Brandon Malone Photography

Robert and Tera have kicked off my wed­ding sea­son for me this year as my first cou­ple for 2012.  The out­door types that they are, I knew to expect lots of fun, relax­ation, and a few crazy guests.  Plus some good food.  I was any­thing but disappointed.

This was my first visit to the Christ Epis­co­pal Church in West River, Mary­land.  It was absolutely beau­ti­ful, and full of out door photo options.  The inside was tight, but with the older clas­sic look and feel that you would expect.  The kind that makes you feel like you’re sit­ting amongst his­tory and it dri­ves a bit of curios­ity about who was there long ago.  It is a very well kept church with a great priest, and I loved shoot­ing there.  Of course the cool doors and pink flow­ers help too.

We were able to get some pho­tos of Robert and his men ahead of time, but that was it before we had to head off to the cer­e­mony.  I love watch­ing a mar­riage cer­e­mony in small old churches.  Some­thing about the red car­peted isle and wooden struc­ture and hang­ing lights just seems to add that spe­cial touch to a wed­ding.  Of course I don’t gen­er­ally get to pay much atten­tion to what’s being said other than cer­tain key phrases that tell me what’s hap­pen­ing next.  But I’m there to take care of the visual cap­tur­ing of things, so I have to keep my focus on look­ing for those expres­sions.  They will be excited with the pictures.

From there we were off to the Amer­i­can Legion in Edge­wa­ter, Mary­land for the recep­tion.  Again, keep­ing with their style, they kept things sim­ple so as to focus more on sim­ply hav­ing fun.  Most every­one was able to spend time catch­ing up with oth­ers, shar­ing sto­ries, and pass­ing their bless­ings and best wishes on to Robert and Tera.  And it’s always a good sign when a brides­maid catches the bouquet.

Robert and Tera have begun their newest life adven­ture as new­ly­weds, and like all of their fam­ily and friends, I wish them the best.

If you would like to view the pho­tos from this wed­ding, a link will be posted here once the pho­tos are com­pleted and Robert and Tera have had their first looks.  In the mean­time, enjoy the pho­tos that I have included and feel free to leave some com­ments or sto­ries or any­thing else about the day that you’d like to share.

Click HERE to view the event site pho­tos.  They are only avail­able till July 1, 2012.  Both prints and dig­i­tal files are avail­able for purchase.

I won­der if any­one can tell me what the white stuff was that I dis­cov­ered spilled all over the back­side of my pants.

As with every­thing else in pho­tog­ra­phy, lenses are sim­ply tools used to cre­ate a spe­cific look.  So when you walk into a scene, or are prepar­ing for a ses­sion, you’ll want to first think about what you want the final image to look like.  This will help guide the deci­sions you make.  For now, we’re just focus­ing on lenses.

When you have a SLR/DSLR/HDSLR, you have the option to choose dif­fer­ent lenses.  Point and shoot cam­eras require mini adapter lenses to get a sim­i­lar option.  But we’re going to stay with inter­change­able lenses here.

There are obvi­ously tons of lenses options out there vary­ing in brand, zoom, speed, and price.  So what’s the dif­fer­ence and what does it mean for you?  Well, it depends on what you’re doing.

Lens glass:  With lenses, glass is a very crit­i­cal fac­tor.  Lower end lenses will work out just fine for the aver­age per­son, but the pro­fes­sional often requires a much higher qual­ity glass.  The dif­fer­ence in glass could be the dif­fer­ence between a clean, clear, vibrantly col­ored pic­tured and one that is dingy and off-colored.  Some brands are bet­ter known for their glass than oth­ers, such as Nikon.  But even Nikon has both higher and lower end glass options.  A brief read­ing on each glass type will let you know which is bet­ter.  Of course so will the price.

Lens speed:  If you have ever been con­fused when some­one talks about how fast a lens is, done feel bad.  I remem­ber when I knew noth­ing and assumed it referred to how fast the lens focused on a sub­ject.  What it really refers to is the aper­ture rat­ing of the lens.  For exam­ple, a lens may be referred to as a 2.8 lens, or a 4–5.6 vari­able lens.  The lower the aper­ture rat­ing, the bet­ter the lens, and the more expen­sive it is.  This is not some­thing the aver­age per­son will need to worry about unless you are a seri­ous hobby shooter work­ing in low light or need­ing shal­low depth of field on a reg­u­lar basis.

