wedding photographer – Page 2

October 1, 2011

Nick & Caroline: A Southern Wedding with a Second Line

Nick and Caroline were married at the LDS Temple in Dallas, Texas and their wedding reception was at the Lee Hardware Gallery in Shreveport, Louisiana. Nick and Caroline are a truly vintage couple. Many people go for the vintage look, but Nick and Caroline really fit the part. I think you’ll see what I mean.

I was struck by the architecture of the Temple, but the hedge in front made the situation perfect for a couple’s portrait.

I loved this location, which I found in my pre-wedding scouting, but as Caroline walked around the corner, I had to tell her to freeze. It was the perfect position for her. Everything around her framed her quite nicely.

Her dress, her hair, the necklace, even the lipstick were all perfect vintage.

At the wedding reception, instead of a guest book, Nick (a designer by trade) created a sign in map.

And of course, even the microphone fit the vintage theme. I was very covetous of this mic. I am a mic enthusiast.

The reception was held in the Lee’s Hardware Gallery, which is an old building in downtown Shreveport. The textures on the walls in the interior courtyard were phenomenal. And yes, that is a wedding cake piñata. It was fun.

The textures and colors in the streets of downtown Shreveport are fantastic for portraits, but you must turn off that auto white balance on your camera!

I love the warm film look on this shot.

This is my favorite image from the day. As we were taking the bride’s portrait, she turned slightly toward the wall and I saw the possibility of this shot. With a slight adjustment of her hand and head, I shot several variations on this shot and the result was fantastic.

If you are going to do a vintage wedding, I suggest taking a stroll in a vintage town. Shreveport is definitely vintage. I love this Ridgway’s sign.

I also love Nick’s “Ronald Reagan” hairdo. Of course the back ground is perfect as well. I shot this at a much higher f-number to make sure I got the groom and the metal door in focus. I am more often a shallow depth of field kind of guy, but there are times when f8 or higher is called for. In this case, the greater depth of field give the image a illustrated look, which I thought was very appropriate to the image.

The flowers were fantastic. These flowers are called Billy Balls and apparently they look the same when they are dried. The arrangement were done by Patsy Foster in Shreveport. She did a great job.

This was the most touching moment of the day. The bride had been carrying a handkerchief throughout the entire day. I had not paid much special attention to it and just assumed it was an old vintage handkerchief: something old. But Caroline knelt down beside he grandmother and showed her the handkerchief and reminded her that she had given it to her when Caroline was a little girl and that she had kept it to this day for this very purpose. That is something old and something special.

I think this will be the groom’s father’s favorite photo of the day. It would be mine if this were my son.

Just a couple of great shots on our way down to the “second line”.

A “second line” is an interesting tradition in Louisiana, kind of a parade. The entire wedding (all the guests) met at the water’s edge and paraded, complete with music, up to the wedding reception. It was a hot day, but was a great opportunity for photos! This was my very first “second line.” I enjoyed it, but it was a lot of running and sweating.

Two of the children led the way, carrying a banner for the bride and groom.

At the end of the evening, the games began. The children got a whack at the wedding cake piñata and so did the bride and groom.

Most of the guests came from the surrounding states, so the signature map was a bit crowded near the gulf, but there were a few people (like myself) who came from quite a distance to join the wedding. This is one of the coolest guest signature ideas I have seen in a long time.

I think the straws are a good indication of the “fun” level of this wedding. Caroline and Nick put their wedding together on a small budget, but I think they spent their money very well and made every detail count. It all added up to a very fun event with a lot of cute details.

The painting is by Nick Eckel and the lamps were made by Caroline Majors (the bride and groom), I love both. Nick is a talented designer and illustrator. If you need a graphic designer, I highly recommend him. He’s a talented, stand up guy.

I was glad to represent Arizona at Nick and Caroline’s wedding. It was a pleasure to be a part of it.

Wedding Details:

Photography by Jared Platt, Platt Photography

Special thanks to Jessica Brownell for assisting and second shooting.

