Happy 1st Anniversary WeddingBee Pro!!

Over a year ago, I was contacted by the delightful Bee Kim, founder of WeddingBee- where many brides blog about their journey through wedding planning all in one place! I thought the blog was the best thing since happy meals, so when she asked me to become the first photographer blogger on a new blog dedicated to wedding professionals, I didn't hesitate to say yes. Since today is the official 1 year anniversary of the WeddingBeePro launch, I thought I'd share a little about my journey of being a featured blogger.

I knew WeddingBee was big, but I didn't realize what kind of spotlight I'd be under when I joined WeddingBeePro - to me it was just another opportunity to help brides on a larger scale- but I quickly found that it elevated me to a status I wasn't quite ready to handle, especially after having the busiest year of my business on top of moving to a new city. I felt really guilty when I had to take an extended break from blogging and social media, just months after the Pro blog launched, in order to catch up on all the private parts of my life that had slipped through my hands over the last couple of years while my business was taking off like crazy. I had been trying to do everything myself, which I now realize is impossible if you actually want to be successful. However, I'm so grateful that taking time off allowed room for so many other wonderful photographers to become featured bloggers. WeddingBeePro has become a collection of some of the most talented, thoughtful, humble, and loving wedding professionals in the industry and I'm so glad that I get to be included in that bunch of people.

I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be part of a community of people who love and share love on a regular basis. It's inspiring and joyful to see people pour their hearts into their work. I almost considered walking away from it all this year after the stress of the prior year, but after taking time to find greater balance in my life, I'm happy to say that this really is the best career I could ever have. I get to utilize so many of my talents in different ways and then share everything I love with people who love it as much as I do. Now, before you think it's an idyllic life, let me remind you that there is a balance to everything and there are plenty of painful, stressful, and boring parts of this job as well, but when all is said and done, they make the reward that much sweeter.

I sincerely want to thank Bee Kim for creating a wonderful and thriving community of bloggers. I know she works incredibly hard with very little reward or recognition because so often she's just behind the scenes pulling the strings and connecting the dots. I know that there are a lot of other bloggers and wedding industry professionals out there who have probably considered giving up at one point in time because they felt like no one cared. So if you love what someone shares with the world, please let this be the day that you take a moment to let them know how much you appreciate them. Bloggers are a special breed of people who give, often without receiving much of anything in return, but are inspired and motivated by your appreciation for what they take the time to share. :-)

How to Take Amazing Engagement & Wedding Ring Photos

It's been almost a year since I first wrote this post and a whole new season of just engaged couples are appearing on the scene, so I thought I'd bring this post back to life for all of the 2010 brides to be! (I know you're dying to see some of my newest work, but I'm still crazy busy and blogging is a low priority right now!!)

I received a great question from a bride in the comments over on WeddingbeePRO and I thought I'd turn this into an extended post for everyone out there who's working with a point & shoot camera and looking to get a great shot of their engagement or wedding ring to share with friends and family!! (For this post, I'll be using my own point & shoot camera, the Canon PowerShot SD870IS Elph.)



1. Take Off Your Ring
As beautiful as your latest manicure may (or may not) be, it's going to be so much easier to take a great picture of all of your ring's beautiful details when it's off your hand (especially if there's side detailing). After this post, I hope to inspire brides to show off their rings in style and with creativity and personality! It could even become your facebook announcement or twitter avatar, since everyone is going to ask to see it anyway! So get the ring off the finger and get creative! (Can I just tell you how hard it is to squeeze my ring off of my fingers these days?! OUCH!!)

2. Find a Cool Background or Set Up
To make your ring shot "artistic" find something really interesting or different - I like things that represent you and what you love! Maybe it's a cool band poster, or the first love letter or card you received from your sweetie, or your favorite book, or your favorite fruit (oooh.. I wish I had a kiwi in my house right now- that would be mine!), or your favorite flower, or your favorite pair of shoes, or just a cool texture like an awesome sweater or pillow you have laying around - whatever! ANYTHING can make a great background. Get creative! If you need inspiration, definitely check out the Rocktographers Blog.



3. Find Good Light
Good light is ESSENTIAL to a great photograph! The easiest light to work with is natural light because it's the most powerful and consistent. Make your way to a nearby window or take it outside. If you don't have any natural light to work with, you can get creative with a flash light, the light coming from your computer or TV, or just any ol' light in the ceiling or from a lamp around your house. BUT, in order for artificial light to be bright enough, you may need to get very close to the light source, which is why a flashlight may sometimes work better in these situations.