Prime verses zoom:  Most peo­ple are imme­di­ately aware of what a zoom lens means.  So the oppo­site would be a non-zoom lens that has only one focal length.  This would be a prime lens.  Where a zoom lens is con­ve­nient, and prime lens is sharper and cleaner.  Most peo­ple assume buy one really big zoom lens (such as Nikon’s 18–200) than lug around a bunch of primes.  But be aware that lenses with these larger ranges usu­ally sac­ri­fice on qual­ity.  Again, prob­a­bly noth­ing the aver­age per­son will notice, but will drive the pro­fes­sional crazy.  My per­sonal favorite zoom lens is Nikon’s 24–70 2.8 lens.

Per­spec­tive Con­trol:  Ok, this will be really dif­fer­ent to most peo­ple.  A per­spec­tive con­trol lens (PC lens), also called a tilt-shift lens, is a really cool fun toy.  It can be related to a lens-baby (for those famil­iar with it), but it’s not com­pletely the same thing.  These lenses are prime lenses that are man­ual focus only, and are very expen­sive.  The user is able to rotate, pan, and shift the lens in order to achieve the desired per­spec­tive and depth of field.

Ok, so you know a few things about lenses now, now you need to know a lit­tle more about how to make the best use of them.  So let me share a few things more for you.

Pro­tec­tion First!  Have a UV or Haze fil­ter on your lens at all times unless you’re replac­ing it tem­porar­ily with a dif­fer­ent filer.  Fil­ters pro­tect that expen­sive glass you just paid for and help give you a bet­ter image.  Dif­fer­ent fil­ters do dif­fer­ent things, so check out web­sites such as Tiffen and see what kind of fun things you can get to play with.

Be con­science of your shut­ter speed!  The gen­eral rule is that your min­i­mum shut­ter speed should be the same or greater than your focal length.  So if you’re zoomed out to 200mm, then your shut­ter speed should also be 200 or faster in order to prop­erly stop motion.  Again, this is a gen­eral rule that every­one breaks, but know you can before you try.  This is where faster lenses are handy.

Think about sub­ject com­pres­sion!  I prob­a­bly had you up to this point, so let me try to get a sim­ple expla­na­tion and some exam­ple pho­tos.  Imag­ine you are pho­tograph­ing two peo­ple, and one is stand­ing ten feet behind the other, but you’re only focus­ing on the indi­vid­ual clos­est to the cam­era.  Com­pres­sion how to do with how close or far apart they appear from each other in the final image.  A wider angle lens (such as 24mm for exam­ple) and closer to sub­ject posi­tion (say 5 feet) will make the two appear much far­ther apart.  If you use a longer lens (such as 200mm) and are father away (maybe 20 feet), then the two will appear much closer together in the final image.  This does not mean they will both be in focus, so don’t con­fuse com­pres­sion with depth of field.

The image on top was with a 24mm at less than 5 feet from the tree.  The bot­tom image was with a  200mm at just over 10 feet away.  Same tree and same back­ground, but dif­fer­ent compression.

Now you know a bit more than you prob­a­bly did before about lenses, and hope­fully have a slightly bet­ter idea of how to choose a lens that will best suite the job you need it for.  Remem­ber the aver­age per­son that is just tak­ing vaca­tion pho­tos and cap­tur­ing fam­ily moments is prob­a­bly just fine with a basic low-end lens with a sim­ple range zoom of between 24–80-ish.  Just remem­ber that it is a lower end lens with lim­i­ta­tions, and put a fil­ter on it for good­ness sakes!

The last time we looked at basic pho­tog­ra­phy, we focused on basic under­stand­ing and usage of the aper­ture and shut­ter pri­or­ity modes.  This time I want to look at mix­ing a lit­tle flash into the equa­tion.  I’ll even sim­ply the sit­u­a­tion a bit by assur­ing you that you only really need to worry about the ISO and shut­ter speed this time.  Also, the tech­nique I’m about to share is one of my secrets that I use at a lot of events.

Though we are using a hot shoe mounted speed light flash unit, this will still work to some degree with a pop-up flash as well.  If you want to be advanced, then you can play with your var­i­ous flash set­tings, but a stan­dard TTL set­ting is a great start­ing point.

