Weddingbee PRO

Every once in a while, a couple comes along that changes my life forever…

I tend to fall in love with people while photographing them and often come away from the experience with a sense of admiration and love that is normally difficult to achieve when you’re just meeting someone for the first time. Now, I’m not sure if my couples end up feeling the same way about me, but hopefully they see my love in the images they end up with. Sally & Rodney just blew me away with their kindness, joy, love, compassion, and inner beauty, which resonates in everything they do and with everyone they meet. While most couples will keep in touch maybe a year or two after their wedding, they often slip out of contact and remain beautiful memories, but Sally & Rodney have only become closer to me as friends over the years and through the many different twists and turns our lives have taken since then.

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I believe your wedding album design should reflect your sense of style just as much as every other choice you make for your wedding day. To help you identify which wedding album design is most appealing to you, I’ve taken one set of images and created a variety of album designs to show how each album design affects the viewing and interaction of the images on the page. While there are literally infinite design possibilities for wedding albums, I’ve found that most designs can fall into one of the following categories: Fine Art, Traditional, Editorial, Collage, or Embellished. I’ve included a quick preview here, but you can click on the links to view the complete album design sample.

FINE ART
This album design displays one image per page, like a gallery in a book, allowing each image to stand on its own and command the full attention of the viewer one image at a time. Images are usually centered on the page with a white or black background or matting, with or without contrasting border/bevel (the sample below is black background with contrasting white border/bevel.) If the book is printed with images on the front and back of each page (allowing two images to lay side by side when open) there are opportunities for pairings of images that uncover hidden or implied relationships. If you’re a minimalist, or want your album to look like a portfolio of art, this is the album design for you:

Fine Art Album Design Sample

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Mobile Monday is a weekly collection of iphone photos and twitter captions from my daily adventures.

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From Anne’s intern Alexis

I don’t know about you, but I definitely have a love-hate relationship with my speedlight. I’ll use it if I have to, but most of the time I’ll go to extreme lengths to avoid pulling it out of my camera bag. Probably 90% of the time it makes a better paperweight than it does a piece of camera equipment.

Anne showed me a nifty trick last week that will tip the scales more toward the “love” part of the equation. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll post a few by way of demonstration. You definitely have to see it to appreciate it (that, plus the fact that I don’t really feel like writing a 3,000 word blog entry. I’m sure you appreciate THAT, too.

Just to preface this, I was shooting at f/4.5 at 1/50s (manual mode). My speedlight was set to E-TTL, with no light modifiers on it.

Exhibit A: Neo (yes, named after the Matrix) relaxing on an unseasonably warm spring evening. The flash is on-camera, pointed straight at him. The verdict? EW. Ew ew ew. Nasty shadows, cold, harsh light…just…ick. We can do better.

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ed note: Post by Anne’s intern Alexis

Being a photographer is a super glamorous job. I mean, how could it not be? You get to spend all your time at weddings, sneaking hors d’oeuvres off the appetizer trays and hobnobbing with the guests.

No, grasshopper, you have much to learn. That’s not how you spend most of your time. This intern’s lesson of the day is that as a photographer, the bulk of your time is spent getting things to work. No joke.

It makes sense, when you think about it (well…I suppose it would make sense regardless of your thinking about it, but that’s beside the point). The actual “taking pictures” part of being a photographer is probably something that we spend the least amount of time on. We rely so heavily on technology, which can be extremely temperamental and seems to require begging, pleading, praying, and promises of your firstborn child in order to convince it to work.

It’s not easy. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes on, and it can be frustrating at times. Creating images that give people a way to relive their fabulous wedding day, or transport them back to a time when their now-teenager was just a wee little baby, that’s the fun part, but it’s just a small piece of the pie. And speaking of pie…let me present to you the graphical representation of the breakdown of a wedding photographer’s time.

I love all of the amazing inspiration boards that are put together by designers- it’s such a beautiful display of possibilities. However, when I was a bride, I also loved seeing what real brides had done. Brides who had to work on a budget, or for whom the crystal chandelier in the tree wasn’t going to be a practical reality. So, a while ago I decided to start doing inspiration board style layouts of wedding details from real weddings. There are about a dozen here and while many revolve around strong color combinations, sometimes more subtle themes emerge from the set of details as well. One thing is for sure, I can’t wait to see what creative details the 2009 brides come up with!!

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Mobile Monday is a weekly collection of iphone photos and twitter captions from Anne’s daily adventures.

Not quite boat weather yet in Boston.
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I wish I could remember where I found this, but I love it. It’s a mini movie and it really speaks to photographers and anyone in the pursuit of happiness.

One of the things that happens to me when I photograph people is that I start to “fall in love” with them. It’s a platonic love like you would have for your best friend, but that love makes me want to do anything and everything I can for them. I don’t know if there’s something romantic about looking through a lens, after all it can be quite cinematic when the only thing in front of you is viewed through a black tube, or if it’s the process of getting to know people in a way that just isn’t possible on a wedding day. I’m pretty sure it’s the getting to know people- that’s always my favorite part.
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(ed’s note: This post is a continuation of Anne’s Mobile Monday series.)

This last week was kinda slow because I was really sick with a wicked flu and ended up having to cancel a lot of appointments so I wouldn’t cough all over people and gross them out. I didn’t have much of a voice the entire week, and thus didn’t feel much like venturing out too often unless I really had to. My poor husband was forced to make a few calls on my behalf and to be my translator when I sounded like I was speaking alien. If it weren’t for having a meal with the interns and needing to take Misty out, I probably wouldn’t have left the house at all. I really learned to appreciate not talking, however I still had hundreds of emails that required my fingers to do lots of walking. This week I’m happy to say that I have my voice back and I’m about 95% healthy again- just a few sniffles here and there which I’m keeping under wraps with some antihistamines. Technology also seems to be back on my side once again, so I’m looking forward to lots of productivity this week!! Woo Hoo!!

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