I talked about this sweet couple in my last blog post with their wedding slideshow. Here are some images that highlight their big day. These make this wedding photographer smile! By the way, my favorite shot is me with either my future employee or future competition!

My future employee or competitor?? Not sure which but he was ON IT all night!

(Thanks Liz who took many of the shots you see below!)
Enjoy!

What an adorable couple.  They make such a good match for each other.  Heather with her vivacious personality and Mark with his calming stability seem ideally suited for each other.  You can just see the whole world disappear when they look into each others eyes.  The day was gorgeous and you can’t ask for better weather in February.  Spring has even taken root a little early with the daffodils in bloom by the church.  I loved how this couple was so laid back just enjoying the day as it unfolded. Heather with her gift to brighten any room and any person she came into contact with and Mark with his steel blue eyes that put her at peace whenever she looked at him.  They were the perfect bride and groom.  And who can beat a reception at Carolina Country Club.  It always looks gorgeous. They rocked to a fun band and really got a chance to spend some time with all the friends and family who came to be a part of this next big step in their lives.  The maid of honor and the groom’s best friend gave great toasts that had us all tickled.  And finally the end where the bride and groom exited to a traditional bird seed exit and off to their next adventure as man and wife.  I loved this wedding and thank you so much for letting me be a part of it. Congratulations Mark and Heather! It was a BEAUTIFUL wedding!

Click the picture below to view a slideshow of the highlights of the day.  Pause the media player down at the bottom right before viewing.

To see the full gallery of images go to the YOUR PHOTOS section of the website and look for the Starritt Price Wedding. They will be posted no later than Saturday, February 18th by 8pm but may be up as early as Friday night!  : ) Thanks!

Have you ever wondered why we cut off the top of the head sometimes?  Why the subject is off center rather than in the middle.  You don’t notice these things, you just see an image and thing WOW that’s beautiful.  But when you start looking at your own image you start to change it and want it centered or maybe put the head back onto the top etc.  Read this ariticle and it may shed some light on the subject and keep you from changing the art you received into a snapshot.

There are many other rules of composition we use such as S curves, C curves, leading lines etc. But this is the most basic and most widely used of all the Rules of Composition.  Thanks for Photography Talk for the article.

The Key to Pleasing Compositions.

Rule of Thirds

The hardest part about shooting bridal portraits is waiting till the day after the wedding to post them!  I get so excited as does the bride and you just want to share them with the world but obviously we don’t want the groom and guests to see the dress before the big day.

We got somewhat lucky as this was shot at the end of January and although it was a tad cold it could have been MUCH colder.  But even with a slight chill that didn’t take any of the smile off this bride’s face.   Heather has one of those charming abilities to light up any room.  Her smile and laugh are infectious and I can see how this teacher is a bee charmer to all of her students.  I only wish my babies could have her for their teacher.

She has this gorgeous long hair that holds curl perfectly and the dainty flower as dressing on her wedding gown are the perfect touch to her vivacious personality.  Here are some of her favorites and some of mine!

Congrats Heather and Mark!  You have a beautiful bride here INSIDE AND OUT!!!  : )

Ah, back from paradise and back to reality. I will save you from the boring details of me unpacking, grocery shopping, running thousands of errands, opening all the mail etc that I had to do to catch up yesterday.

But it is back to work right away with a wedding on Saturday.  Thank goodness for this photographer I love my job and am excited to get right back in the fro.  After my coffee and checking email it is into my office to re-pack all my equipment. I had to pull every thing out and only bring what I really needed on my trip.  So I spent an hour making sure I had everything I needed to get just the right shot.  I get a lot of questions from photographers starting out asking what equipment do they need for a wedding.  Some is very specific and is a MUST have if you are going to shoot weddings.  What a lot of people don’t know is that you shouldn’t use the same equipment for every type of photography although some do overlap.  But there are certain items that are critical to capturing the special moments that make up the bride’s perfect wedding day.  The two most important lenses are the 24-70mm 2.8 and 70-200mm 2.8 Nikkor lenses.  These are the most important for several reasons.  The first most important reason is when you have to shoot in a dark church and they don’t let you use flash you must have a lens that can shoot under dark conditions.  The 2.8 in the description above is what enables you to do that… So those lovely lenses that came with that camera you bought in a box probably won’t cut it.   Also, most semi pro cameras don’t have high enough ISO settings to shoot under dark conditions.  Let’s put it this way, if you spent less than $2500 on your camera is it not a real pro camera.  You may get lucky and have a church with a LOT of windows that will make it possible to shoot with a lesser camera or lens but not if the window is stained glass windows and not if it ends up being a cloudy day either.