Ok, so there is one more cam­era set­ting that you’ll need to know about in order for this light­ing recipe to work prop­erly.  It’s called a Rear Cur­tain Flash Sync.  By default, the cam­era pops the flash at the begin­ning of the expo­sure, so chang­ing it to rear cur­tain means the flash pops just before the expo­sure ends.  What this does is allow the var­i­ous lights and col­ors in the room to hit the sen­sor before the flash burst, allow­ing for more nat­ural col­ors and less washout.  So get your cam­era man­ual if you need to and find this set­ting.  I actu­ally leave my cam­era per­ma­nently set this way, so feel free to leave it there per­ma­nently as well.

This image was made using a lower ISO and a faster shut­ter speed.

The next thing you want to do is adjust your cam­era set­tings to pull in more of the ambi­ent light.  If you remem­ber, a higher ISO num­ber will increase the sen­sors sen­si­tiv­ity to light, which means less light is required to get a proper expo­sure.  Some­thing around 800 to 1600 will prob­a­bly work just fine.  The idea is to use more avail­able light and less flash to get your final expo­sure and the ideal end look.

This image was made using a higher ISO and slower shut­ter speed.

Now, set your cam­era to Shut­ter Pri­or­ity and choose a slower num­ber.  Some­thing between 1/15th and 1/60th will do the trick.  The slower your shut­ter speed, the more ambi­ent light and col­ors you’ll bring in.  If you speed it up too much, like say 1/125th or more, it won’t have enough time to pull much more than the light from your flash.  The would result in a less col­or­ful image.  The trick is to almost even out the flash out­put with the avail­able ambi­ent light.  That way the flash is mainly freez­ing your sub­ject and ensur­ing they’re prop­erly light.

So what should you con­sider when doing this tech­nique?  Well, since you’re using slower shut­ter speeds, you’ll need to be con­science of the amount of move­ment that your sub­ject is mak­ing.  If the sub­ject is fly­ing all over the place, then you’ll get that crazy ghost­ing affect, which is cool if that’s what you want.  If not, then you’ll want to speed up your shut­ter speed a bit.  Of course, if your sub­ject is not mak­ing sud­den move­ments, then you’ll end up with a warmer image.

The two exam­ples below demon­strate the dif­fer­ence this tech­nique can make.

The first is with a faster shut­ter speed while the sec­ond one used a slower shut­ter speed.

Remem­ber this is just one of numer­ous tricks that can be used to get a spe­cific look for an image.  Not every trick is idea for every sit­u­a­tion, so like a good spice, use it only when the occa­sion really calls for it.  Oth­er­wise you’ll end up over­do­ing it and be left with a ton of images that have a look not bal­anced with the sub­ject mat­ter.  Any­body to learn tricks just as any­one can spread paint on a can­vas.  It takes an knowl­edge­able artist to know how and when to use them, and when to leave them alone for another day.  Enjoy play­ing with your new tricks, and show­ing off to your friends what you can do now.

Remem­ber that it’s YOUR day.  It’s human nature to share well intended advice.  Most of the inputs you’ll receive are prob­a­bly going to be very help­ful since your aren’t plan­ning a wed­ding on a reg­u­lar basis.  Other inputs will need to be taken with a grain of salt.  If some­thing some­one says (friend, rel­a­tive, or ven­dor) trig­gers a neg­a­tive ques­tion mark in your mind, then you may want to stop and ques­tion what’s being said.  Is it some­thing that some­one wants you to do to make them happy and they want you to want it so they can enjoy it?  This is usu­ally not inten­tional, but does hap­pen.  You might even find that a ven­dor has a pol­icy or a way of work­ing that doesn’t fit your plans.  You can change ven­dors eas­ier than you can elim­i­nate regret.  Bot­tom line, it’s the only time you can make the entire world revolve around you, so don’t let any­one take it from you.  Don’t give in if it means you’re going to regret it later.  It’s your day!

