Suzanne and Thomas’ wedding yesterday (Sunday - 4/23) was a small intimate affair with about 50 guests - just close friends and family. The ceremony and reception was held in a restaurant on the waterfront of Port Washington in Long Island (NY). We met up before the ceremony to do the portraits of the lovely bride and groom there on the rainy waterfront.

I seem to be blessed lately in just working with couples who make wedding photography as much fun as it ought to be. To Suzanne & Thomas .. thank you, and best wishes!

I was very excited when Jeff Caplan of the Digital Wedding Forum notified me that my proposal to present a seminar at the 2006 DWF Convention in Las Vegas,  was accepted.  The topic that my friend and co-conspirator, David Mielcarek and I had decided on, was to be called Fearlessly Formal. The intention with this seminar was to present techniques to the newer photographers on how to sequence the family formals session on the wedding day, and how to use lighting during the formals session. 

Preparation for this seminar started slowly last year, and picked up roller-coaster speed as the date approached - Monday morning, April 10th, at 8:30am. Weeks and weeks of actual work had gone into the preparation and fine-tuning of the seminar … and then it was actually time to do it.

The DWF Convention was held this year from Sunday April 9th, to Wednesday 12th in Las Vegas - and it tied in with the WPPI Convention and trade show that was held across the road at Bally’s. It was wonderful to meet up with so many friends and acquaintances I had made over the years on the Digital Wedding Forum.

The seminar itself went very well - with one exception.
There were sound problems, which meant that the presentation was delayed by 30 minutes while the hotel technicians rigged a temporary sound system.  Also, a thank you to whoever helped sort out the feedback problem with my clip-on mic. :^)

Other than that, I believe the seminar went very well. I got tremendous feedback afterwards from dozens and dozens of people.  An indicator of the success of this seminar, was that there must have been 200+ people attending - some lined up against the wall at the back of the auditorium - no seats avaialble. Wow! Thank you everyone who attended. It was wonderful to be a part of something so big.

You also need to keep in mind that any presenter is competing with the lure of friends, other hugely talented photographers, the WPPI trade show, and of course … Las Vegas is just outside the room.  In the evenings I roamed the Vegas Strip with other photographer friends.

Here is a gallery of images of (mostly) night-time Las Vegas.

Megan and Bryan’s wedding this past Saturday (4/01) was made special to me as well, by how Megan’s family invited me into their midst for the day. And as the photographer, I had a lot of fun as well during the day - and it all added up to lovely photographs.

It’s a huge point of pride for me that the April 2006 issue of Rangefinder - the official magazine of WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International) - features a 5 page article that I wrote. The subject is Digital Photography - Raw Workflow. Six of my wedding images accompany the article.

The article is a streamlined version of the online tutorial I wrote on raw workflow in digital photography, that is featured on my Planet Neil website.

The timing is very fortunate for me as well, since this is a huge confidence booster for when I present the seminar in Vegas in a few days at the Digital Wedding Forum convention.

Here is the link to the article on Rangefinder’s website …

… and this is the opening page of the article in the magazine:

I photographed Caitlynn’s sister, Christine’s wedding in October last year - at which Caitlynn was the maid of honour.  But it was quite by chance that I bumped into them again in January - and in catching up with news, we also talked about doing a photo shoot with Caitlynn as soon as the weather allowed. But this being New Jersey in winter time, the weather only relented slightly the past weekend - nearly three months later.

Caitlynn and I did an extended photo shoot on Sunday, with my daughter Janine helping out with a light reflector.  Christine travelled with, soaking up the sun wherever we stopped to shoot.

Caitlynn turned out to be a delight to work with, as the photographs showed.  This is one of the very last images we took, using the fading light of day …

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And from earlier on in the day:

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More of the day’s shoot can be seen in this gallery.