Slideshow music by J’Nae, Courtesy of Triple Scoop Music

Wedding Location: LDS Temple, Dallas, Texas

Reception Location: Lee’s Hardware Gallery, Shreveport, Louisiana

April 10, 2011

Shelby and Nick’s Engagement Portraits in Phoenix, Arizona

Nick and Shelby’s Engagement Portraits in the Phoenix Arizona Desert from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

We started this engagement portrait shoot at Shelby’s parents home in Phoenix, Arizona and ended it in the desert as sunset. Shelby’s parents home is in the shadow of the mountain about two and a half hours before the sun sets, so there is a lot of great open shade around the home, which makes for fantastic images. The color and texture of the stones is quite nice to work with as well. And of course, Shelby and Nick are a good looking and cool couple, so it was a pretty nice afternoon.

The night after the engagement shoot, I posted one of the images from the shoot on my Facebook Page. The shot is below. Shelby just happen to have a card board cutout of Jacob, from the Twilight Movie series in her trunk. I remember trying to watch one of those movies on a 14 hour flight home from a wedding in Hong Kong and it was so bad, so poorly acted, that I shut the movie off and did nothing for two hours rather than watch that movie. It was a lot of fun and the shot makes me laugh, every time I look at it.

We had a lot of laughs while we were making the shot. And if there is one thing that is extremely important at an engagement portrait session, it is having a lot of good laughs. It certainly makes my job more entertaining, and the by-product is that the photos look better too.

So, here is the first photo I posted, the night of the engagement shoot.

There were so many great shots from the afternoon. I have posted a few of my very favorite shots below.

This was one of the earlier shots in the day. The huge windows behind them make for some fantastic back light and the stair case made for a great angular element to hold the top of the photo together. For those of you interested in the lighting on this shot, there is a shoot through translucent umbrella above, forward of and to the right of the Nick. This light is giving the couple some volume by side lighting them, but we are not too dramatic, because it is at a 45 degree angle on them and it is a shoot through umbrella which softens the light a bit because the direction of the light is less defined. The light was simply a 580EXII Canon Flash attached to a Radio Popper. My camera is also sporting a 580EX flash with a Radio Popper transmitter and the flash is pounding up into the ceiling to give a little fill light throughout the room. And then, of course, the window lights are providing shape of the stare case, and a little hair light for the couple.The shutter speed is at 125th of a second and the ISO is at 400. This allows me to get a good blast from the ambient light outside and the aperture is at 2.8, which gives me that soft look in the background. I am shooting on a fixed 85mm lens. The 85mm 1.8 is not a very expensive lens, but it takes a beautiful image. I love that little lens.

I love the reflection in the pool and the blue set against the yellow blooms of the desert trees.

Of all the images at the house, this has to be my favorite. The stone and the tree are fantastic and the tree frames the couple very nicely in the bottom left corner of the photo. You have to love the color in this one.

I just love the expressions on this one. Oh, and the composition.

Just behind their home, on the side of the mountain is an outcropping of rocks that was quite difficult to photograph. Once we got them up to the rocks, I had to take position on the top of a wall to get the right angle on the shot, but how can you not love this one. I was so happy with the image composition and then, Shelby put he elbow up on Nick’s shoulder and that made the photo! I told her to keep that pose and “never stop!” I think those were my actual words. Way to go with this one Shelby. Way to go.

I enjoy the quality of the light after the sun has gone down for about 15 minutes or so. There really isn’t a better light. I used to capture this kind of light on film, but I had to use a tripod, I was often shooting a 4×5 camera (those old accordion looking cameras with the dark cloths over the photographer’s head) and the exposures were 30 seconds and of landscapes. I am so happy with digital cameras today. 6400 ISO? No problem. I could enjoy shooting an entire photo shoot AFTER sunset! It really is the best light ever.

Sweet light. Sweet kiss. Sweet shot.