Here’s some tips for ensur­ing the best pho­tos for your day:

• If pho­tog­ra­phy is a high pri­or­ity, keep this in mind when you select your loca­tion.  Look at the dif­fer­ent areas of a loca­tion and imag­ine what your pho­tos will look like if wed­ding is pho­tographed there.  If you’re only finan­cially in love with the venue, but find your­self wish­ing the pho­tog­ra­pher luck, then you may want to look at other venues.
• Either plan a time to meet with your pho­tog­ra­pher at the venue to plan your pho­tos, or take pic­tures and email them so you can talk with your pho­tog­ra­pher about photo options and plan for your big day.
• Out­door Wed­ding: Aim for late after­noon or early evening instead of mid-day when pos­si­ble so as to have bet­ter light­ing to com­pli­ment your day.  You pho­tos will be softer and warmer instead of harsh and contrasty.
• Indoor Wed­ding: If you’re cer­e­mony loca­tion has lots of win­dows, then mid-day is not as big of a prob­lem.  If all of your pho­tos are indoors, then lots of win­dow light is a bonus.  If you plan to have out­door pho­tos done, try plan­ning your sched­ule so that these pho­tos can be done later in the day when the sun isn’t so high.
• Don’t for­get to smile!  This goes for the entire wed­ding party, as well as the par­ents.  Occa­sion­ally we’ll find peo­ple that are either very focused or com­pletely exhausted to the point that they for­get they should be smil­ing as they are being photographed.
•  Keep the details together.  If bride and groom get ready in sep­a­rate loca­tions, then the bride is pri­or­ity one, which means the guys may not have get­ting ready pho­tos.  In this case, con­sider hav­ing either a brides­maid or rel­a­tive hold the rings so that the pho­tog­ra­pher has access to them when pho­tograph­ing the other details for the bride.
•  Slow, steady, and happy.  To ensure every­one is seen and cap­tured while walk­ing down the isle, have each per­son walk no closer than twenty to thirty feet apart and at roughly the same pace.  If one brides­maid walks down ten feet behind the other, then she becomes hid­den and may not be pho­tographed.  And most impor­tantly, every­one should be look­ing up and smiling.
• Don’t rush a good thing!  Your cer­e­mony is sacred and the entire rea­son for being there.  I know being in front of every­one sounds scary, but almost every­one for­gets the audi­ence once they’re at the alter.  So don’t rush the most impor­tant part of your day.  And if you do, then real­ized that you risk not hav­ing it prop­erly doc­u­mented.  For suf­fi­cient cov­er­age, try to have a cer­e­mony that will have you at the alter for roughly 15 min­utes.  When you cut it short, you cut the oppor­tu­ni­ties for cher­ished pho­tos that can never be staged or repro­duced.  So fight the stage fright and stay at the alter longer.  And remem­ber that walk­ing up and down the isle doesn’t count as part of your time at the alter.  I’ve seen “ten minute” cer­e­monies that were less than seven min­utes at the alter.
•  Stop and kiss.  When walk­ing down the isle for the first time together, stop mid-point of the crowd and embrace each other one more time.  It makes a great photo.
•  Have’em ready.  You either have or will receive a list of basic group arrange­ments and the order they are pho­tographed.  You can tweak it if you wish.  Share this with those that are to be in cer­tain pho­tos so they can be ready when it’s their time to shine with you.  Hav­ing every­one aware and ready will help reduce the “cat herd­ing” expe­ri­ence and get every­one to the recep­tion faster.  You may also want to con­sider doing all of your pho­tographs pre-ceremony so you and your guests can go straight to the recep­tion.  Every­one that has done this with us has been glad they did.
• Keep’em look­ing’ and smilin’.  Whether walk­ing up or down the isle, or when being announced into the recep­tion, the entire wed­ding party needs to remem­ber to look up and smile when it’s their turn to walk.  Nobody wants the only pic­tures of them­selves to be look­ing at the ground, so a men­tal note can help counter-act this ahead of time.
•  Where is the cake?  When coorindat­ing your recep­tion set-up with your coor­di­na­tor or plan­ner, try to ensure that the cake is not in a loca­tion that the photographer(s) can’t posi­tion them­selves to get the shots they need for you.  Things to avoid would be square tables pushed against a wall or into a cor­ner.  Usu­ally a round table, or a table pulled a cou­ple feet from the wall will make it so the pho­tog­ra­pher can posi­tion them­selves appro­pri­ately and that the guests can observe and enjoy as well.
• Bride: before throw­ing the bou­quet, give one or two fake tosses first.  This gives you more pho­tos, and lets you play with your anx­ious ladies.
• Groom: be slow and sexy as you remove the guarder.  Maybe even make a game out of it.  It’s relly the only time you can climb up your woman’s dress in pub­lic with­out being arrested, so enjoy every inch and sec­ond of it.
•  Don’t for­get the pho­tog­ra­pher.  You paid good money to have your day pho­tographed.  Make sure you don’t jump into some­thing need­ing to be pho­tographed with­out ensur­ing the pho­tog­ra­pher is ready when you are.  Also, if you think of some­thing that you think is a good photo, or a group photo you specif­i­cally want, or just some­thing fun you think of on the spot dur­ing your day, be sure and com­mu­ni­cate that with your pho­tog­ra­pher so you don’t regret any­thing being missed.
• Con­sider hav­ing all of your for­mal­i­ties dur­ing the first two hours of your recep­tion.  After­wards, you’ll be able to focus on danc­ing while guests that need to leave early won’t feel like their miss­ing anything.
•  Push it fur­ther.  Every­one wants a unique day.  Some want it sim­ple while oth­ers want tons of fun things.  I rec­om­mend check­ing out the tons of tra­di­tions that can be found in other coun­tries and cul­tures.  I expe­ri­enced this when pho­tograph­ing my broth­ers recep­tion for his wed­ding in Ger­many.  They incor­po­rated many fun lit­tle games that added amaz­ing pho­tos to their day.  Adding some of these tra­di­tions to your day will make it more fun, mem­o­rable, and unique for both you and your guests.
• Con­sider hav­ing some spe­cial pho­tos taken just before putting on the dress.  These can be put into a small black accor­dion book as a sur­prise for your spe­cial man.
• Have all of your pho­tos taken prior to the cer­e­mony.  This not only saves a ton of time and stress, but gives you more time with your guests that came to cel­e­brate your day with you.

