– Posted by Mark
It’s been kind of crazy around here – last Sunday we photographed Ronnie & Brent’s wedding here in Atlanta, then on Monday I had several sessions in the studio, and then last Tuesday afternoon I landed in San Francisco to photograph Anne & Dominic’s engagement session. We went around town, ate lots of good food and then at 10:30pm that night I boarded a plane to fly back to Atlanta! Yeah. I was almost in the air longer than I was actually in San Francisco. Still – San Francisco’s a pretty great place and we’ve been lucky to be able to travel there several times now for photography (Lauren + JD’s wedding and then also Rachel & Kamil’s engagement session!)
So – Anne & Dominic flew me out to San Francisco for their engagement session, and then later this year we’ll be near Omaha, Nebraska for their wedding. They’re kind of really awesome, they like food as much as I do, and they have a ridiculously fun dog named Mr. Bennett (who happens to believe that tennis balls magically come from the ocean since he keeps finding them whenever they go to the beach!)
Oh yeah – I was playing with a little video during this session so I made a short video of the whole day. We try to tell our Interns to work towards setting up ‘scenes’ instead of just telling people to pose in front of this, and then pose in front of that – so that the photos won’t feel as static and stiff. Sure you want to setup the standard shots, and classic portraits – but you don’t want to have your subjects feel like they’re posing. So to avoid that and to keep things moving along – we just setup scenes, or movements that our couples can go through. Whether it’s walking from here to there, or taking a sip of a latte, or brushing back the other person’s hair – it’s all movement, and it helps to distract your subjects by giving them something to do – something other than staring right into your lens.
I’ve slowly been building a video rig that enables me to record at the same time that I’m taking photos – without compromising my photography, along with making it so that the video has close to the exact same composition as my photos. I’m getting close – and now I’m just working on technique. Here’s a little bit of my progress – and it’s interesting to see what my photos actually look like on video, moving around…
Anne & Dominic – You. Are. Awesome.
Yay! You made a video! I love it! 🙂
Lovely Lovely! And that video is awesome 🙂
I love the video. I've been thinking about doing a little video myself, but I've been too intimidated to start. This is beautiful, and definitely inspires me!
Train your hubby and get $ for both. Very much a team effort then. Or hire an assistant to video. You need to be full service at some point. Maybe even have a wedding planning service.