Friends and Lovers: Linden, CA wedding Photographer

Posted by David 

Blogs are hard for me to write. It's not because I don't know what to write; it's because I want to write so much. Remember, after Art school I went and got my BA in English, with aspirations of being a writer. I LOVE to write. So when it comes to a post like today's, where the subject matter happens to be close friends, I want to gush. I want to tell you about playing soccer with Greg when we were kids, how adorable we all agreed that Nikki was when he started bringing her around, how Nikki's adorableness can only be eclipsed by her daughter Emi, and how supportive these two have been throughout our growth in photography. But, in the study of creative writing, aside from learning things like 'never start a sentence with a conjunction,' they teach you how to whittle your story down to a core concept beyond what most people see.

Anyone seeing these two interact would immediately say that 'love' is the core concept. You see the way they look at each other and you just know it's there. But love takes on so many forms. It's a broad term that encompasses too much. We need to whittle it down. 

When we got to their house, a beautiful old farmhouse that sits amongst orchards, one that belonged to Greg's grandparents before him, we were greeted at the door by Nikki. She opened the door so gingerly, so quietly that as soon as I saw her face I said, "Is Lucas sleeping?" 

She looked over to the living room where Greg held a nestled newborn to his chest as he rocked in his recliner. "Yeah," she said, apologized about not being ready and headed off to collect more things.

The house was so quiet that even the floorboards stifled complaints. 

I hung out by the stove in front of a whiteboard filled with stars and asked Emi to explain to me what they meant. She told me all about her last reward for doing so well, her eyes alight with wonderment. Her lips puckered with resolution as she ran through the tasks she had to do to get so many stars, all in the span of one breath. 

"What's your next reward?"

She instructed me to wait there while she went on a mission to find out. "Mommy!"

When she returned, she told me that her Aunt and cousin coming over to watch Lucas while we were out was her treat, then ran off to get daddy so that we could go. 

And there it is, the crux of it: Family. 

I respect Greg and Nikki for a lot of things, but the way they honor that one word trumps all else.

Now then, let's look at some engagement pictures.

Greg: "Can you get a picture of that tree?"
David: "Depends on the lens I use. It's a pretty big tree."

Greg is apparently in training for the wedding. 

Loved the tractor off in the distance. Super happy that we were able to work in a farm reference. Love the juxtaposition of the farm boy with the tractor and the city girl with the brick wall. One of my favorite shots.

The shots from the day are a bit out of order, but I wanted to lead up to the last shot we took out at the park. Right after the above shot I asked, "Is there anything that you wanted to do before we head over to the brick building?"

Nikki said that she would really love a shot of them laying down in the grass, shot from above, but that she didn't know how we'd do it since there wasn't anything tall nearby that I could stand on. It leads me to believe that most folks think we bring a ladder with us or that we stage those shots near some structure that you can easily get to the top of. Not so. Nine times out of Ten, I'm actually climbing up into a tree with thousands of dollars worth of equipment all in the name of art. It's one of those secrets I don't mind sharing because either you can climb a tree or you can't.

In this situation the setting worked perfectly. There was only one place that I could be and the base of the tree was so large that there was only one place that the light could be. The Y of the tree as it branched out acted as a gobo for the harshest of light and created a light fall off that mimicked what was happening at their feet. The result is dramatic and rich.

Oh, and the above behind the scenes shot is not actually the position I was in when I took the lower photo. I had to stand in a rather awkward position above them. One foot on a limb to the left the other foot about five or six feet away to the right. I'll let you connect the dots.

Linden, CA Engagement Session. Stay tuned for the wedding, it's just around the corner.

New Years Eve Wedding: Manteca Wedding Photography

Posted by David 

One thing that photographers do with their free time is check out other photographer's blogs. We like to admire other's work, be inspired by it, keep up on the competition, and yes, bite, as in "beg, borrow, bite," a term taught to me in a design class years ago (I argued with the instructor that it was "steal" not "bite," but he seemed to find that insulting. Whatever).

There are different ways to blog your weddings. A lot of people simply throw up pictures, "Look, I shot a wedding! Aren't I fab? There were some people there, but OMG look at my pictures!" Others go through the step-by-step of how they shot the wedding. Others still will go into length about details, table toppers from here, hanging decorations from there, cake by so and so. Oh, and let's not forget the destination weddings. "LOOK where I went!"

Most often, when you read about how amazing the wedding was, you often read about how the bride and groom spared no expense on X, and "OMG was it gorg!" X is usually a thing, and for some reason that thing is what totally made shooting the wedding worthwhile for the photographer. It was a pair of shoes, a stylist that put together the décor, a venue, but it's almost always centered around stuff.

For us, what totally made our most recent wedding was the bouquet! More specifically, the designer of the bouquet. No, you haven't heard of the designer. No, you can't get them anywhere. And honestly, the designer probably doesn't even want you to know about this, but it totally made the wedding for me and Melody.

  

The night before the wedding, Melody and I stopped by the venue to see how preparations were going and how the ceremony would run. We don't always have time for this, but we are happy to when we do.

We arrived at Chez Shari at the Manteca Golf Club about ten minutes before the rehearsal was supposed to start. Family members were bustling about hanging decorations, the groom was fielding questions from vendors and the like and the bride . . . well, the bride wasn't there. Gulp.

At first it was very hush hush. "Uh, something came up, but she'll be here soon. Promise."