We first met Jes­sica and Bran­don in March ’09 at one of our wed­dings.  We then bumped into Jes­sica later that year as we fol­lowed another bride to a salon for her hair and make-up where Jes­sica just hap­pened to be work­ing.  It was one of those funny coin­ci­dences.  We chat­ted for a minute as she explained that she’s now engaged as well.  Months later we had our first meet­ing with her and Bran­don and some of the fam­ily at their home.  I think we spent more time talk­ing as friends than talk­ing busi­ness, which Amanda and I both really enjoy.  We love being able to get to know cou­ples and their fam­i­lies because it helps bring us into their lives.  When this hap­pens, we under­stand the cou­ple and their desires from us that much more, which means we not only pro­vide a bet­ter prod­uct in the end, but we stay con­nected bet­ter on the day of the wed­ding, as was the case on their wed­ding day.

Jes­sica and Bran­don are the first cou­ple to finally bring us to Har­ring­ton on the Bay, and I loved it.  That is an amaz­ing beau­ti­ful venue with plenty of options.  The only real lim­i­ta­tion is the square footage inside any per­ma­nent build­ing struc­ture.  But every­thing out­side was just beau­ti­ful.  The area set aside for their cer­e­mony was like its own lit­tle enclosed trop­i­cal haven as a side walk brings you in through a small gar­den and water­fall, and then keeps you sur­rounded by raised gar­dens on three sides while the water view was behind the alter.  I look for­ward to going back for other wed­dings in the future.

One of the other first time expe­ri­ences that Jes­sica brought my way was a mini boudoir ses­sion just before putting on her dress.  Usu­ally Amanda cov­ers the get­ting dressed pho­tos, but since I was the only pho­tog­ra­pher that day, it was my job to get those crit­i­cal pho­tos instead.  So in the lit­tle 5x10 foot room, with the bride, mom, and brides­maids, we cleared a space and cap­tured a few spe­cial pho­tos for her hus­band to be as a sur­prise for him.  After­wards the dress went on and we wrapped up our groups pho­tos of the guys and girls before the cer­e­mony began.

Though the day was short for me (only 5 hours cov­er­age), I did get a lot of impor­tant mem­o­ries for them that they’ll cher­ish for­ever.  Their day was full of fun char­ac­ters and wild col­ors.  The shoes of the bride and brides­maids really express the wild col­ors as the bride had hot pink shoes with bows, and the brides­maids all had yel­low with other col­ors on them.  The tables were dec­o­rated with sea shells, and the table assign­ments were attached to sand dol­lars.  The cake even had the beach feel with the cake top­per con­sist­ing of a cou­ple of beach chairs with the cou­ples names on each chair, white choco­late shells, and gram cracker crumbs for sand on the edges.  The open­ing of the recep­tion tent even faced the water where there was a pier for guests to go out onto if they wished.  It was tons of fun and will make for an amaz­ing album.

