We were at Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale, Arizona at sunrise. The weather was perfect, a little chilly, but perfect for a serious hike. It’s a good thing, because that’s what we were in for. Krissy and Dan planned their wedding on the top of that mountain. Well, not on the tip top, but pretty high up there. My associate, Eric Greenhaulgh and I spent a good 15 minutes deciding what gear needed to come and what gear could stay down below. Any photographer knows exactly what I’m talking about. Equipment is heavy, so you don’t want to take something you are not going to use, but you would hate to be at the top of a mountain and need something that is in your car at the bottom of the mountain.
First, we made sure not to duplicate anything. We did not bring any duplicate lenses. Between the two of us though, we had a full compliment of lenses. A Canon 16-35, 28-70, 70-200 and a 50. I carried my 1D Mark IV, he had his 1D Mark III. We had one small hand held post with a Canon 580 EX flash and a set of Pocket Wizard TT1 and TT5 radio slaves. It is important to have your hands free, when hiking up a mountain and shooting others who are hiking up with you, so we couldn’t take reflectors and such with us and not self standing light poles, etc. Everything strapped nicely onto our one backpack (which we alternated carrying up and down) and we had only the gear that was necessary in the backpack, although Eric was a little over zealous about what he was willing to carry up the mountain. My backpack was a small one and I was still able to fit a bottle of water in mine. I had to convince Eric not to take everything he owned up the mountain. The truth is, I didn’t want to have to take my turn at carrying it. Maybe I am lazy, but I prefer to call it “smart.”
Opportunities for challenging wedding photography are wonderful. I enjoy them because they force me and my crew to work and think differently about the job and how to accomplish it. We still need to get great images, but we have to think differently and sometimes find ways to capture them with less. Granted, I have done entire weddings with far less gear than we had here, but it was a very bright, sunny day, so we definitely needed some kind of lighting solution to match the sun and shadow sides of faces. Also, because of the wide variety of opportunities for a great shot up there, and the limited options for the photographer to stand (we were on a mountain with cliffs and cactus etc.), I needed a good compliment of lenses to be able to capture the images on my terms.
A Native American flutist meat us at the top of the mountain. As we neared the ledge, where he was playing, Dan (for whom this was a surprise) thought it was just great luck that on the day he was getting married, a Native American flutist was up on top his the mountain playing his flute. Krissy had lots of little surprises like this throughout the day.
It was a good hike to get to the wedding location, but is was indeed, a beautiful morning.
Getting ready occurred at the top of the mountain. The guys took on side of the hill and the girls took the other side. I did appreciate that the groomsmen all work black hiking shirts and shorts. Those were their tuxes. That was cool. The only two that dressed UP for the wedding were the bride and groom. Otherwise, dress code was very casual.
Here is the bride’s room. And quite frankly, I think it was one of the most beautiful and well decorated bridal rooms I have ever seen. Most of the time, the bride is getting ready in a hotel room, or a sitting room. Which, even if decorated nicely, can’t match the grander of the top of a mountain. They just needed a sheet to sheild Krissy from the onlooking hikers and photographers. Oh, wait, I was one of those, but I had a press pass.
Surprise 2: Krissy took all of Dan’s love notes and poems and printed them out on origami style paper and made her own bouquet out of love poems. I really enjoy an original and personal bridal bouquet. I love it when brides put more of themselves into their wedding details. This was a great surprise for Dan.
I love a good wedding on a cliff. Up to now, I have only done cliff weddings at the Grand Canyon, which has some magnificent cliffs. It was nice to witness a cliff wedding closer to home.
For the photographers out there, you can see that the sun is shining very bright now on the bride and groom. You can see the crest of light on her dress, and on his face. But you will also notice that the grooms back is not in complete deep shadow, the bride’s face is lit, as is her dress, etc. But you can still see the direction of light from the sun. There is a clear direction of light here. This is the use of the Pocket Wizard TT1 and TT5 with a Canon 580 EX Speedlight although now you can use the 600 EX. We set it on a rock and I just turned on and off my TT1 transmitter when I needed or didn’t need the flash. This was an indispensable part of capturing this wedding. Without it, we would have extremely dark shadows or blown out highlights. The light is set to fill in from the left of the frame at one stop less than the ambient. If we had set it to equal the ambient light, the flash would have attempted to equal the sunlight and thus eliminate all the volume in the shot.
This is the entire wedding watching the ceremony. I love a small wedding. I really do!
