carefully at all the images displayed on the photographers website or blog. Are you looking for someone who does more traditional posed wedding photography, someone who uses more of a photo-journalistic style or a combination of the two? Make sure their shooting style matches with what you envision your photographs will look like. Also look closely at their work with an eye toward these three questions:

1. Is it well lit?
2. Is it in focus or focused on an appropriate element within the photo?
3. Is the subject well framed within the photo?

Price

This is the point where you want to look at price and which of the photographers you have on your short list fit into your budget. I recommend looking at quality and style first because if you truly want beautiful wedding photos that should be your primary consideration. When evaluating price, find out everything you get for the price points each photographer uses. Be sure to ask the following questions at a minimum:

• Are you limited in the number of hours?
• If so, what is the cost for additional time?
• Are you limited in the number of locations the photographer will go to on your wedding day?
• Does the photographer use an assistant or a 2nd shooter?
• What is the additional charge for these folks?
• Does the package price get you any type of credit towards your wedding album or other products / prints?
• Is online proofing available?
• If not, how will out of town family and guests see the photos?

Experience

Now its time to look at the photographer’s experience. Keep in mind, like any other occupation or career, there are people with a vast amount of experience that you will not like as much as someone with much less experience, so use this as one check point on your list. Talent doesn’t necessarily come with experience, but what does is the ability to know how to shoot a wedding; where to be at the right time; how to get into position for the shot without being a nuisance to your guests; maintaining a professional demeanor on what can be a very stressful day; the ability to keep you and the wedding party smiling when you feel like your cheeks will crack and fall off. All of this comes from two things – the photographer’s experience and personality.

This isn’t to say that you should never consider or contract a less experienced photographer. After all, there wouldn’t be experienced photographers if no one gave them a chance when they were new. Again, use experience as one of your check points and weigh it with all the other criteria to make your choice.

Interview

Next you will need to interview your prospective photographers either on the phone or in person; I prefer to meet in person. This is your opportunity to get to know the photographer, after all, this person and their team will be spending several hours with you on the most important day of your life. Your photographer is one of the most important and conflicted choices you will make. The person you choose must be someone you feel a connection with and who you feel listens to what you want and also understands you, but who can also be unobtrusive and seem to almost not be there. Get to know and LOVE your photographer…whoever you choose. I would NEVER contract a wedding photographer without speaking with them more than once and getting a feel for the person and how they interact with people.

Here are some sample questions you should ask, at a minimum, during your interview:

• Will they be your photographer on the wedding day?
• What is their back-up plan in case or illness or an emergency?
• How many photographs do they estimate they will take?
• Can you put together a list of “Must Have” photos?
• What are their policies on the deposit, paying the balance and refunds?
• How long after the wedding will you receive proofs or your online gallery?
• How long after choosing your images will you will receive your wedding album?
• Do they charge extra for touch-ups / editing and how much?
• What format do they shoot the images in? If it’s digital, make sure they are shooting in RAW format.
• What lighting situations are they familiar with?
• How intrusive will their equipment be?
• How many weddings do they shoot on one weekend?
• Can you buy the negatives or a high resolution CD/DVD of your wedding photos? What is the cost?
• Will they make site visits to the ceremony & reception location before the wedding date? Is that included in your price?

A word about site visits because this is a pet peeve of mine. In my opinion, your photographer MUST do at least one site visit to each location before the wedding day, preferably with you. This is an invaluable tool for both of you. If your ceremony or reception will be outdoors, they should also do the site visit at the same time of day as the wedding and not 6 months in advance. This is to see the lighting they will be working with outdoors and how the buildings, trees, etc impact that lighting. The lighting at your ceremony site in December will look much different on your wedding day in May. The photographer also needs to meet the people running each location to be sure of their policies and restrictions. This is especially important if your ceremony is in a church. Many churches do not allow flash photography during the ceremony and restrict where the photographer can go within the building. They need to know these things ahead of time. It also helps ease the mind of the person performing the ceremony if you assure them you will respect their restrictions and their church. The last thing about site visits is that it gives the photographer the opportunity to scout locations at the site for photos either before the wedding, after the ceremony or during the reception. In my opinion site visits are imperative and should always be done at least once. I don’t mind flying by the seat of my pants when the situation calls for it, but why do it if I don’t have to?

Make Your Choice and Get It In Writing

It’s time to evaluate all the information you have accumulated and make your choice. Once you choose…sleep on it for the night and then call and ask the photographer to pencil you in their calendar until you can meet again to complete the contract and pay your deposit. Make sure you get all the details in writing; dates, times, locations, phone numbers, a description of what the photographer is doing for the fee you are paying, how many hours, all of it. The contract should be as detailed as you can make it so there are no misunderstandings.

Now it’s time to relax, finish your wedding planning and get ready to read Part III of our series with tips on how you and your wedding party can look your very best for your photos.

Please feel free to leave any comments you might have.

Weddings: Part I – Posing Problems

This is the first in a multi-part series of Blog posts that will cover a wide range of wedding related topics beginning here with posing for your photographs and including other subjects such as information on how to prepare to look your best for your wedding photos, a guide to the important factors in choosing a wedding photographer, memorable and unique ways to use photography in relation to your wedding and many other topics. We hope you find these posts informative and entertaining.

Now, on to the subject of posing.