Be sure and pass your con­grats onto the new cou­ple.  They’ve been together since she was 15 years old, so I have noth­ing but faith that they’ll last the years and the tri­als ahead of them.  They are a lively cou­ple, and it was a plea­sure to get to know them and to pro­vide their wed­ding day cov­er­age.  Now to plan an after wed­ding dress session.

To view their online wed­ding pho­tos, click here.

I just wanted to share that my pho­tos from a wed­ding last year at Sot­terly Plan­ta­tion were used in an online pub­li­ca­tion called Rus­tic Wed­dings.  Here’s the link for you to go and read the arti­cle and see the images: http://rusticweddingchic.com/real-rustic-wedding-hollywood-md-sotterley-plantation

We meet Michelle and Braden when we were pho­tograph­ing April & Jojo’s wed­ding almost a year and a half ago.  Since I like to have fun and they like to have, we all thought it was a good match.  And it was.  We had a great day, espe­cially since the rain stopped just barely in time.

As usual for a full day wed­ding, I met up with Michelle to cap­ture her and the brides­maids as they get they’re hair and make-up all fixed up and fancy.  It worked out great too because we had almost per­fect light com­ing into the kitchen where prac­ti­cally all of my pho­tos were taken.  I love sim­plic­ity when I can get it.  I also loved her col­ors as well with her ladies in black dresses with accents of orange and pur­ple through­out the wedding.

Once I fin­ished pho­tograph­ing Michelle putting on the dress, I then rushed over to the guys to get some pic­tures of them get­ting dresses as well (which only takes 20 min­utes).  When I got there, the guys were up to some­thing that looked like trou­ble.  They quickly informed me of their awe­some plans to scare and sur­prise the bride dur­ing the cer­e­mony.  To briefly explain, they rigged an RC car with a Just Mar­ried license plate, a bunch of painted cans strung off the back, and a lit­tle pil­low on top with the rings tied to it.  When the cer­e­mony started, the best man sud­denly couldn’t find the rings (scar­ing the bride), but then found the remote tucked into the back of his pants (scar­ing one guest that thought he had a gun).  He had the car hid­den under the DJ table behind the guests and drove it down the isle so he could pro­vide the rings (sur­pris­ing pour Michelle).  That’s the first RC ring bearer I’ve photographed.

The venue was Run­ning Hare Vine­yard, which was my first time there.  It was a bit chilly, but at least we didn’t have to worry about rain.  The cer­e­mony was on top of one hill sur­rounded by grape vine­yards full of very tempt­ing pur­ple grapes.  Act­ing as a beau­ti­ful back­ground to the cer­e­mony was the recep­tion build­ing up on a dis­tant hill.  Every­thing about it was just amaz­ing.  It gives a unique look and feel that many venues aren’t able to pro­vide.  I look for­ward to work­ing there again next year.

One of the things Michelle and Braden fell in love with as guests at our other wed­ding they attended was my Photo Booth.  The Photo Booth is basi­cally a portable stu­dio con­sist­ing of one stu­dio light and a back­ground.  We actu­ally had to put it out­side under a cov­ered area of the build­ing, so the wind blew it over twice before I was finally able to weigh it down prop­erly.  Thank­fully no one was around either time.  But come time to open it up dur­ing open times of the recep­tion, the wind was gone and the Photo Booth received the most atten­tion it’s ever had before.  I drained both portable bat­ter­ies and had to con­tinue with my cam­era flash.  I think the guests had me tak­ing more pic­tures of them in the Photo Booth than generic reception photos.

Being that it was my last wed­ding for the sea­son, it was great to end it hav­ing so much fun and in such a great place.  I can’t wait to start edit­ing the pho­tos from this wed­ding.  I have links below for you to visit the pho­tos once they’re up and ready for pub­lic view­ing.  Be sure to share your con­grats with the new couple.

If you’d like to see the online host­ing of the Photo Booth pho­tos from this event, click here.

If you’d like to see the online host­ing of the wed­ding day pho­tos from this event, click here.

