Most of my wedding previews don’t look like this one, but I will say the Saber Arch at Marisa and Andy Gebert’s wedding was pretty darn cool. I got an email from Marisa today saying that they moved out to Oklahoma where Andy is stationed just a week after the honeymoon. These men below in uniform represent all the branches of the military and I know we can’t thank them enough for serving.
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to shoot my friend Ryan’s wedding. It was the largest wedding I’ve shot so far with over 300 people in attendance. We had a great time and I’m really excited for them and their new life together. I’m also excited to see the final product of video Atlanta Cinematic was filming of the ceremony and reception. With some of the footage I saw at the reception, I can only imagine it’ll end up being a full-length motion picture. Without further ado, I’ll get into the pictures beginning with the bridal bouquet assembled with family brooches from both sides.
No- seriously… PILLOW FIGHT! The International Pillow Fight Day was this Saturday at Freedom Park. I have been wanting to go for the past few years- not to fight- just to take pictures. Keri and I were tipped off by our friend David so rode our bikes there and had an awesome time. I was hit by copious amounts of pillows of all sizes even though I was unarmed. I could do nothing but cry… and keep taking pictures. I mean really- if you opened your eyes and saw this, how would you react?
The King of Pops showed up too.
If you want to see more- just click here!
Keri and I have received an awesome response to our Save the Date. People have been asking me how we did it, so I figured I’d post about it. It was incredibly simple for those that have not seen a stop-motion video before. First off- there was no video footage whatsoever. The entire thing was completed using still photos. All one really needs is a camera.
For the footage of Keri and I, we had our good friend Curt come over with some props to snap the shots and help with art direction. I set up a black backdrop in the living room for our “studio.” Then we set my camera on a tripod so we knew it would be in the same spot the entire time. I also had a wireless flash set up to light the entire scene (detailed info for the photo nerds below). That’s all it was. Just lots of pictures in a row like a flip-book. If I were to do it again, I would have done it outside because we could only snap photos as fast as the flash could recycle. Otherwise, we could have had it look a little smoother. In the end, we walked away with 1,500 photos. I cut it down to about 1,000 for the final version (took out extra takes).
You’ll see below here a shot without any editing but with the nerdy info. You can see the black cloth in the background.
For most of the shots, they’re more zoomed in so I didn’t have to do much in post-production. For the full length shots (the park scene), I had to take them into photoshop and black out the sides as seen here. I also added the hearts for fun.
For the chalkboard scenes I set up a chalkboard from my kitchen (Ikea) on an easel outside in the shade. I made sure to tape everything down so it didn’t move from frame to frame. I also taped down my tripod for the camera. I made sure to position the camera close enough to where I didn’t see the edges of the chalkboard (less work to do in post). Those scenes were really simple too. All I did was take a picture, have Keri draw one letter, take a picture, another letter, and so on. The lighting stayed mostly constant but with the outdoor light, the white balance changed a bit because of clouds and sun.
All in all it took about four hours for the live action scenes, 2 hours for the chalk scenes, and about 6 hours of post production in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Not a bad weekend project and the outcome was perfect. Feel free to leave comments below if you have additional questions! I’m off today at 3 to take pictures of International Pillowfight Day at Freedom Park.Expect pictures on the blog!