Fixing Old Mistakes

Not only is today Thanksgiving, but it is also Shonee’s and my 21st wedding anniversary!  If we were to give advice to any couples planning a wedding it would be this. 

First… don’t get married on or near a holiday… it is much better to spread out your reasons to celebrate.  To make matter’s worse… Shonee’s birthday was yesterday. 

Second… hire a professional photographer to shoot your wedding.  Long after the cake is eaten and the blender you received is in a landfill somewhere, the photos will be all you’ve got.  We had a “family friend” take our photos to save some money and Shonee says that is the only regret she has (and it’s a BIG regret)… which is good news for me.

Since it’s our 21st anniversary I decided to take a look at our old wedding photos and see if I could improve them at all with some of the technology and cool computer programs we have today.

Here’s one of the photos I pulled out of our album…

At first glance, one assumes that our wedding took place on Mars due to the orange glow.  The image is also out of focus and there are some compositional elements that could be improved.  This is actually one of the best images from our album.

I took the photo and scanned it into the computer, saving it as a jpeg.  In Lightroom I corrected the colors so that Shonee is wearing a white dress.  Next I opened the image in Photoshop and played around with “painting” the background using the Mixer Brush Tool.  I also added the date.  It took about five or ten minutes to get this image.  It’s far from perfect… but I think it looks a lot better and that’s the point.

 

I wanted to see what it would look like without color so I created this black & white image using Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Now Shonee wants me to redo all our photos and create a new album.  She says, “her life will be complete if I do that for her.”  I guess I know what I’ll be giving her for our 22nd anniversary…

Happy Thanksgiving!

Through a Father’s Eye’s

I created this composite image a few weeks ago.  It is a teammate on my son Ander’s football team. 

The reflection of the boy is in his dad’s sunglasses.  I thought it made kind of an interesting father/son portrait.  I sort of wish I had captured a bit more of the Dad’s face.  Live and learn.

“Fragrance”

Here’s an image from a wedding I shot up in Seattle.  The flower girl (who did a great job I might add) wanted to smell the bouquet.

“Splash”

Sometimes things happen really fast at a wedding.  This was one of those times…

The festivities were winding down when one of the bride’s brothers decided to grab the groom (his new brother-in-law) and leap into the pool.  I had no warning this was about to happen.  It was one of those times when you just have to “shoot from the hip” and hope something turns out.  I think I got a pretty good shot of them entering the water…

Problem was… earlier that day the bride told me about a nearby field with a great view of Mount Rainier in the distance.  She had asked me if I would mind sticking around after the wedding was over so we could go take some pictures in this field. 

Needless to say… her new husband taking a swim in his tux was not what she had planned.  Never-the-less, the groom was a great sport.  He climbed out of the pool, dabbed himself with a towel, and we hopped in the car.  A few minutes later we were standing out in the middle of this field surrounded by blackberries.  Cars were driving by and honking their horns.  The groom’s pants were making that “sloshing” sound pants make when they’re soaking wet…  I think you get the picture!

Even with all that… I think we got some great images.  This was one of them. 

And as Paul Harvey used to say… “now you know the rest of the story.”

“Grandma”

Here’s another of my favorite images from the weddings I shot this summer.  The bride leaned over to kiss her 92-year-old grandmother… and grandma seemed to love every minute of it!

“The Kiss”

The bride and groom were sitting in front of this large stone fireplace after the ceremony waiting for the minister so that they could sign their marriage license.  They had been married only a few minutes and decided to steal a quick kiss.  They were not aware that anyone was watching… or didn’t care.   But I was.  This turned out to be one of my favorite images.

“The Hug”

At the reception following the ceremony the bride found her dad and… well, it made for a great moment…