Trash­ing the Dress  

Bran­don Malone

About

Most peo­ple cringe when they hear, “Trash the Dress,” but the dress is not always being trashed.  The name is just what every­one has come to call what peo­ple have actu­ally been doing for years before the name was applied.  The idea is sim­ply to put a bride into a sit­u­a­tion that con­trast the typ­i­cal pic­ture per­fect set­ting, which often can  mean there is a poten­tial for the dress to get dirty or trashed or maybe not at all.  Where and what to do is an open door.  Any­thing from walk­ing the beach, to swim­ming in a pool, to rid­ing a horse, rid­ing an ATV, or play­ing on an old rusty train car.  What­ever the con­cept ends up being, end result is fun and mem­o­rable pictures.

Set­ting Up

Amanda and I have worked together on numer­ous occa­sions over the years rang­ing from her wed­ding three years ago to var­i­ous pho­to­graphic jobs here at ONI.  She knew my inter­est in doing a  “Trash the Dress” ses­sion, and she had an extra wed­ding dress.  So we sched­uled a day, and made all nec­es­sary arrangements.

The plan for me was to use my Quan­tum Trio flash unit off cam­era (wire­less) to gain a cer­tain look.  I love using off cam­era light­ing, and in every cir­cum­stance, includ­ing ways peo­ple say won’t work.  But as luck would have it, Murphy’s Law hap­pened.  We showed up on loca­tion, and sud­denly my light­ing gear was mal­func­tion­ing.  I brought var­i­ous reflec­tors, but with the gray weather out­side, they proved use­less.  So the day became avail­able light only.  No flashes, and no reflec­tors.  Only the glow­ing, hazy light radi­at­ing from the over­cast clouds above.

The Shoot: Part 1

The shoot was split into two dif­fer­ent loca­tions.  The first took place at the aban­doned train cars off of Crain Hwy in White Plains, Mary­land.  These train cars where cov­ered with graf­fiti and trash, full of bro­ken win­dows, rusted to the hilts, and located out of the back win­dows of the Charles County Health Dept build­ing.  Of course a few weeks after the shoot, the cars and tracks were removed to expand the Rails to Trails project that runs through there.  Thank­fully we did the shoot when we did, or these pic­tures would have never happened.

When shoot­ing, I had a few dif­fer­ent con­cepts that I was aim­ing for.  I wanted to give them their cute, happy, warm fuzzy pic­tures first and fore­most.  Other con­cepts where a grungy fash­ion looks, story telling pic­tures, and plain old crazy fun pho­tos.  Every­thing was exposed and shot man­u­ally in cam­era Raw.

Some of the images not seen are from inside one of the cars.  I put my cam­era on a tri­pod, my shut­ter speed at about 1.5 sec­onds, told Matt to stay very still, and then had Amanda move in var­i­ous ways.  The result was very dra­matic images of a lonely groom inside of an old train car with the ghost of his bride hov­er­ing around him.  Very dra­matic, but with the ghostly look and feel of the inside of the car, it was the only appro­pri­ate images to capture.

The Shoot: Part 2

The sec­ond part of the shoot took place on my neigh­bors prop­erty, where they have an old bar that looks like it’s going to crash down any day now, a rid­ing mower so old that most peo­ple never heard of the brand name, and land that looks like some­thing from a fairy tale.  Along with the fairy tale look also came the rain, requir­ing that I pro­tect my equip­ment from get­ting wet.  We used tree lines that sep­a­rated fields, open fields for run­ning, and a mossy cov­ered lawn that was cov­ered by trees whose branches are only a few feet off the ground and sprin­kle their tinny ped­als on the ground like var­i­ous col­ored show flakes.  On this mossy area is where the tiny frog was dis­cov­ered, along with a hun­dred oth­ers in the imme­di­ate area alone.  Amanda was afraid to step on them.  When she picked one up because they were so cute, I couldn’t help but tell her to hold for me to capture.

What every­one can’t see in the pic­tures is the flip slide of a pic­ture per­fect fairy tale that included intense humid­ity from the rain that just left as the sun was com­ing out, fol­lowed by the enor­mous amount of mos­qui­tos eat­ing us all alive.  Mainly Amanda who exposed the most bare skin due to her dress.  But like most women, she endured long enough to get the shots know­ing that it’d be worth it.  I’ve found over the years that women tend to be tougher and less com­plain­tive that us guys when it comes to endur­ing any­thing at a photo shoot.  I can tell some stories!

