Brandon Malone Photography

So now that we have some amaz­ing pic­tures of you, what are you going to do with them?  It’s so com­mon today to have dif­fi­culty think­ing past our smart phones or Face­book and remem­ber that we have homes for dis­play­ing our mem­o­ries in.  Sure, these are great ways for shar­ing your pho­tos, but elec­tronic means should be a far sec­ond after first cre­at­ing amaz­ing dis­plays for your home.  You’ll love these dis­plays so much bet­ter and you’ll never have to worry about los­ing them when your phone eats the big one, or your com­puter gets fried, or when your online pro­files get hacked.  Elec­tron­ics have a 100% fail­ure rate while most phys­i­cal dis­plays have 100+ year archival rat­ing.  Besides, that large wall piece is WAY more impres­sive than any screen view.

So, what are your options then for in home dis­play?  There are tons of new options all of the time, but there’s also the more com­mon ones that only get bet­ter as time goes on.  These are things such as Can­vas Gallery Wraps, Framed Prints, and Books & Albums, fol­lowed by gift prints and wal­lets of course.  Then you can start mov­ing into other cool things such as metal or acrylic prints, snow boards for the wall, cards for the fam­ily, and more.  We even have Can­vas Ban­ners and Illu­mi­nated Prints for our wed­ding recep­tion displays.

It really is crazy the amount of options avail­able to us today for dis­play­ing our pho­tos, yet most peo­ple can’t get past their screens.  The screen is never going to do jus­tice to a mem­o­rable pro­fes­sional pho­to­graph.  So when you start think­ing about hav­ing pho­tos taken for a wed­ding, or of the fam­ily, or your high school senior, think also about what you’d like to do with those pho­tographs.  How do you want to pre­serve those mem­o­ries and dis­play them in a way you can be proud of?

Below is a short list of some of my com­mon prod­ucts for wed­dings and por­traits.  Obvi­ously there’s always going to be more options, but I pre­fer to focus more on the things most peo­ple will enjoy.

Wed­ding Albums

You are going to relive your day and fall in love again as you slowly ven­ture through your wed­ding album for the first time.  My albums include lay-flat pages with pro­tec­tive coat­ings to ensure spills and dirty hands never ruin your price­less mem­o­ries.  This for­ever keep­sake will be trea­sure for gen­er­a­tions.  You can also add a beau­ti­ful pre­sen­ta­tion box for greater pro­tec­tion and display.

Por­trait Albums

Some­times there’s so many won­der pic­tures from a ses­sion that you just have to have them all, but you can’t fit them all on your wall.  So that’s where our por­trait albums come in.  Our most pop­u­lar ones include the 10x4 flip book, the 5x7 book, and the 4x6 accor­dion book.

Guest Book Album

A favorite among most of our wed­ding cou­ples is the Guest Book Album.  This replaces the com­mon guest book in which peo­ple only sign with an album that dis­plays pho­tos from the engage­ment ses­sion on one side and a faded parch­ment page on the oppo­site side.  Guest love look­ing through the pho­tos of the cou­ple, and then can leave per­son­ally writ­ten mes­sages on the open parch­ment page.  This cre­ates a greater wed­ding keep sake that cou­ples cherish.

Gallery Wraps

Whether using one image or a series, gallery wraps will dis­play them with an art gallery feel right on your walls.  With the high qual­ity and archival pro­duc­tion, you never have to worry about replac­ing them, and can pass them on for future gen­er­a­tions to trea­sure.  For those not famil­iar with gallery wraps, they are images printed onto can­vas that is then stretched around a wooden frame and then treated for protection.

Framed Art Prints

Ensur­ing that your trea­sured moments are both pre­sentable and pre­served, all of our framed art work is printed on fine art paper and pro­fes­sion­ally cus­tom framed with high qual­ity eco-friendly mate­ri­als.  Not only will you for­ever love it on your walls, but so will those you pass it on to in the future.

Metal Prints

If you’re look­ing for a uniquely new way of dis­play­ing your images, while also ensur­ing their longevity, metal prints do exactly that.  They can be used as wall group­ings or as indi­vid­ual, and can come in some var­i­ous shapes.  There is also the option of a stan­dard back­ing that extends the sur­face away from the way, or using a metal box fram­ing.  Addi­tion­ally, metal prints have the abil­ity to be double-floated and framed to get an entirely new level of wow factor.

Sto­ry­boards

Using the same love and detail as our other framed prints, our sto­ry­boards tell your story using mul­ti­ple images in one frame.  What bet­ter way to com­mu­ni­cate how you feel than using one beau­ti­ful dis­play piece?

The Spread 14x36 (1) 8x10 & (4) 5x7

The Study 20x20 (9) 5x5

The Quad 20x20 (4) 5x7

The Trio 10x20 (3) 5x7

Paint­ings

One of the spe­cial extra touches that can be added to a pho­to­graph is dig­i­tal paint­ing.  This is done by hand and can take a good amount of time.  Each one is unique because of it being hand done. To do jus­tice to this kind of work, they are only printed on cer­tain mate­ri­als such as can­vas or water­color paper, and no smaller than twenty inches.

Photo Booth

The Photo Booth pro­vides that extra cool-fun fac­tor to your recep­tion.  Using a portable stu­dio set-up and fun props, you and your guests are going to totally love this added experience.

