Sara and Jay’s Wedding at The Wrigley Mansion in Phoenix, Arizona from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

Sara and Jay’s were married at The Wrigley Mansion in Phoenix, Arizona.  The mansion is an old, eclectic building with hallways and doors that lead you around in circles.  Each room is a unique place to shoot.  Which meant we had a number of choices for photographing the dress.  But this room ended up winning.  I loved the portraits hanging on either side and the texture of the translucent drapes.  Generally, I dislike the plastic hangers that come with the dress, but in this case, I was happy with the hanger because the white helped to set it apart from the wood valance.  I would like to know though, why it is that a bride can spend thousands of dollars on a dress and the dress shop only gives her a lame plastic hanger?  That is ridiculous.  They know the dress will be photographed before it goes on, and yet, they give her a white plastic hanger that, in most cases, takes away from the photograph.  I carry a hanger around with me to make up for this oversight, but in this case, the plastic hanger worked in the photo, so I didn’t use my wooden one.

We were on our way up the stair case (where I am shooting from) and I saw this little archway and the light coming down the staircase.  So we had to use it because the light was perfect.

The bride’s room at the Wrigley Mansion is full of soft feminine colors.  The paintings, wall papers and drapes are perfect for a slightly desaturated photograph.  I love the layers in this photograph.  Sara looks fantastic in it, the veil is coming into the shot, the painting is framing Sara nicely, the left side of the frame, though vacant, is held together by a bride’s maid’s shoulder and hair.  I just enjoy looking at this one.

This is one of those doorways in the Wrigley Mansion that leads through a series of rooms and hallways that make you feel like you are in a game of Clue.  And, it was a perfect spot for a portrait.  It is not often that you find this much wall without it being interrupted by frames, drapes, light switches, etc.  So I used every inch of vacant wall.  Just to the right and left are elements that would spoil the shot.  It is all about the Bride.  No other distractions are allowed.

This little ring bearer was quite a show.  Here he comes down the long stairway, which serves as the beginning of the isle at the Wrigley Mansion.  But he caught sight of the cameras and all the people watching him.

So he literally walked the rest of the distance, down the stairs and down the isle with the ring pillow in front of his face to avoid the paparazzi.

The entire way!  He was not interested in the publicity!  Everyone was laughing.  You couldn’t have planned that kind of entertainment.  I think that is why we have little children walk down the isle at weddings, in hopes that we get some comic entertainment.

Because the mansion is on a mountain, there few flat spots.  Lots of stairs and hills.  But there are also a lot of trees, and because it is on it’s own knoll, you can find great shade somewhere at any point of the day.  I am always photographing, regardless of what is going on.  Whenever the bride and groom are walking, I am snapping a shot here and there and always looking for little moments like this one.  A small glance, a smile, something.  I was happy to find this one.

I am particularly fond of this shot.  My wife saw it and said, “fantastic lines!”  Yep!  That’s what I was thinking when I was shooting this series.  This is one of those images that has to be seen at the camera.  It doesn’t appear from the contact sheet as a happy accident.  You have to see the lines and square up to them, otherwise they just fall apart in the frame and while you may get an ok shot out of it, you won’t get those “fantastic lines.”  The frame dictates the effectiveness of the lines.

The Wrigley Mansion’s entry way is full of visuals.  It is a rotunda with a staircase or a balcony completely surrounding the room.  You could shoot this room again and again and get something different every time.

I loved the graphic quality of this image with half of the frame in complete white and the other half in an textured white with a few darker elements and lines.  And then, of course, the main event, the kiss, happens in the corner of the frame making it more dramatic and full of energy as it battles with the convergence of the bottom and right hand edges.

Photography by Jared Platt, Platt Photography

Wedding Venue: The Wrigley Mansion, Phoenix, Arizona

Because of the service I sell and the way I sell it, my clients and I always get to know each other before we ever start a business relationship.  We get to pick each other.  My clients pick me and I pick them.  Which means, I really enjoy all of my clients.  This wedding was no exception.  In fact, Hugh and Meghan are extra great clients because they are super casual and fun and Hugh is a very talented designer.  He designed all of the printed materials for his wedding, you will see them in the images at the serving tables, etc.  It is always liberating to have a client who is artistically inclined because they are always encouraging of you as a photographer to take certain risks and push the envelope.  And they never want anything traditional, which I appreciate.

