Loving the negative soace in this photo.

The expodisc performed pretty well, given the mixture of natural and incandescent light, with a little bit of flash!

The new year lights in the background add a warm holiday layer to the photo. I made them out of focus on purpose.

A close up of Keira’s calm demeanor.

The red hat. I think it was hand-knit by a coworker of the mother.

Bath tiiiiiiiime!

These are:
1. the anticipation of an upcoming vacation to “warm the bones”,
2. my old-school heating pad which I fill up with hot water (my apartment can be either really cold or really hot and I prefer not to sweat), and
3. memories (through pictures) of amazing days of fall in Prospect Park, like below.

The 85mm lense is amazing for portraits because you are still far enough from the subject for them to be totally comfortable… even if it’s a little unsuspecting girl that you run into on the street.

Great for candids too. Hey Canon, am I getting paid for this?

Another lense that I use a lot for wedding photography is the fisheye lense. I love how it captures everything around and I also love the slight distortion that it creates. Of course you have to make sure that the key subjects (bride & groom) are in the center of the picture, since anything even a little close to the edges of the oicture gets distorted. However, if you DO decide to distort them, then (as my graphic design teacher at Parsons used to say) do it with a commitment. Meaning either don’t do it or do it all the way. It should not look like an accident.

The fisheye creates images like this.

And this.

Here is a side by side comparison of the 85mm and the fisheye. As you can see it makes the same image appear totally different and I happen to be a fan of both looks.

A “cherry type thing” grows in Brooklyn. And is documented by the 85mm.

I can’t help but feel love, pity and an overdose of cuteness every time I see Emma. I think her owners pretty much expect a shriek from me every time we bump into each other. She is the most round, clumsy and loving thing I’ve ever encountered.

The 85mm lense creates stunning portraits – as you can see Emma came out looking quite modelesque.

I love how the photography subject is the main focus with the chaos of legs and fingers happening all around her, almost creating a vignette.

And… turn! Just wanted to demonstrate how beautifully her tongue hangs out from the other side.

The day of the wedding shoot was perfect, with slightly overcast skies. Also it was windy. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of wind but I was really thrilled with the motion it created, playing with the bride’s hair in a really cool way. The only thing left for us to do was make sure Lucy was facing the wind during the shoot. For those of you worried about the groom’s hair – he was fine.

Don’t forget to check out the more complete music gallery of Lucy and Garry’s wedding!

I love Lucy’s laughter at Garry as he concentrates on looking at the camera.

I’m a big fan of wide angle shots.

The red wedding shoes were fun and I played around with surrounding colors side by side with the red shoes.

LOVE the flow of this picture. I feel that it somewhat relays the vibes that I feel when I’m around Lucy and Garry.

This picture was shot at the back of the Continental in Boston. I enjoyed putting the newlyweds as a small spot on the bottom right of a towering metallic colored background of the buildings.

Salsa! Lucy is a big salsa dancer who has lured Garry into this activity with her.

Sitting by the fireplace.

Blowing kisses.

Some more wind.

I like the random staggering in this photo and how everyone is doing something completely different.

Group shot.

Here comes the ceremony in the church.

The women sitting and standing on the right of the photo make it look like a painting to me.

More details.

View from the top, where the choir was singing some really beautiful tunes.

Honey colored candles.

Russian Orthodox ceremony. I think there were a few sore hands after the crown holding.

The happy glow.

Check out a more complete music gallery for Lucy and Garry’s wedding here!

The final product – a DVD of high resolution images in color and black & white.

At a wedding I typically shoot around 3,000 photos (this of course deviates depending on the amount of hours that I’m hired for). I shoot a lot because, being mostly a photojournalist photographer, you can never know when that amazing moment is going to happen – you can only feel it coming and then take the photo in case it does happen. After I get home (which is often very late at night) I transfer all the photographs to an external drive. The reason for the external drive is that I shoot in RAW format and there is not nearly enough space on my computer to store such large and numerous files. Now, before all of this gets done, I will often have day-mares of the various possible things that may go wrong causing me to lose the photographs before I get them on my devices at home. What if the precious CF cards somehow slip out of my bag while I’m getting home? What if there are road-pirates who stop the car and steal all my camera equipment, taking all the precious photographs from the wedding along with them? In other words, I can only really breathe after the photographs are safe on my hard drive. After transferring, I don’t erase the information on the CF cards until I need to use the cards for the next shoot, just as a backup.

After transferring the photos onto the hard drive, I then import all of them into Lightroom. I generate instant previews in Lightroom, so that the photos load fast and there is no waiting time when I scroll through them. The first time I go through all the photos in Lightroom is one of the most exciting parts of the process. I often rejoice (sometimes I have to get up and jump around) whenever I see a photo that I think is amazing. The first round of culling typically takes about 2-3 hours. I will give all the worthy photographs 1 star. The others are ignored from that point on. Even in this first round there is a lot of going back and forth and lots of decisions to make. Should the one star be given to the photograph where the bride’s face is towards her groom and she’s laughing, or the one where she’s looking at him in a serious way? Probably both.

A second shooter adds a whole other dimension to this process. Besides having more photographs to sift through, I also have to make sure that the pictures from the two cameras are time synced. Even 30 second gap between the two cameras can result in a pretty serious time lapse in the progression of the photos – and that needs to be fixed.

The next round of photo selection I have to get a little more critical. I don’t want to overwhelm my brides with a sea of photos in which they drown. I want them to relive every point of their wedding day, but limit it to the golden (or at least the silver) moments within the day.

I then start brightening, darkening and color correcting all the photographs in Lightroom. I typically use the majority of Lightroom functions – temperature and tint, all the brightness controls (including exposure, recovery, fill light, blacks, brightness and contrast). I also pull up the right third of the tone curve for all the photos, giving them a tiny boost without ruining them for the printer. The way a photograph is printed is different from how it appears on the screen. If on a screen the photograph is really contrasty with a lot of color boost and the blacks are really black (meaning it looks great) chances are – it will not print well. Printers like less contrasty images that are on the light side. If there is a winning image (or three) that have unwanted details on the sides of the picture, I will sometimes use the graduated filter to blur those out. I then choose images with ISO of 5000 or above and slightly decrease the noise on those. I like to finish off by an ever so slight vignette.

I then rename all the photos and then export them into a “color” and “black+white” folders for the client. I also export the photos in a different folder in a smaller size, so that they could be emailed, put on the web, etc.) Burning the DVDs and putting labels on them, is the icing on the cake. Sometimes I also get carried away with the packaging of the DVD.

As you can see, photographing the wedding, although it’s the most fun part for me, is just the start of a lengthy process.

I’ve also really fallen in love with shooting sun spots (or “lens glare”, as some might call it) as you can see from some of the images here. I’ve also been experimenting with slightly overexposed images – I feel that they work nicely with the sun.