Many photographers will ask the bride and groom for input on their wedding photos and any specific requests they may have. We actually provide all of our wedding clients with a sample list of “Must Have” wedding photos. We believe strongly in giving our clients what they want, but we also believe that many clients either do not know what they want or are not fully aware of how that image they “really want” will look. To alleviate the stress and to ensure everyone is happy, we very often will take the image the way the client has envisioned it and then we will take a similar image in a more technically correct way and let the client choose the one they prefer when we review the finished images.

We would prefer to have clients choose us for our vision, skill and artistry rather than because we simply do everything they ask for.

Here are some examples of common posing problems:

1. Straight arms and legs – if the body part bends, bend it. It will make you look far less stiff and less “posed”

2. The wrong expression for the selected pose. If you are looking off camera, generally this pose lends itself to a dreamy or thoughtful expression, so a large smile or laughing may make this image look off

3. The subject’s hands are completely in the pants pockets – keep the thumb outside the pocket and relax the arms for a more natural looking pose

4. The subject’s heads are all straight – this looks extremely posed and artificial – a slight tilt to one side is much better for a more natural looking image

5. The bride is seated causing her bustier or corset to give her bust line and unflattering or unnatural appearance

6. The subject has an arm dangling that could be placed around the bride’s waist

7. The subject faces directly into the camera with all their body weight on their rear leg – Always try to turn at a 45 degree angle to the camera, with your hips angled away from the light source and keep your weight on your front leg – this will give a more slimming effect

8. The wrong pose for the subject’s body type or individual body characteristics – never photograph a larger or heavyset person from a low angle – do not photograph a person with prominent ears directly from the front – we must continually evaluate each subject’s body and characteristics to get the best shot possible

The goal is always to create poses that don’t look posed and give our subjects the most flattering look possible. A trick we use with children to get more natural smiles is asking them to say “yes”. That word will produce a soft smile that does not look forced. With adults, we ask them to sing the letter G. Very often when this is done together it causes at least mild laughter which will give us a good range of images in the one pose, from smiling to laughing, and they all look natural and unposed.

Please watch for the second part of this series where we will explore the important factors in choosing your wedding photographer.

The wedding capital of Virginia is…?

…Winchester! Or so I read in a recent post on a Blog I follow, but with no data to back it up. So, being the maniac for detail that I am, I decided to do some digging into the data.

Now, being the “wedding capital of Virginia” is a pretty bold claim, but after doing some research it seems the claim may not be bold enough!

Using data obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau, the CDC and the Virginia Department of Health, it appears that Winchester may very well be the wedding capital of the entire region.

With Winchester’s quaint, historic downtown area and numerous venues with an old-world or upscale country atmosphere, it is no wonder Winchester would be a popular place for couples in love. The question is, how popular is it?

The answer – more than 4 times as popular as the state average.

Without boring you with a lot of numbers, I can tell you that over the past 5 years, the average rate of marriage in Virginia is 8.1 per 1,000 total population. In 2009 the rate of marriage in Winchester was an astonishing 35.2 per 1,000! This number in a city with a population of 26,322. By way of comparison, the most densely populated areas of our region, Fairfax County, Loudoun County & Prince William County had an average marriage rate of 7.7 per 1,000 in 2009.

These are pretty convincing numbers and in my mind, make Winchester not only the wedding capital of the entire region, but also the destination wedding capital. Even with beautiful historic areas such as Leesburg and Old Town Alexandria and the proximity to DC that other areas offer, Winchester still pulls in more than its fair share of wedded bliss each year…and as a photographer living in Winchester, I’m glad it does.

Macabre or practical…

There is a new trend that seems to be gaining in popularity, not just novelty, as a wedding venue; Funeral Homes.

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In this lean economic time, with many traditional reception halls going out of business, a funeral home wedding may be just the thing for couples on a tight budget or if they are, forgive the term, dead-set on a specific date and can’t find a venue with an opening. Many funeral homes, especially the ones built or renovated with an eye towards other types of events, are absolutely stunning inside and would provide an excellent venue for the ceremony and reception with many beautiful opportunities for photographs. The hurdle for many people is getting themselves, and their guests, past the entrance – driveway and the potentially co-located cemetery.

Consider the possibilities for a wedding planned in late October, or a wedding for a couple with a slightly “Corpse Bride / Tim Burton” personality or maybe even a wedding near the location where a beloved grandparent was recently laid to rest. I know, I know…creepy to some, but sweet and touching to others.

As photographers, we have no choice in wedding or reception location, so we just go where we are needed and accept and overcome the challenges presented by each location to give the couple beautiful images they can treasure for a lifetime. Having said that, we are very interested in your thoughts and comments on this apparently growing trend. We have also included a link to a USA Today article on the subject. Please take a minute or 2 to vote in our poll and then leave a comment to let us know your thoughts and also why you might be on board with this idea and why you wouldn’t.

Funeral Homes Find New Life

*Photo from the Tim Burton movie, “Corpse Bride”

Jones – McGee Wedding

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This was an incredibly fun wedding with a great young couple. The ceremony was at The Inn at Kelly’s Ford in Remington, Virginia and the reception was held at The New Hope Bible Church in Front Royal, Virginia. We had a great time and are very grateful to Beth and Mark for trusting us to preserve the memories of their special day.