Why shouldn't you use the flash on your camera?! Because the reflection from your ring may blind the camera's exposure meter and cause a pretty crappy picture. It's kind of like when you get pictures with red-eye. With most point & shoot cameras the flash is entering the eye at the same angle it's leaving the eye - reflecting off of the red and veiny retina at the back of the eyeball. Gross, right? Yeah, use another source of light that's not the point & shoot flash. Which also might mean manually turning off your flash so that it doesn't automatically fire- you may need to read your camera manual if you haven't already figured out how to do this.

4. Set it up
Think about the prettiest view of your ring - is it the setting from the top? The amazing details on the side? Think about the angle you'll be photographing your ring in terms of how your photo will best highlight what you love about your ring. If you need help standing your ring up, find something you can stick it into, or if you need to, a glue dot or a little tape might help keep it upright if that's how you want to shoot it. There's no shame in this game - just play around with it until you like how your entire set-up looks with your creative background. If you're anything like me and you never take your ring off, this would be a good time to give it a good toothbrush scrubbing to get rid of any soap scum (unless the metal in your ring is too soft for that kind of treatment- but most will be fine.)



5. Set Your Camera to Macro Mode
Most point & shoot cameras have a macro mode. It's usually represented by a little flower or tulip. This allows your camera to focus at a much closer range than would normally be possible. In macro mode, you should be able to get a close up shot in sharp focus even if you're only 1-4 inches away. If for some reason you have a not-so-great point & shoot and it doesn't have macro mode, try zooming in from further away to get a great detail shot. iPhones and camera phones will simply NOT work for a great ring shot.



6. Get Closer
For the best ring shot, your ring should be no less than half the size of the screen, unless you're giving your background equal or greater billing in this photo. It's totally possible to fill your screen with your ring when you're in macro mode or zooming in. Just make that ring take up as much of the screen space as it can on that beautiful LCD.

7. Just Shoot It
When you're in macro mode, or zooming in tight, it is essential that you stay completely still for this photo because any little movement will pull it out of focus. Either brace your arms on something or use some thing else to balance your camera on, like a tripod, stack of books, upside down bowl, whatever- just keep that camera STILL if you want to get all of the details in focus. If you need to stand over your ring, pull your arms in tight to your body so they'll be less likely to move around as you're taking the photo.

Once you're all set to shoot your amazing ring on your creative background- shoot the heck out of it! Try shooting it in different ways, try moving the camera around for a different angle or perspective, try framing the ring differently on the screen, try moving the light around, or positing it so that the light hits it differently, take multiple shots of the same set up because one might be blurry and the next one might be in focus! Rings are especially difficult because they're often metal, which is reflective, and can fool the camera's focus point into thinking it's further away than it really is. With point & shoot cameras there are a lot of things you can't control very easily - like the exposure and point of focus, so it's good to take a LOT of different pictures and then look at them all later on your computer screen before deciding which one is "THE ONE". It's all digital baby, so don't be afraid to take tons of pictures- the goal is to get ONE amazing photo in the end, but it might take 30 or more shots to get that one amazing photo. Work it out!! (Um, yeah, I worked it out like 90 times. I may be just a BIT of an obsessive perfectionist! I'll probably end up editing this entire post like 20 different times too. Whatever- make it rock or don't do it all!)



8. Edit
After you've shot a bazillion photos of your ring, load them to your computer to view them at full screen size in order to make your selection rather than trying to choose one from the tiny screen on the back of your camera. You'll get a much better look at the clarity and focus as well as the colors and exposure when you're looking at the images on your computer screen. Force yourself to narrow it down to just one or two photos. As a professional, this can sometimes be the hardest part of my job, especially when there are tons of awesome images that essentially look exactly the same. But frankly - no one wants to see a bazillion photos of your engagement or wedding ring, they just want to see one or two shots with great detail to show off the overall design.

If you've done everything right up to this point, you should be done! If you want to get crazy with photoshop at this point, go for it, but remember to keep it about the ring itself and not about a bunch of crazy after-effects which will might just take away from the beauty and design of that awesome ring you love so much!!

9. Share it with the World!
Here are my results with my point & shoot camera... not as great as what I can do with my professional lenses, but hey, I worked what I got and you can too!! (Complete with five years of wear and tear on platinum and white gold - it's been a good ride so far!!) I'd love to see what you come up with!! Share your link in the comments and show us what you did!!