To tell if your lens is a 2.8 or not is by looking around the ring on the front around the glass.   It may also be found on the top when you look down at it holding it on your camera body.  If it says 3.5-5.6  or something like that it is not the lens you need.  It needs to start with the 2.8-something or just 2.8.   These lenses are very expensive and range from $1,000 to $1,500 each.  For a new person starting out you can rent them if you have credit. But it would be irresponsible to shoot in a church without them.  I say this because at weddings I continually get people coming up to me telling me their horror stories about their photographer who was probably new and didn’t know what they were doing.  If you are starting out remember weddings are a HUGE responsibility and one of the harder of the types of photography to shoot.  So at least volunteer to assist a known photographer to learn before you start shooting on your own.  Your clients deserve it.  The short lens is for the getting ready shots, shots of couples or anything close up and the long lens is a must have to get a close up look at the bride and groom during the ceremony.  Most churches have very specific rules about not interrupting the ceremony and you want to obey these rules or you may be black listed from the church or worse you will ruin it for the future and they will make it a policy of no photography during the ceremony because they have had too many problems with photographers.  Ok enough on that!  If you at least have those two you will be ok.  Now for the FUN lenses! These are the ones that make your style your style.  This gives your images a creative look in different situations.  You have several options for portrait lenses the 50mm 1.4, 85 1.4, 80 1.8 and probably more.  This just gives your images that dreamy look with the blurry background.  It is really only good for one person at a time because literally you focus on the eye and it will be in focus but even the nose will be just a bit blurry so if two people then one of them will be slightly out of focus. Then a good macro for the details shots. These are tough lenses to learn to shoot with because they literally focus on the head of a pin and can be frustrating for beginners but I love them. I have two, one short and one long.  And lastly a fish eye or wide angle that are good for the dancing shots and make the dance floor come alive. They can capture everything from the left side of your body almost all the way around to the right side of your body.  There are more I can tell you about but you get the idea.

So after about an hour of putting everything in its perfect place then have to put my cards on around my waist.  I only shoot in 2 gig cards because a card can fail and you don’t want your whole wedding sitting on one card. And SHOOT IN RAW!  Jpg is a terrible format and if you end up in a super dark church that even you 2.8 can’t handle then you need to have a little flexibly to lighten your images and jpg gives you VERY little flexibility.  Then lastly I put on my classic black pants and jacket.  You want to meld into the background not be the center of it.  Also, for women pants because you never know what you will have to climb, lay down on or whatever else to get that perfect shot.

I always try to get to my weddings at least 30 minutes before my shoot time.  I sit in the car reformat my cards, put on my gear that saves my neck from further injury from my camera strap.  Then I pull out the camera and lenses I want to start shooting with right away.  And lastly into the church I go.  This church doesn’t allow photography during the ceremony.  My guess is they have had a problem with photographers in the past.  Sometimes it is because the minister or priest is older and finds all the movement in the back distracting.  But if they kick you all the way out of the church it is a pretty good sign they have had bad photographers in the past who didn’t respect the rules.  Luckily this church does have a glass window that they say it is ok to shoot through.  But I am miles away even with my 200 mm AGAIN can you imagine if I was shooting this with a short lens?  The bride and groom would look like ants.  (I will write more about this specific wedding in my next post because I must say they are adorable!)  After that we go into the group shots. I am very careful not to ever let the after shots go any longer than an hour.  People are fine all the way up to 59 minutes but I swear to you it’s like clockwork, the minute you hit 60 minutes you will get the questions of ‘are we almost done?” etc.  This is another good reason to mentor with a photographer.  You need a plan for the group shots so you get people up and down quickly BUT STILL MAKE IT FUN without yelling at people. I use humor all the time and luckily I have a voice that carries.  If you aren’t good at this HIRE someone to do it for you.  Accept your limitations and find an alternative.  I know one wedding planner who is a fabulous wedding planner but a terrible coordinator.  She has this small little mousy voice that no one can hear so no one listens to her.  Therefore it just makes for mass confusion.  Don’t let that be you because most brides don’t hire coordinators and we as photographers along with the DJ’s end up doing most of the coordination.  But I highly recommend hiring a coordinator even if it is just for the day.  (Again make sure you hire a professional, not someone who decided to become a planner because they just planned their own wedding.)  Look at lots of their weddings.  I have shot over 100 weddings and can show you just about anything you want.  A good coordinator who has been in the business can too.  Also, I would talk to a couple of her/his clients as some coordinators are fun and some are down right mean when they coordinate the wedding.  You want it to be fun not a big bummer.