"Soon" got to be longer and longer. Finally the groom got over to us and let us know that the bride was in the ER.

Now, I won't drag the suspense out; it's not a nice thing to do. Besides, you can scroll down and see that they got married. She was fine. But the doctors sent her home to rest before the big day. The rehearsal was run with a stand-in and we all went home, relieved that the bride was alright. Well, most of us went home.

Late into the wee hours of the morning, a groom stayed up, surrounded by flowers that had not been arranged. Who knew that all those years ago when Robert had to take a class to meet a requirement for college it would come in handy on the eve of his wedding.

That's right, at about four o'clock on the morning of his wedding, Robert finally crawled into bed after arranging his bride's bouquet for her. I don't really think I need to say much more than that. Some people talk about love, others express it.

How have you expressed your love lately?

While Melody was inside chronicling preparations, I was outside getting details. Someday I'll have time to make our yard as cute . . . someday.

Off to the venue, Chez Shari's for bridals. 

A couple of sweet shots from the ceremony.

Reception fun. Chez Shari's recently installed tons of mood lighting. It makes for a fun and colorful reception. Combined with Kayla's knack for design, the venue looked fantastic. 

One of the reasons that Kayla and Robert hired us was because they knew that a great deal of the wedding would take place after sundown. If you don't have light, you need to not only be able to introduce it into a situation, but control it. It's tempting to overpower a scene with your own light and make everything look like it was shot by a guest, just with a better lens, or shoot with only available light, and turn everything into a black and white and call it art. It is far more difficult to get just the right mix of ambient and introduced light, especially on a lit dance-floor, or with colored mood lighting.

We stayed right up to midnight and caught the traditional New Years kiss. After we packed up our gear, lights, stands, and laptop, we headed off to a Jack in the Box, grabbed a bite to eat, checked into a hotel, backed up images and crashed till morning. All in all, it was a pretty good way to ring in the New Year.

Congratulations Kayla and Robert. Thanks for letting us ring in the New Year with you.


 

Venue: Chez Shari's in Manteca

House Keeping: Guests of the wedding may recall seeing a slideshow of images shot the day of the wedding. Next to that slide-show was a stack of cards with a link to Kayla and Robert's online gallery. We've had some issues with the link and have had to create a new gallery. The link to that gallery is here. For those of you that would like to be notified when the new gallery is made available by Kayla and Robert, drop us an email at melodyanddave@gmail.com, put "Kayla and Robert" in the subject and then how you know them in the body, ex. "mother of the bride," and we'll send you an email with the password when it's ready along with a discount on prints.

Erin and Will's Engagement: Turlock Wedding Photography

When talking with couples about engagement sessions we try to center the location around something special to them. A quiet place they escape to together, where they first met, where he proposed. A lot of the time we get open answers or a location that just isn't feasible. In the case of Erin and Will we got two answers, "the fire department and the fair," and they made both of them happen.

On a cold, overcast, day in late December, we met out at the fire department located across the street from the Turlock fairgrounds. Being a firefighter himself, Will was able to get us into the fire department where we took some sweet and fun portraits staged around his favorite truck at that department.

Then we headed over to the fairgrounds where these two first met. Unfortunately, there is no fair going on right now, but they did have a hookup that got us a key for the day. We wandered around and took shots in front of stables and the like. I think we were all rather fond of the rustic look of the stables. More importantly, I for one was fond of all of Erin's expressions. It made culling their photos extremely difficult, "I like this one because Erin's smile is gorgeous, but in this one she's got this wistful look about her." Seriously, we're talking about the exact same pose but she'd do something with her eyebrow in one that she didn't do in the other and I'd be like, "Oh, I like that too!"

We also had the pleasure of incorporating Sadie and Sam into some shots. Working with dogs is a lot like trying to wrangle small children, but if you're patient and have the right treat, you can get some pretty fantastic shots. I think that Erin was worried that they didn't turn out, but I'd be one to disagree.

While we didn't plan the first shot this way, it just so happened to work out that Sadie who was a bit more mellow was on Will's side and Sam, who had a bit more spunk that day, was on Erin's side. It was as though they knew what would make a strong composition. In fact, in nearly all of the shots, Sam stayed closer to Erin and her black sweater. We absolutely love how these turned out.  

For friends and family that would like to see the entire session, if you follow this link to their online gallery and pre-register, you'll be given a $5 discount to be applied to any purchases made from their gallery once Erin and Will release the event for public viewing. And as always, if you've enjoyed what you've seen and read here today, we encourage you to add us on Facebook and/or follow the blog.

Housekeeping Note:

You may have noticed during this post a bit of a format change. With the coming of the new year I wanted to make some changes to our branding and fix things that I was never really happy with. We now have a logo mark that will be placed on all of our branding materials and the title itself, I feel, flows much more smoothly now. The watermark will be faster to apply than the old system of placing a border around all the pictures, will allow us to show larger pictures, and the saved time will be applied to more blog posts.

For our facebook friends, (if you aren't one, you should be, so get on it) we'll be posting fewer images directly to FB and more to the blog and our soon to be new site. The reason for this change is that we need to drive more traffic to those two spots on the internet so that they show up in searches. Because FB is a closed platform, everything that happens on facebook stays on facebook. Images and comments posted there are not searchable by the rest of the web and we want to get the word out to as many people as possible.