Gorgeous custom egg was a 5th anniversary gift from my husband, custom designed and created by our dear friend Liz Smith, who's an indie craft artist. You can find more of her fun creations in her etsy shop--> Made in Lowell, or if you live in the Boston area, you can see her work in person and maybe even get a live demonstration of her techniques at Western Avenue Studios, where you can visit my studio as well!

Some insider gossip for you... my engagement ring is actually a big fat one carat Ziamond. Yep, CZ baby. Alex and I were students when we got engaged and when we started looking at rings, I told him, "you don't need to buy me a diamond because it's not about the rock, it's about the symbolism of commitment." He really didn't believe me at first, and I reassured him that, "after we've been married for like 10 years, and our commitment really means something, then we can upgrade if we have the money, but until then I don't want money to prevent us from making this commitment to each other." What's sad is that the jewelry stores gave him a really hard time for asking for a CZ instead of a diamond for my engagement ring!! They kept asking, "Are you SURE she's OK with it?", and he started feeling really guilty! Seriously- just let the guy do what's right for him. One day I'd love to design a custom wedding ring and maybe even get a much more unique set of stones in the color green. In any case, we didn't put a ton of unique thought or design into our engagement or wedding rings because they were just a symbol for us, not a statement. Eventually, though, I'd love to make it a statement... a unique and subtle statement of our marriage and how we've grown together over the years. ;-) If you're reading this Alex, I love you - and if you want to upgrade your ring someday with cool enamel, different stones, or even some kind of ultra techie microchip, I'm all for it honey!! XOXOX

Why Do Wedding Photos Take So Long?

Last week I received an email from a bride who was feeling a little uneasy about the turn around time on her wedding photos. She had been in contact with her photographer but wanted to gain a little more perspective on the matter and asked me if I could help (she had wanted to hire me originally, but I was already booked.) She said that she loved her enagagement photos and even the preview photos that she had seen from her photographer, yet something was still bothering her to make her feel uneasy about the remaining images she hadn't seen yet. I don't feel comfortable sharing her email since it contains sensitive personal information, but she did mention that she had a friend who attended the wedding, took pictures, and put them online the next day- which added to her confusion as to why the remaining images from her professional photographer would take so long. I'm sharing my response here in hopes that it can help other brides understand some of the behind-the-scenes workings of a wedding photographer. (photos from some of my recent weddings, just for fun)



Here was my response...
"It sounds like it will be worth the wait! If you absolutely loved what your photographer did for your engagement photos, which are merely a fraction of what you'll receive on the wedding day, than I'm sure you'll love your wedding photos too!! Your friend's photos look great and I can see why he was able to turn them around quickly- because there were so few (44?) and he probably doesn't have a bunch of other weddings and holiday orders to process right now!



I know that when I photograph a wedding, I take somewhere in the area of 2500-4000 photos which I end up narrowing down to around 800 (I take lots of duplicates in an attempt to get the absolute perfect moment)!! That's a LOT to go through!! It takes time to find just the right ones, and then after I've found all the right ones, to go through and make sure all the skin tones look good, that all of the exposures are great, and that the colors and contrast are just right. It's pretty easy to whip out 100 photos or less in a day when there weren't many to begin with and they were all taken in similar lighting conditions, but weddings often include a much larger variety of lighting conditions, exposure challenges, and color balancing that needs to happen for them to look good. There are so many times when I long to be shooting film again so that I could just drop the film off at the lab and be done with it!! Now, as digital photographers, we have become the lab, and because we've become the lab, we've also become increasingly perfectionistic about our work and every single image! Just yesterday, I spent an hour and forty minutes to produce 18 images as a "quick preview" for a bride & groom. Can you imagine the time it takes to do 180? 1800?? I know that I spend way more time on my digital images than I ever did with film- but I also think that the quality of my work reflects that extra time versus just letting a machine do all the corrections for me.



I feel like sometimes it's hard to make a promise for a certain deadline, because it means I have to limit my creative process just to be finished by a certain time, rather than by when I feel like everything is the way I would want it to be. And on a personal note, every time I set a deadline, I then run into some kind of problem- as if fate is just mocking me for setting deadlines in the first place. It's quite ironic actually because it happens practically EVERY time, without fail, even if I try to compensate by giving a longer timeline. When things go wrong, all I can do is try to be as open and forthright as possible about what's happening and what I'm doing to remedy the situation. It would be nice if things always worked smoothly, the way we expect them to, but fate loves to make a fool of expectations.



