What, may you well ask, is going on in the photo above?

Although it doesn’t look like it, this image was taken during a wedding - it was during the reception of an Orthodox Jewish wedding I photographed recently.  And it is typical of the general delighted craziness going on during these events.  The photo shows some of the guests dressed up in costume - this time in surgeons’ wear. 

The premise of an Orthodox wedding is that the guests make the wedding for the couple, meaning, the entire energy of the event is directed towards doing whatever it takes to ensure the bride and groom will be happy. 

The guests take turns to delight the bride and groom with all kinds of antics. I’ve seen magic acts, and juggling, human pyramids, and the absurdest of silly things.  All hugely entertaining -  and it certainly makes for memorable one-of-a-kind photographs!

Spontaneity, genuine expressions and gestures, the things that make each bride and groom individual - these are things which I continually hone in on when photographing a wedding or engagement session.  Even when I’m working with the couple, directing them, I am still looking for something real - something uniquely ‘them’, as we collaborate in getting wonderful images of their wedding.

What I find are those genuine moments where the bride and groom interact with each other .. and that’s what I give back to them in the photographs I show them.  Quite often there is a found moment, a gesture, an action which just … works.  Really works. And if that moment happens during the engagement session, we often come back to it and use it as a starting point during the wedding portraits.

And so it was with Alli and Colin, whose wedding I photographed late in 2006.  The first image is from their engagement session, and the second image is one of a sequence from their wedding portraits.  At the end of their engagement session, I had taken a series of images of them sitting on a grassy spot at the edge of a lake.  As they stood, Colin helped Alli up.  Alli, being a dancer, leapt up into the air and straight into Colin’s arms … and it looked wonderful.  I asked them to do it again, so I could get a better angle against the dramatic sky.  They did and it made for a fantastic image!

I had hoped to find this same image again during their wedding portraits, but the wedding day was a different setting, with different clothes, different light.  It was just a different day.  Alli was slippery in her dress, and Colin could barely hold onto her.  When I asked them to recreate the moment from their engagement session it wasn’t quite the same … and yet, it made for another striking photograph that was very much who they are.

So just by working with something we ‘found’ in their engagement session, using it as a starting point and playing around with the idea, and then extending it on the wedding day, it evolved it into another image which I simply love.

Let me say this out straight - I hate gazebos.  I hate gazebos and fountains and I especially hate having to photograph a couple at whatever landmark/feature that a reception venue has, where every other couple from the last five years has been photographed.  There, I’ve said it. I feel better now, with that weight off of my shoulders.

Wedding portaits should be about capturing the romance, and capturing the relationship between the couple.  I would much rather work with the couple and with the light available.  I want to show how much they are in love with each other, rather  than the wooden structure that the reception venue bought from Home Depot. 

The portrait above from Simone and Damien’s wedding was taken in the late afternoon.  The maitre’d of the venue suggested I use the fountain as a backdrop for the couple - the same fountain that every other photographer uses as a backdrop for every other couple who gets married there.   Instead, I looked at where the light was coming from … and it was stunningly beautiful glowing light.  And the best was, the spray from the fountain was lit up by the glow from the late afternoon sun.  This created that ethereal looking golden mist behind them.  Looking for and using great light, and looking for a beautiful backdrop to place the couple in context … is so much better than photographing them against unconnected objects in the landscape.

Wedding portraits should be about romance, and not the gazebo or fountain. 
Indeed, we need more cowbell, less gazebo!

Photographers and clients alike regularly comment on this photograph and the question invariably asked is whether this is a Photoshop effect.  Far from it - this image is straight out of the camera and is one of my favorites …

It is an image taken during one of the portrait sessions of Desha and Kyle’s wedding in Aruba.  Their wedding consisted of two parts: The noon-time legal wedding ceremony at the Orangestad courthouse; and afterwards in the evening, the vows ceremony on the beach.   After the wedding ceremony at the courthouse was completed, I spent some time with Desha and Kyle, photographing them around the colourful city center.  The old colonial buildings offered a beautiful setting for this first set of wedding day portraits.

As we finished up this noon-time session, Desha and Kyle and I agreed to meet again on the beach much later in the evening and we said our goodbyes.  We were walking through a shopping center on the way to the main street to grab taxis to take us to our respective lunchtime destinations … and then I called them back excitedly, and told them to stand in a certain spot in the middle of the shopping center and just snuggle in a bit. 

They both looked a bit bemused at my request - after all, it was just a shopping center - but they indulged me.  I lay down on the ground and shot upwards against the neon-lit ceiling.  By throwing the multi-coloured neon lights out of focus, I was able to isolate the couple against this background.  It’s a photo that I am quite proud of, since it is so striking looking, but difficult to figure out the context for anyone who wasn’t there.

Some of the readers of my blog may be unaware that in addition to photographing weddings, I also take time to teach other photographers.  By presenting as well as attending seminars and workshops,  I keep myself inspired as a photographer.

This year I’ve scheduled a series of photography workshops on lighting techniques, to be presented in cities across the USA.  I just completed the first of the series of workshops held this week in Phoenix and three cities on the West Coast - San Francisco, Portland and Port Orchard (near Seattle).   The workshops are based on material I’ve written to help other photographers and is published on my photography techniques blog, planetneil.

In each location I helped the attendees deal with lighting situations that are typical of their specific area - and each workshop included practical sessions where the attendees were able to photograph models to put into practice the techniques I taught. The image at the top was taken at the Boat Harbour in Port Orchard, WA.  The images below were taken during the photography workshops held respectively in San Francisco, and Phoenix.

Thank you to everyone who attended the workshops, and to our models in each city.
Do keep in touch.