After the posed shots I let everyone go but the bride and groom and then go into the romantic shots. I don’t want anyone watching because it makes it harder for them to be natural with everyone staring at them.  I also usually do this at the reception venue right before we go in since the reception venue is usually prettier than the church.  (USUALLY-check out your venue before you shoot their to make sure.)  Then the rest of the night are those fun candids everyone loves to shoot.

Here is a quick question you should ask yourself before you take someone’s money to shoot their wedding…  ”What percentage of my shots are printable images?” Meaning would you spend your own money to print that picture?  Is it a picture of the back of people’s heads?  Really would you print that?  Maybe if it was the bride and groom walking away holding hands but not just of some random guests etc.  When you zoom in on your picture at 1:1 ration is it blurry or soft? If soft KILL IT!  It won’t print well.  Computers are MUCH more forgiving than print.  You can only tell what your image will look like when it prints when at 1:1 ratio.  And don’t assume you are a photographer because you get some great shots. With digital ANYONE (well almost anyone) can get some great shots.  But do you think the bride and groom are going to be happy with even 20 amazing shots?  You need to consistently get great shot, after great shot, after great shot.  And you have to nail all the important ones: walking down the aisle, the kiss, walking back down the aisle, intro to the ballroom, the first dance, the cake, the toasts, the garter & bouquet and the exit. YES ALL OF THEM.  I don’t promote any photographer till they can get all those shots three weddings in a row.  Now keep in mind accidents can always happen.  I had a DJ once walk right in front of me just as the bouquet was thrown.  I got half of the brides body and half of the lovely DJ.  To say I was not happy was an understatement.  Fortunately my assistant got it but it wasn’t my favorite angle to shoot  but these things can happen.   For brides who may be reading this as well as budding photographers the economy has produced a ton of semi-pro photographers.  These are the people who bought a nice camera and think the camera makes the photographer.  This is absolutely not the case.  You have to know how to shoot into the light, shoot in dark situations without it being blurry (and if you are shooting on P in a dark church it WILL be blurry) and shooting in a dark reception during fast action like the bouquet toss. These are usually the shots a new person will blow.  Ok, I feel like this has turned into more of a class than a blog post about my day…  ;  )

So the rest of the reception is a blast.  Everyone is relaxed at this point and having a great time. It is my time to just kick back and shoot everything.  I love those shots of people just being themselves and my bride is so smiley I can’t get enough of her!  She lights up a room.  Before I know it the exit is upon us and the bride and bride’s Mom has chosen bird seed – a classic.  So with soar feet, a soar back and a ton of gear to pack back in the car I go home happy.  It was a beautiful wedding.  But that is not the end of my day.  I have to download all my cards then back them up to a separate drive.   I never erase the cards till I have burned two DVD’s also but I usually do that a little later. It takes another 2 hours to load them copy them to another drive then I can finally go to bed.

The next blog post will be the beautiful bridal portrait from my bride this evening that I can now finally show followed by a slideshow in a couple of days about the happy couples big day! For now this wedding photographer is signing off!