The Inspirador has a nice room for the bride.  Many places don’t have much in the way of a bride’s room, but I was very pleased with the brides room here.  Every angle in the room was a nice angle with well thought out decor.  That’s always helpful to have the bride dressing in someplace other than a bathroom.  Although, here is an interesting note: beautiful and expensive dresses always come with an ugly plastic hanger.  You would think that it would come with a nice hanger, something delicate and pretty, but it comes with an ugly one.  And the Bride rarely thinks to bring a hanger for the dress, so I have to either find one on location (at a resort hotel, there is always a nice wood hanger, which isn’t delicate, but it doesn’t distract from the photo) or, I always have an extra one with me, just in case.  Anyway, if you are a photographer, you should always carry an extra hanger for the dress and if you are a bride, consider buying a hanger that is unique to you to hang the dress on when it is being photographed.

I love this kind of veil.  They are so beautiful.  I think it is because of the way it divides the eyes from the cheek bone.  It helps to define the face and subdivide it.  Plus the texture and pattern is extremely beautiful on its own.

As I mentioned, Hugh designed all of the printed material for the wedding and it was very good work.  I saw a lot of people really paying attention to the printed designs.  When you put that much effort into the design of your wedding, people really to pay attention.

We shot a lot of the portraits before the wedding, but we also shot a few after the ceremony, but of course, it was dark.  So we needed to light it.  This front gate at the Inspirador is quite beautiful, so we shot there with one off camera flash.  Setting up large flash equipment for each shot is just not feasible because we need to move around a bit, so we simply use a Canon 550 EX with a set of Pocket Wizards.  My assistant is standing off camera by about 30 degrees.  That’s the entire lighting set up.  Nothing fancy, but it certainly makes for a dramatic photo.

The ring shot is an opportunity for me to take a break from the wedding and all the distractions and just design something interesting.  When I worked in a commercial studio, I shot a lot of jewelry with lots of equipment, now I am challenged to do some interesting shots of the rings without all of the equipment.  In this case I am using candles for light, napkins for bouncing light and place cards to block the light in certain areas.  Of course then I do a little more burring and dodging in Lightroom (the computer) and we have a ring shot.  By the way, the rings are lying on the wedding program designed by Hugh.

Ah, the luck of the Irish: there was a definite Irish theme to the wedding.  The wedding was a few days after St. Patrick’s Day and Hugh is Irish.  It was fun.  Lots of green.  And Meghan even had a little porcelain horseshoe on her flowers.  The problem with a horseshoe on your flowers is that you MUST always keep the flowers upright, so the luck won’t spill out of the horseshoe.  I like having the bride hold her flowers down, I like setting the flowers in different places (not always upright), so this became a challenge throughout the day.  But I always like a challenge.

Good luck to you both Meghan and Hugh.  It was an absolute pleasure to be with you on your wedding day.

We recently shot a Aimee and William’s wedding at The Boulder House in Scottsdale, Arizona, near The Boulders Resort. It is a magnificant home and the most peculiar I have ever seen. It was designed by nature and one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s students. I think this is an instance where the student truly outperformed the master.

This was one of the most challenging weddings I have shot in a long time.  The ceremony was scheduled for outside, but it was rained out.  The house is an amazing home which is buried in the middle of a pile of boulders.  The outside and inside walls are made up of these large stones, so the home was very beautiful inside as well as out.  But the change between an outside wedding to an inside wedding was quite a challenge as the inside of the home was very dark and with the storm clouds blocking the sun, even the windows couldn’t provide much light.  Once the call was made to hold the wedding inside, we scrambled and pulled everything together.  With a lighting kit and some high speed digital cameras, we were able to make some great images and make sure that the inside ceremony was equally as beautiful as the outside ceremony would have been.  In the end, the wedding was beautiful and so was the photography.  Of course, always coming prepared was worth the Boulder House’s weight in gold (more on being prepared later).