Photography by Jared Platt, Platt Photography
Shoot: Engagement Portrait Session
Location: Phoenix, Arizona, South Mountain
Slideshow Music: Mindy Gledhill, courtesy of Triple Scoop Music

October 6, 2010

A Wedding in the Grand Canyon

It is pretty hard to top getting married at one of the seven natural wonders of the world. It’s like being married at the ocean’s edge, except that there is only one Grand Canyon. It was a perfect day for a wedding at the Grand Canyon. Shashone Point is a great location with almost no tourists and no guard rails. This is the way the canyon was intended to be seen. And what a great backdrop for a wedding.

Thank you, Eric and Alicia for allowing us to be a part of this great wedding. It was a truly one of a kind.

The Bailey / Kintner Wedding – The Grand Canyon, AZ from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

Alicia and Eric were married at the Grand Canyon. The ceremony was held at Shoshone Point, which is one of the most spectacular views in the canyon and is one of the most accessible and yet untouched areas on the canyon’s edge.

Photography by: Jared Platt
Wedding Designer: Kim Duncan
Location: The Grand Canyon
Music: Celtic Blessing by Lianna Klassen – Triple Scoop Music

www.triplescoopmusic.com

June 25, 2010

Engagement Portraits in Downtown Phoenix, Arizona + One Cool Dog!

Saturday morning was a fun morning. We got out early enough to beat the heat and stayed in the shadows of the buildings for the most part, so even the heat of a Phoenix summer didn’t deter us from taking some cool engagement portraits. Then add one very cool dog… It was a fun photo session with some cool results.

The slideshow is below and then my favorite images from the engagement session. Enjoy.

Downtown in any city is a great place to shoot (provided that it is a safe city). There are obviously interesting backdrops everywhere you look, but one of the great advantages of photographing, in this case, engagement portraits, in the city is that the buildings give you cover from the sun at any point in the day. No matter where the sun is, you can always find a shady spot. So we took our engagement portrait shoot downtown in Phoenix, Arizona. I always enjoy the painted lines and text on streets in a photograph and in this one, the street lines and the lines of the dog’s leash converge quite nicely, making an accelerated sense of perspective.

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Cute shoes, cute dog. No need to photograph anything else.

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She is a super small girl, so she almost disappears when she snuggles in, but there seems to be a joyous safety in that and I can see that in her smile.

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Again, I am using the converging lines of the parking entrance as the major design element in this shot. And of course, her leg is perfect. And the shoe too.

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This dog is the coolest dog. He was a rescued dog and she was his “foster parent”, but fell in love with him. Can’t blame her for that. The dog was low key and casual and was super cooperative as a subject. Hence, lots of photos were taken with the dog.

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Everytime I photograph animals at a wedding or engagement portrait, I am reminded of my earlier years in photography when I shot Christmas portraits of peoples’ pets on Santa’s lap at a local PetSmart store. My favorite was when Santa (an elderly animal shelter worker lady) was handed a very large snake to hold. She had a tough time with that assignment. Then later, at a commercial studio, we shot the isle blades and catalog images for PetSmart. We had dogs, cats, hamsters, snakes, parrots, lizards, fish and everything else you can think of on the set. It was quite the experience. Anyway, one animal becomes easy after that and this dog was a real cool customer. So he was great.

I especially love this shot. It was taken in an alleyway next to the hotel laundry room, so hot air was blowing on me as I shot in the already increasing temperatures of the Phoenix sumer morning, but the lighting was perfect. No artificial light was necessary. The only major light source was coming from the street where the dog is looking and bouncing off the walls as it filtered toward us. That bounce with a little general fill light from the sliver of sky above gives the shadows just enough light to keep them full of interesting detail.

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This next shot is in the same alleyway, so the light is similar, just with a very weak fill flash to soften up the drama.

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And the parting shot – one of my favorite buildings in all of phoenix is the Orpheum Theater, which has been fused with the more modern Phoenix City building towering over it. It was an beautiful way to merge the old and the new together.

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