Example of shooting into the light and making it work

Yesterday was another exciting day. We made the most of it as it was a rain off again on again as it sometimes is in the tropics. But the beautiful part about it is that it rarely last longer than an hour and the sun is back out again just as bright as if it had never even rained. My husband is a surfer and has always hoped for me and my children to pick up the sport. When I would see him surf on the East coast the waves always looked so small and boring. So finally it seems like a great day with big waves, I just grabbed one of his boards and headed out-determined. Needless to say the waves beat me back as I tried to paddle out over and over. And when I finally did get to try to take a wave I ate it as soon as I grabbed it. But yesterday was a different story. Barbados has BEAUTIFUL waves and with it an amazing surf school, Barry’s Surf School, which I can say actually LEARNING how to get on the board is quite helpful as you can imagine. Jonno was my instructor. A pro-surfer at that! He was fun, full of energy (and Lord help him he needed it with me!) and a great teacher. With his before hand instruction and a little push as these short little arms didn’t give me much speed I caught my first wave and stood up. Not for long as you can imagine but enough that my husband was in heaven. I even rode in the rain, like a true surfer. ha! I rode over and over, never staying on the board long but long enough for me to have fun and maybe someday with some practice I might be able to ride a wave in with my husband. It was a great ending to my last day in paradise. Fun people at the surf school to hang with doing something I had never really done before which is always something I strive for in life. I owe Mark the photographer and the Barry’s Surf School (who I HIGHLY recommend) for these photographs. And yes, I included the good, bad and the ugly! ; ) OH and note to future surfers, don’t surf the day before you have to cart heavy bags around the airport. ; ) Think about it… Can you say “SOAR!!!!” Ok, not that bad but enough to make me a little whiney.

As I sit on the plane ride home I am thinking about all the wonderful things I did and saw this week. I will miss it for sure but it is always good to come home. And I have a wonderful wedding on Saturday that I can’t wait to shoot. I have some fun things planned IF I can fit them in… But they will be so cute if I am able to do them.
So this is my last blog post from Barbados. See you back in Raleigh, photographing all my amazing local peeps!!!

Diane

Photo's Courtesy of Mark with Barry's Surf School

Photo's Courtesy of Mark with Barry's Surf School

Photo's Courtesy of Mark with Barry's Surf School

Photo's Courtesy of Mark with Barry's Surf School

Photo's Courtesy of Mark with Barry's Surf School

Now a REAL surfer! My sweet husband.

Photo's Courtesy of Mark with Barry's Surf School

Photo's Courtesy of Mark with Barry's Surf School

It is day 5 in Barbados but day 1 hardly counts since I spent the whole day traveling and didn’t get it till late at night. The last couple of days were spent alternating between the beach and the pool. I was going to take a boat to see the Sea Turtles but evidently the turtles are full of jellyfish right now so they don’t come up out of the water. So it was off to see the monkeys and other wildlife on the island.

Anytime I can see wildlife that is one of my favorite things to do. My trip to Africa is still the highlight of all my travels and would go back at a moments notice if the opportunity presented itself. For photography sadly it was the film days back then but SOMEDAY I plan to have all those negatives scanned. All 28 rolls of them! Ughh. But here in Barbados the most exotic of the animals is the green monkeys. Very cute I must say. I remember a study from years ago a study we reviewed in my psychology class that when they observed monkeys they had a similar society to our own. Their mothers took care of their children, they developed families within the community which is no shocker. But what WAS a shocker to me is they had mugger, rapists and other such darker sides of society. Needless to say they are very interesting to watch. I also tell you this since you will see one little monkey wasn’t real happy with my getting so close to him. He yelled at me a couple of times. I decided to get my shot and move along for my own good. Here is a little of what I photographed yesterday. Enjoy!

Funny it has only been 24 hours but yesterday already feels like it was weeks ago. Racing to make final edits and ordering for my bridal portrait for my bride this coming saturday, shipping what felt like a million packages so none of my brides would have to wait an additional week for their Save the Dates they ordered and of course trying to pack for my trip. Crazy. But now I am miles away in paradise. The sun is bright and it is about 85 degrees with a warm ocean breeze. I have only spent time at the pool and the beach but have already witnessed an amazing anomaly. At least I THINK it is… While shooting the rocky coast their were some local fishermen that started pointing to the sky to show me and eagerly asking me to take a picture of the sky. At first I was a little confused but when I looked up surely enough there it was… A giant rainbow AROUND the sun. I have never seen anything like it. The fisherman also told me he had lived on the island his whole life and never seen anything like it. I did a little research and the closest I could come to what it might be is a Sundog but that also said it had to happen in cold temperatures which this definitely doesn’t qualify. If there are any astronomers out there though speak up!

Man what a couple of days it has been. I was busy doing lots of little activities for the business that needed to be taken care of when I get the call…  ”She had the baby”.  Normally I would be looking at my schedule to see when we could bring the newborn into the studio for his or her first photoshoot.  But the surprise is that it is a baby cow!  Now I have already forgotten the formal name for this type of cow.  My friend did tell me but all I can remember is the nickname for them, the Oreo cow.  Oreo because the are black on both sides with a white stripe that rings the center just like an Oreo cookie.  Oddly she was skidish-evidently unusual.  But once I set out on foot instead of in the gator with 7 kids, my girlfriend and myself then I was able to get close enough to get some decent shots.  (As I re-read that it might seem the obvious reason would be the 7 kids and 2 adults but I can say with pretty good certainty that is not the reason.  We have been doing that for that last 5 years since we moved out here and my friend for at least 4 more in addition to that number!  I am putting a couple of shots below.  So a lot of excitement and she was so cute.

