"Work is Love Made Visible." --Kahlil Gibran
Like I teach in my workshops, sometimes you really are stuck with just three minutes and a parking lot when you’re taking portraits, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it anyway.
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Lens: 24mm f/1.4
Camera: Nikon D3s
Lighting: Three SB-900s, composited
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Lens: 85mm f/2.8 PC-E
Camera: Nikon D3s
With the weather we had in March, the Ritz-Carlton had built-in epicness. 1/5th of a second, hand-held.
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Lens: 35mm f/1.4
Camera: Nikon D3s
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Lens: 24mm f/1.4
Camera: Nikon D3s
Man, I really wish more brides would get ready in hotel rooms at night. Lots of creative possibilities when you take the sun out of the equation. Bring on the 3 a.m. weddings!
I got a lot of my favorite photos of the night just from running light tests with photographer Lynn Michelle before the model even showed up. That’s how it works sometimes.
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Lens: 35mm f/1.4
Camera: Nikon D3s
Lighting: Lamplight and a Litepanel MicroPro brightening the background.
A little high-key fun with Stefan and Sabine. Blown-out, but lots of fun. Sometimes it’s worth it to try to make mistakes on purpose and see what you get.
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Lens: 24mm f/1.4
Camera: Nikon D3s
Man, I’m glad I went in the wayback machine to feature this wedding on MomentJunkie.com — I had completely forgotten about this picture, and I dig it. You never know when you’ll come back to one day’s b-list and see it in a new light.
People who know my portfolio will probably recognize the shot I took immediately after this.
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Lens: 24-70mm f/2.8
Camera: Nikon D3
…and we’re back! My web host was down most of the day, which is always fun when you run a Web-based business. But I’m still happy from Karen and Ajay’s fantastic Ritz Carlton wedding, so here’s an end-of-the-night portrait of the fantastic couple.
The flower girls scramble between adults in the rush to prepare for Gianna and Sebastian’s wedding.
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Lens: Sigma 85mm f/1.4
Camera: Nikon D3s
It’s safe by now to reveal the couple in this photo. I love when I get hired to photograph the moment of a proposal. It’s fraught with such incredible emotion … and I get to use my best ninja skills. Here, the set-up was an incredibly romantic dinner date at the Metopolitain Museum of Art, with a classical quartet in on the act. As the groom-to-be set up, I pretended to be a tourist very interested in photographing nearby art pieces, until it was time to whip my lens toward the action. And they were so engrossed in the moment and their love for each other that even as I gave up pretense and shot from every angle, they didn’t so much as glance at me for almost 30 minutes.
Shock, and then joy — probably the best series of emotions one could hope for when they get down on one knee. And I don’t blame her … it was a heck of a ring.
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Lens: Sigma 85mm f/1.4
Camera: Nikon D3s
Please allow me a moment of tourist photography here. Wendy and I went down to Atlanta for about 36 hours in a quick “before the insanity comes” getaway. While the goal of finding some warmer weather utterly fell to 35-degree mornings, we did have an amazing time swimming in this very tank, including whale sharks, the largest fish in the world. There also was a Hammerhead in the tank that came awfully close, but we were promised it wouldn’t eat us … much.
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Lens: 35mm f/1.4
Camera: Nikon D3s
New York City quickly kills your sense of personal space.
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Lens: Sigma 85mm f/1.4
Camera: Nikon D3s
I know, I missed the Photo of the Day yesterday, but that’s because awesomeness was happening. First, I can unveil the location of my 3/18-19 workshop in LA! Both days will be in a gigantic studio at the very hip Brewery Artist Collective. We’re going to have lots of room to play around and have fun, indoors and out.
But even better, I did a portrait shoot yesterday with Stefan and Sabine, who were fresh from getting married. Even better, no one knows it yet, and the way that their friends and family are finding out is … this blog entry! That is such a cool idea, and all I can say is congratulations to a couple I had a wonderful time with.
I literally shouted with joy when I took this shot, because there was a great deal of luck involved in getting it to come out this way. Stefan, who knows a lot of my history, assumed that I had broken another piece of equipment.
Because of their awesome idea to announce their wedding right here, here’s another photo as well. I love working with photographers — as soon as I pulled out my 50mm, Stefan said “Oh, it’s freelensing time!”
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Camera: Nikon D3s
Lens: (Photo 1) Sigma 85mm f/1.4
(Photo 2) Nikon 50mm f/1.2 (freelensed)
I’ve been thinking recently of great moments I’ve seen at weddings, and I keep coming back to this one. Lane was marrying Eva, a lovely Danish woman, and it is a Danish tradition that, during the reception, the guests physically restrain the groom and cut his socks in half “so no other woman will look at him.”
Lane knew about that, and was game for it. What he didn’t know was that the tradition also had them cutting his (very, very nice) tie in half.
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Lens: 24-70mm f/2.8
Camera: Nikon D3