Photography / Weddings

Second Shooter // 13

So after a week at the beach and getting my fill of brain candy (aka an overload of books and podcasts about running a creative business), I’ve decided to change the format of my second shooter posts a little bit. Instead of highlighting a few random images from each wedding (which were starting to feel, to me at least, a little redundant and impersonal), I’m choosing just one image to talk about what went into making the final photograph. I think this might be more helpful to cover some “behind the scenes” things, which is always something that I personally am interested in when I see anyone else’s work.

So this image. Weddings in July in Maryland can come with some of the same complications as those in the winter…it’s really uncomfortable to do photos outdoors because of extreme weather conditions. Thankfully, this wedding was at a hotel in Baltimore that had an adjoining upscale shopping mall with huge windows that let in some gorgeous natural light. So Dani had the brilliant idea of doing photos inside the mall. Genius, no?

As we were scouting locations that didn’t look too mall-ish, we passed this window in the Brooks Brothers store. I’ve always loved store windows, ever since my days in retail, setting them up and rearranging them to perfectly display the newest products in an enticing way. So I immediately decided that I was going to try to use this men’s clothing store window, all set with a topiary and empty chair, to make a portrait of a man wearing the most important suit of his life.

Once we finished groomsman portraits, I took Chris, the groom, into the store with me to ask an employee if we could use the window. I wanted to actually have the groom there so that, hopefully, they’d be less likely to say no. Thankfully, it worked.

I’ve included the settings for this photo below, but in this case, pre-visualization and location scouting are the true story behind this picture.