It's a great sign that your photographer has been open with you about her process and how much she needs to accomplish before she can start working on your images. It definitely sounds like the pressure of the holidays, maybe some pressure from parents, paired with some unpleasant wedding day experiences have wreaked havoc on your emotions about the final outcome. After my wedding day, I know I was on pins and needles until I saw all of my wedding photos- and I didn't really even have anything go wrong!! There were so many what-ifs running around in my head - like, did they get this or that? Did I look OK? Did everything turn out? What could possibly be taking so long? Is there something I don't know about? And honestly- my anxiety just continued to grow until I was able to see everything!! Once I saw everything, I felt so much better and I realized that a lot of the anxieties I had were merely related to other things I was holding onto that weren't necessarily related to the photos themselves- most of it was just other stuff rattling around in my head and I wasn't really able to crystalize that until I saw that everything was OK with the photos.



So- I TOTALLY understand what you're going through and as maddening as it seems right now, it's actually a very common feeling which will likely dissipate once you get to see all of your photos. I think you did a great thing by talking to an objective third party about it because it can be disturbing to just let all of those thoughts fester without getting them out somewhere, and it's obvious that you care about your photographer and want to give her the benefit of the doubt! I wish all brides were as understanding as you!"

Are you ready for some post-wedding humor?? I just love this video because this is TOTALLY how I felt after my wedding.... (for the record - I don't think you represent any of these brides, but I think I was all of them wrapped up into one!!!)


Disclaimer: all photographers are different. We all have different processes, which is why we can't assume that everyone will have the same turn around time, or that there's even a "standard" turn around time. Some photographers put their proofs up as unfinished images, some finish all of their images first. Obviously unfinished images are much quicker and easier to get online than hundreds of images that have been tweaked and worked on. Some photographers give their clients 200 images while others give clients 1200 images. Some photographers blog a few images right after the wedding, some blog everything way after the clients have already seen their images (me!) Some photographers have a staff of employees who do all the work for them, while others operate as artisans- crafting each image from start to finish. Some photographers whip through their post production, while others take time on each image. Some photographers give unfinished digital images on disc, some give finished images on disc. Some photographers do all of their own album designs, some hire someone else to do it for them. No photographer is right or wrong, they just have different methods of creating their work, and whatever that process is, we should honor the process that goes into giving us the results we want and have paid for. However, if you're REALLY anxious, please talk to your photographer directly in order to get a sense of where they are in the overall process. It's better to have open communication than to let the mind wander in anxiety!



It's a delicate balance- trying to be an artist and a business person at the same time. The artist mentally is quite obsessive and perfectionistic. The artist hates being bothered in the middle of being intensely focused because it can ruin a creative streak. The artist wants to simply shut out the world around her so that she can enjoy every little creation as it's being made. The artist works on something until its done, not until the timer has run out. The artist has a lot of pride in her work and would be horrified if it were to be out there unfinished. Yet, we also have to be business people. We have to meet our clients needs and keep them happy, even if it doesn't always give us the freedom to do what makes us happy. We have to set deadlines and meet them no matter what happens or else we lose our client's trust. We have to answer emails and return phone calls in a timely manner so that our clients feel valued and respected. As a business person, we WANT to do all of these things because we care about our clients, and because without our clients support, we wouldn't be able to do what we do!! We love our clients and we want to give them the best of everything. It's just a delicate line we must walk every day, always trying to stay in balance- and sometimes we fall down, but we pick ourselves back up in the hopes that it is our accomplishments, not our failures, which will be the ultimate measure of our success.

Brides, if you have any more questions about wedding photography, please feel free to post them in the comments (you'll be donating food to my local food bank with each post!) Photographers, feel free to add your own thoughts and responses. I'd like this to be an open and friendly conversation about the topic!

More info:
What is Post-Production? Why would I want processed images?
and
Should I get digital negatives from my photographer?

Just Launched: WeddingBee PRO

Yesterday, one of the most popular wedding planning blogs in the world WeddingBee.com (named affectionately after it's founder's first name, Bee) launched a new blog called WeddingBeePRO dedicated to weddings and wedding planning, but written by wedding vendors and industry professionals!! This is the first blogs of its kind for the wedding industry - aggregating the posts of many different wedding vendors to bring them all in one place, helping brides make more informed decisions about their weddings! I'm incredibly honored and excited that the WeddingBee community asked me to help launch this new and exciting project!! Feel free to check out my intro post, "The Making of a Wedding Photographer" which talks about how I got into this fun and exciting industry in the first place! While you're there, stick around and greet some of the other wedding professionals by leaving warm fuzzy comments for them!



to continue reading this article, click here --> "The Making of a Wedding Photographer"