Clean Up

So the days fun is over.  We’ve suc­cess­fully trashed the dress with an old rusty train, and lots of wet grass.  For those of you in shock that we could com­pleted destroy an expen­sive, ele­gant, and beau­ti­ful wed­ding dress, the dress was almost com­pletely cleaned with the help of Oxy Clean and a water hose while hang­ing from our horse trailer.  Also, the dress only cost Amanda about $100 orig­i­nally, and was not the dress she actu­ally wore on her wed­ding day.  The tress was also donated after we got it cleaned.  So relax and take a sigh of relief.  The dress is ok.

Post Pro­cess­ing

Now we have tons of pic­tures.  What do I do with them?  The looks you see printed obvi­ously are not what the cam­era cap­tured.  I do my ini­tial work in Aper­ture, which is an Apple prod­uct what allows me to man­age and do basic adjust­ments to my images such as var­i­ous color and light­ing cor­rec­tions, as well as some basic retouch­ing tools.  Once I’ve decided what pic­tures to apply spe­cial treat­ments to, I then use the famous Pho­to­shop where I’ll address some of the addi­tional details that Pho­to­shop is bet­ter equipped for.  I’ll remove or lighten some wrin­kles.  In cases such as the photo where the pink slip­pers are vis­i­ble, I had to remove an awk­wardly located hose that what was part of the train.  Depend­ing on the photo, I’ll use var­i­ous color treat­ments, mod­ify my depth of field appear­ance, add tex­ture over­lays and frames or fram­ing effects, and so on.  For some stuff, var­i­ous plug-ins for Pho­to­shop come in handy, which is how I can quickly cre­ate many of the looks seen on the prints.

Final Thoughts

Not every photo needs this extra stuff, which is why I make a clean ver­sion and an extreme ver­sion of a pic­ture when I’m hav­ing fun.  The com­mon mis­take is going too far sim­ply because we can, when in real­ity we should prob­a­bly be keep­ing it sim­ple.  By nature, we often need to find that extreme limit of where we can go.  You just need to make sure you keep that safe spot you can always go back to.  At the end of the day I can reflect back on a day of fun where I gave some­one an expe­ri­ence, I gained more expe­ri­ence, and we now have the pic­tures that you can enjoy.

Occa­sion­ally we have the priv­i­lege of work­ing with a cou­ple that’s part of the fire fighter fam­ily.  Laura and Justin are part of this fam­ily.  Their wed­ding day was beau­ti­ful and full of fun char­ac­ters.  We pro­vided them full day cov­er­age, so we started out meet­ing Laura as she and her brides­maids were hav­ing their hair and make-up done.  The two flower girls kept things enter­tain­ing.  We even got a cou­ple of my new favorite detail pho­tos there.

The cer­e­mony was at  Immanuel United Methodist Church in Brandy­wine, MD, and was a pic­turesque lit­tle church.  And when I say “lit­tle” I mean “LITTLE.”  You could hear every click of all three of our cam­eras in there.  Since we were spread out in three parts of the room (not able to move), I’m sure it was almost like sur­round sound when we were click­ing away.  It was a beau­ti­ful lit­tle build­ing.  I loved the tall wooden ceil­ing and the stained glass win­dows.  But it was Laura and Justin that brought the life to that lit­tle church that day.

Then from there we headed on down to the Baden Vol­un­teer Fire House for the recep­tion.  It was one of the nicest fire house halls that I’ve seen, and great food (which is nor­mal at a fire house).  The ladies run­ning the hall were as friendly as could be.  Dur­ing the recep­tion, I had the plea­sure of pho­tograph­ing an 80 year old lady danc­ing to AC/DC with the bride.  Later the father of the bride told me to get a pic­ture of a cou­ple danc­ing.  When I asked why that cou­ple specif­i­cally, he explained how almost 30 years ear­lier at his own wed­ding, the cou­ple danc­ing was his flower girl and ring bearer, and they danced all night as kids.  So it was for the occa­sion they danced again.  I don’t know that they are a cou­ple them­selves though.

The day left us with fun mem­o­ries and a ton of pho­tos to go through, but that’s what I’m there for.  I know they’re going to love not only their pho­tos, but the album and wall art that we plan to design for them as well.  Wish them many won­der­ful years if you see them.

To see the pho­tos online click here

Con­grat­u­la­tions Laura and Justin!