Save The Date Mag­nets 4x8

These are great for our wed­ding cou­ples that want some­thing cus­tom and unique, and yet not eas­ily lost.  Your guests can dis­play it right on their refrig­er­a­tor instead of los­ing it in a pile of papers.  Plus it’ll con­tinue to stay there long after the wedding.

Peo­ple LOVE our Photo Booth.  This has been one of our favorite ways to give our wed­ding cou­ples the oppor­tu­nity to raise the fun fac­tor on their wed­ding day.  Of course there are dif­fer­ent var­i­ous of Photo Booths among us wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers.  Some use the tra­di­tional box with a cur­tain that spits out prints.  Oth­ers have remote based sys­tems.  I have my portable stu­dio setup.

My most recent cou­ple that used the Photo Booth for their wed­ding at Run­ning Hare Vine­yard hit a new record for the amount of time and pho­tos taken in the Photo Booth.  Every time I thought it was wrap­ping up again so I could get back into the recep­tion, I had another group pulling me back out again.  I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty pos­i­tive that I spent more time in the Photo Booth than in the recep­tion itself.  If it wasn’t for the tra­di­tional func­tions of cake cut­ting, toasts, and so on, I would have hardly seen the recep­tion.  Think­ing about it, I just remem­bered that I still need to restring one of my cocoanut bras after that wed­ding.  That and I need to inven­tory my bag of props after one of the older women kept try­ing to hijack one of my red boas.

Some of our other wed­dings have had some pretty wild times in the Photo Booth as well.  When we were at the Navy Acad­emy for a wed­ding over the sum­mer, it was lays, beach hats, sun glasses, and (of course) the coconut bras that were taken over.  It was also the last time used our white paper back­ground before finally pur­chas­ing a white wrin­kle free fab­ric to replace it with.  To most peo­ple, it was pretty obvi­ous that the back­drop was just that as it set a few feet in front of some shaded win­dows, and the paper curled on itself as it slightly hov­ered just off the floor.  Yet just as I’m wait­ing for a group to get them­selves together for a photo, an older gen­tle­man in the back of the group sud­denly fell down, almost tak­ing my back­ground with him.  When I helped him and made sure he was ok (thank­fully he was ok), he apol­o­gized and told me he mis­tak­en­ingly thought the back­drop was a solid wall.

Usu­ally the biggest influ­ence on the pho­tos taken in the Photo Booth is the drinks often still in hand when they arrive, such as one of my fire fighter wed­dings at the IC Hall in Mechan­icsville, MD.  I love fire fighter wed­dings by the way.  Though not often, I do on occa­sion end up hav­ing to take a photo quickly that I know will have to be deleted later on due to the drunken obscen­ity of the photo they want taken.  I don’t recall if I had any­thing that extreme at this wed­ding, but we did have some­thing that came close.  One of the guests (yes a fire fighter) stood in front of the back­drop as I was instructed to wait a moment.  Sud­denly a large group of con­spir­a­tors arrived to form a human shield around the Photo Booth, and I was instructed to say noth­ing and be fast.  As I was prepar­ing for what unknown thing was about to hap­pen, our sub­ject stripped off his top so as to expose his over weight and exces­sively hairy body.  I cap­tured a few pho­tos as he gave a few “man” poses, and then I just tried to rec­ol­lect myself after that kind of visual trauma.

So what is my Photo Booth exactly.  My Photo Booth con­sist of a back­drop and a sin­gle strobe light with a really huge soft­box, and me as the pho­tog­ra­pher.  I do give peo­ple the option to choose either one of my avail­able back­drops (white, or one of two tex­tured options), or to upgrade their Photo Booth and choose a new back­drop that I’ll buy specif­i­cally for that wedding.

Because the Photo Booth requires the extra man hours for setup, break­down, and run­ning it, the basic cost of the Photo Booth includes a sec­ond pho­tog­ra­pher for three hours of time.  Basi­cally to help cover the recep­tion for me.  I have also decide to add a Photo Booth Plus to my list of pack­age cov­er­age options.  This option includes the upgraded back­drop, extra hours for the sec­ond pho­tog­ra­pher, and a can­did gift print of major­ity of the images cap­tured in your Photo Booth for either a per­sonal keep­sake or as a gift to send with Thank You cards.

I really do enjoy run­ning the Photo Booth, and I know the guests love it, and the cou­ples laugh for years at the pho­tos they receive from it.  Though the props don’t change too often, each wed­ding is a new and unique expe­ri­ence because of the peo­ple I capture.

I’ve been work­ing on my skills at cre­at­ing painted pho­tos.  This is a fun, but time con­sum­ing pro­ce­dure and has been well received so far.  With this kind of treat­ment, these images are only avail­able as 16x20 or larger, and on spe­cific tex­tured sur­faces such as can­vas and some fine art papers.  I def­i­nitely love these painted images and how they enhance the feel­ing of emo­tion in cer­tain images.  These are very impres­sive when hang­ing on the wall and if you get one, you’re gonna love it too.

Wed­ding Cou­ple Painted Picture

Mil­i­tary Wed­ding Painted Picture

Acco­keek Vol Fire Dept