Devin and Lee were married at Tlaquepaque in Sedona, Arizona.  The images we got are fantastic!  Lee and Devin are a very cool couple and we loved working with them and their whole family.  Because we shoot in a documentary or “photojournalistic” style, the limited time we had for portraits was plenty.  We used the last minutes of sunlight for the couple’s portraits and then as the sun disappeared, we had a small portrait studio ready for a quick 10 minute group and family portrait session.  Then, everyone was off to the reception and dinner.  And even though the dinner was outside, at Tlaquepaque, the walls surrounding the event provided a great place to bounce our flashes, giving the very natural lighting look you see in the reception images.

Devin and Lee, thanks for having us as a part of your wedding.  We’ll see you in LA soon.

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The streets in Hong Kong are littered with signs and crowded with people. It was like nothing I have ever seen.

This is my first Blog on the new and improved Jared Platt Photo Blog.  I am thrilled to have it launched and will be adding to it regularly, so put it in your reader because I am going to be adding some great stuff here.

The city of Hong Kong at Night from Victoria Peek is breath taking. Especially if you try to hike there.

I just got back from China where we shot a wedding, from which I will post some images soon.  The wedding was in Hong Kong, which is a very interesting city.  I have never seen anything like it in my life.  It is very tall and very big.  The city is built on a series of islands which are full of hills and mountains, so the city feels a bit like a mix of New York in San Francisco.  It is full of very tall buildings that spill down the hills and to the edge of the water and in many cases, they have reclaimed land from the ocean to expand the city.  The entire airport is a man-made island.

The entire city is marked in Chinese and English, including the traffic directions. This was fortunate, since neither of us can read any thing Chinese. Although I was taught the symbol for the numbers 1, 2 and 3. That's it. That is the extent of my knowledge of Chinese characters.

The subway system in Hong Kong is the cleanest I have ever seen.

An open air market butcher in Hong Kong prepares his meat.

An old man walks his bicycle through the streets of Hong Kong.

The city is very safe and very clean. It has the cleanest subway system I have ever seen and everything is high tech.  And yet, as you walk through the packed streets of the city, there is a distinct look and feel that is unquestionably China.  Chinese characters adorn the hanging signs that litter the sky between the buildings and the city markets are full of open air stalls with raw fish and beef and smells that can only be Asian foods and spices.

A fisherman returns home to the small fishing village of Tung Chung with his catch. When he tied off at the dock, I saw that he was very old, most likely older than my grandfather was before he died. As I helped him pull in to the shore and onto the dock, I realized he had caught only four fish. Perhaps it was simply dinner for the family. But I spoke no Chinese and he spoke no English, so I am left to speculation as to his story.

The small fishing village in Tung Chung sleeps in the shadow of over 20 sky-rise apartments buildings. The clash between the two is quite an extreme.

Because real estate is so expensive, clusters of sky-rise apartment buildings are placed wherever there is space. Here the fishing village of Tung Chung in the bottom left of the photograph is overshadowed by this set of newer apartment buildings.

A boat docked at someone's home in Tung Chung village.

I was fascinated by the textures throughout the fishing village. Even a simple canvas draped over the rails of a fishing boat were worth a photograph.

As I walked through Hong Kong, I could not help but enjoy the disparity between the buildings and the streets, the distinctly Eastern and Western influences and cultures, and between the two classes of people (the business class and the worker class).  Everything I saw was a contradiction and yet, as I talked to the bride and her family, I was struck that this clash of culture, to a native of the city (reading and speaking Chinese and English simultaneously, eating with chop sticks at McDonald’s), was simply a unique culture called Hong Kong.  I still can not get over the extreme visual contrasts I saw there, it was fascinating to say the least.

The view from The L'Hotel was a beautiful scene of ships moving in and our of the harbor.

The colors on the buildings were rich and what photographer doesn't love textures like these.

I'm not sure what I would have done without our native Hong Kong bride who ordered on our behalf. Eve (our bride) did a fantastic job of introducing us to a wide variety of food while we were in Hong Kong. Thanks Eve!

I enjoyed our time there.  I expected something very different.  I suppose I expected a bit more China and was surprised at the size and scope of the modern city.  It was a great experience.

Check back again to see photos from the wedding we shot there in Hong Kong.

You can also see more photos at www.plattphotography.com.