Today was filled with retouching the final images on my bridal portrait for their final selection, packing and getting the house ready for my upcoming trip and of course answering emails.  Although I did get one little surprise that those of you who are facebook friends are already aware of…  My youngest decided to pour baby powder all over the bathroom floor so she could ice skate.  Gotta love kids!  So ingenious and insidious all in one! ha ha!  And I am SO mad at myself for not taking a picture of it.  Can you believe it? ME NOT TAKING A PICTURE!  You know I was feeling stressed and overwhelmed not to think of that!

So here I am at 1:23am wrapping up my day.  Goodnight!

This guy was just really friendly. I think the poor thing thought I had food.

I guess I need to rename my title huh?  Because really it has become 2 days in the life of a photographer.  Well the last two days have been very busy although it is a bit of a blur.  Ordering Save the Dates for clients, lots of back and forth email on differing products, wedding dates, consultations or explanations of packages and the biggest chunk devoted to editing my bridal session.  What most people don’t realize about photography is that for every one hour of shooting we have about 2 hours of editing behind the scenes. And that assumes you are an experienced pro that shoots pretty much on target without a lot of mistakes to correct.  That doesn’t even include backing up and burning all the files ( A MAJOR TASK WHICH I HATE) but clearly VERY important, album designs, proofs to order, packaging, shipping and I could go on and on.  Someday I am going to time every piece of the puzzle and REALLY know how much time a wedding takes.  And of course some shoots require more editing that others.  My infant sessions always require more retouching because their skin can be kind of flakey or blotchy and let’s face it they are so stinking cute I am not letting them go out the door like that!  Same for a bride who has been stressed out and has just that one little blemish that yes make up helps to hide but the camera can be SO TRUTHFUL at times.  That one doesn’t usually sneak out of my studio either.

Today was a little more low key since I stayed up till about 3am last night finishing my bridal and posted it in the am.  That left me free to check my 2 hours of emails. (Yes, I spend between 2-3 hours each day corresponding on email.) I am STILL astounded about that but I guess after being in business for almost 10 years you get a lot of new inquiries, really old ones, random ones and not to mention all the spam!  But the majority of the day was spent on backing up photoshoots to disk and writing my business plan for the year.  It feels good to put it on paper.  I was always anal with New Years Resolutions until I had my first child, then there just isn’t that time for introspection I guess.  So this was a lot like that…  And I liked it.  I wrote down what I really want my business to be in the next 5 years for me and for my clients.   It is a good feeling.  Now mind you on a side note I had a whole other computer downloading my video for the whole year of the family.  Nothing like multitasking on 3 computers at one time.  I must be insane or severely ADD.  (Which by the way, my brother Caid says I am…)  Good problem to have when you are juggling a business, two little one’s at home and I won’t even pretend I juggle the house because anyone who has been over knows I got over that a LONG time ago.

I rounded off the day with a bike ride with the girls then off to dinner with my favorite photographer friends.  We have a group of girlfriends who are all in photography that we try to get together AT LEAST once a month.  Sometimes we all make it but most of the times we are missing one or two but this was a very close to having everyone night.  It was so fun to hang out with people who ‘get’ your life.  They get it as a Mom, they get it as a photographer and they get it as a wife.   I love you girls and thank you for being such WONDERFUL friends.  (That is the two glasses of champagne coming out!) ha ha!  Speaking of which being a bit of a tea totaler (is that right?) I hope this doesn’t sound like alcoholic rambling in the morning.  Oh and if you think the bad grammar is a result of the champagne let me help you with that one…. It’s not.  I always got A’s over C’s in English. A’s in content, C’s in grammar and I never seemed to get it.  So hopefully you can over look it.  I have some pictures from the park where we rode our bikes but sadly they are sitting in the camera downstairs.  Maybe I can get them up in the morning before you read this post but for now my bed is calling me.  Only 3 hours of sleep makes this photographer grumpy and tired.  Goodnight!!