Here are some of my favorite images from the portrait session after the wedding.
Yes, Krissy is an amazingly gutsy bride! If that doesn’t look safe, it is because it is not. I think Dan was a bit worried about her, but Krissy was game for anything. I wasn’t worried about Dan, he’s a police officer. He’s a tough guy.
Dan is also sorting a boutonniere made of his own love poems.
I was working on this image and my wife came in and commented on it. How tiny is she?
I don’t always pre visualize and image at the shot; meaning that I don’t always know exactly what I want to do with an image in post-production before I shoot it, but in this next series of images, I knew what I wanted to do before I even started shooting the photos. We were stating back down the mountain and the bride and groom were going to be walking by me at any moment. I knew I wanted this image to be extreme selective focus, I wanted to make it look like it was taken at the end of the 19th century. So I opened my lens all the way up and made the appropriate exposure adjustments (which can barely be done because at f 1.2, at 100 ISO, you have to expose at 1/8000 of a second). Anyway, I rattled off a bunch of shots with this concept in mind and I was pleased with the result. I am always more pleased with the results when I pre-vissualize the end from the beginning. I suppose it is more satisfying to know I pulled it off, but I also think that if one can see the end from the beginning, it makes every step in the process more valuable to the final result.
I thought this was just a great comparison/contrast.
Down the mountain! At times, Camelback Mountain is a bit steep. For a girl in a wedding dress, it seems even steeper.
This is one of my favorite series of shots. We got a few grumbles from a team of repellers that wanted the cliff all to themselves, but if they only knew what we were accomplishing in the two minutes we were imposing ourselves on their rock, I think they would have been much more supportive. I really like this shot.
This is my official wedding attire for all super casual hiking to the top of a mountain weddings. It’s quite frankly the most comfortable wedding attire I own.
Krissy and Dan, thanks for letting me be a part of such a wonderful wedding. It was a pleasure.
Courtney, her sister, her mother and I all headed out into the desert for some cool senior portraits. Here are a few of my favorite images from the photo shoot.
We started fairly early in the afternoon by lighting standards which means that the sun was high in the sky and very bright. But with a fantastic camera (the Canon 1D Mark IV) and the best software (Adobe Lightroom) and a good understanding of lighting, harsh lighting does not have to be a problem.
You will notice that in many of those shots, I have Courtney facing away from the sun so that her face is in her own shadow. This means I have a “north light” studio with a very strong hair light. Then, with a little off camera fill light, matching the exposure is simple enough. I prefer to keep the flash (a Canon Speedlight 580 EX – no longer available – instead try the new 600EX-RT) in manual mode so that I am getting the same flash output every time, but in these bright lighting conditions, that requires shooting well above the camera/flash sync speed, and that can only be done off camera with a set of Pocket Wizard radio slaves (TT1 and TT5). With a speed light and a set of the pocket wizards, I can keep my flash in manual mode, but still have it operating in high speed sync, which makes matching the subject (flash) and the background (ambient) possible.
I do have to say that I am excited about the new Canon flash (600EX-RT) just released this month which may make the pocket wizards unnecessary. But I will be testing those very soon and I will let you know how well they work.
This is another example of using the off camera flash and high speed sync capabilities in a bright sunlight situation. I couldn’t have done without the flash on this shoot and I didn’t have my assistant, so I am so glad the set up is light weight and portable.
Here, you will notice there are no catch lights in the eyes. No flash was used. But since I was not placing her against the sky, I could get all the exposure latitude I needed from the camera without a flash. This requires attention to the highlights (making sure I do not over expose them) which makes the entire photo seem a bit dark. But, since I am shooting RAW, I can then brighten up the mid-tones in Lightroom 4 and I end up with a perfect exposure in the end. This is what Ansel Adams referred to as pre-vissualization. Were Ansel Adams shooting today, he would be using Lightroom. And no, that’s not blasphemous.
I will always love open shade best. And this is my favorite photograph of the day. Courtney’s hair frames the photo nicely and I really enjoy the treatment of the photo. I have always loved the look of film, digital can be too perfect and too smooth. In fact, I have found myself purposefully shooing higher ISO shots on my digital cameras even when I have abundant light just to get a little more grain into the photo.
I love the composition on this shot. The repeated lines in the skirt mimicked by the white picket fence is nice as well. One particular part of the composition that I love is the way the porch windows frame her head and shoulders. And I and so pleased with the faded black and white film look.
Ah, the good earth…
Courtney just looks fantastic in this shot. And I love all the texture in the collar. This shot is taken just as the sun dropped below the horizon. My favorite time of day.
My wife and I have known Allie since she was in high school. Neither one of us thought that there was a man out there as cool as Allie, but of course Allie had to prove us wrong . . . . and found the lid to her pot. I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with Allie and Tyler in a grove of pistachio trees in Gilbert, Arizona. Here are some of my favorite images:
Note to self: buy mirror sunglasses.
I had a great time playing with the colors in this photo. If I were 14 I would say it looks “chill” even though it is warm.
Long before he fell in love with Allie, Tyler fell in love with the outdoors. Not one to shy away from a little competition, Allie drummed up this little number to catch her man’s eye. I was laughing the entire time we were shooting. Which is problematic because laughter creates camera shake. But I kept it under control.
In today’s world of social networking we have all at one time or another written up a personal profile – a brief description of who we are and of the events that have occurred in our lives to make us that way. I told you that I have known Allie for a long time. Her personal profile is full of strength, hard work, optimism, and survival. I am so pleased with this next shot of Allie. It does what photography does best and provides a visual representation of that description of who we are and the events that have made us that way.
Is it possible that Tyler likes her even better without the antlers?
Yep!
As the sun set, I opened up the aperture on my 50 mm 1.2 lens all the way to 1.2 which gave us this extreme limited depth of field. I told Allie and Tyler I was going to be making some extremely grainy old looking photographs. They were excited about the idea. I think they turned out well.
This is definitely on of my favorite shots of the day. The grain, the encircling branches, the soft light. It is all there.
Ever the hunter!
Tyler brought several deadly weapons to this photo shoot . . . and I just brought my camera.
This is a fairly personal post. I photographed a wedding for a very dear friend of our family. Our friend Becky and her children joined a new family and promptly flew away to China.
Jeff and Rebecca were married at the LDS Temple in Mesa Arizona. Their wedding brought two young families together. The kids on both sides are as sweet as they come. Rebecca lived with her children in Chandler, Arizona and Jeff traveled with his children all the way from China, where he works and now they all live in China. We miss Becky and her children very much, but what a great adventure for their family… we hope to see them soon.
I had hoped, with the sheer number of children and people who would be converging on the bride’s home that there would be chaos in the house, which is always fun to photograph, but true to form, Becky and her children were on top of it all, very organized and no chaos whatsoever. Lots of laughter and happiness though!
Although I don’t think it was the only reason for the happiness, there were a pair of Jimmy Choo magic shoes there, which couldn’t hurt.
Tying ties.
Drying hair.
Putting on makeup. It’s all part of getting ready and I see it all the time, but getting ready is all relative to what you are getting ready for. Not just a wedding, but the merger of two dynamic sets of children, a great adventure, a new culture, a 15 hour plane flight…
I thought this makeup photo was one of the better I have captured. The framing was perfect as was the light and with Becky’s striking features, I thought it deserved a little film noir look. I was already shooting at a very high ISO, so the grain was a natural result, there was no reason to fight it. So I pushed it even further. All of this was done in Adobe Lightroom 4 without the help of any plugins or external editors.
It was interesting. When I started to photograph the dress on the hanger, Becky just laughed and said, “good luck. That dress does not look good on the hanger.” And she was right, the dress looked like nothing on the hanger, but it was perfect when she put it on. How she decided to try it on is beyond me, but it was perfect.
Introducing Jeff. All around great guy. Jeff and his kids traveled all the way from China the day before the wedding, but only after their flight got canceled on them, so they flew from China to LA and then drove to Phoenix. What a crazy wedding story. But they made it in time and in the end, I suppose , in the end, those with the best stories win.
I had so much fun photographing the kids during the wedding. They are all so expressive and good natured. Case in point…
And finally, a photograph of the LDS Temple in Mesa. If you do not know much about the LDS or Mormon culture, Temples are a very important part of the faith. They are extremely spiritual places where members of the church are married and make covenants with God. So, when you are married in a temple, that building often symbolizes the commitment you have made to your spouse and your family. So anytime I photograph an LDS wedding, I try to make a new and interesting photograph of that temple for the couple. I am pleased with this one.
Photography by Jared Platt, Platt Photography
Slideshow Music by Mindy Gledhill, Courtesy of Triple Scoop Music
