A little photo walk in Sparks Maryland before going back to work with Amy – doing some design and consulting.

I’m here in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond.
Have meetings with Clients for a Uganda wedding tomorrow.
Keeping my heart eyes open to all the possibilities the world has for me.

Read on to see where Kelly & Tom’s wedding art lives…

It lives in their hallway…

You may be wondering what ‘it’ is, and I don’t bother to take a picture of it because the piece is not a picture – it is a painting with a picture in it. Kelly and Tom took me out to their wooded property for part of their engagement photo session and they mentioned this as one of their favorite photos. It was used on their save-the-date card. And for each of our clients who spent more thank 6k with us this year I have attempted to do something outside their contract, as contracts seem to constrict the heart – and I need to open mine. As a result I painted this piece, it started with an artistic retouching process:

And continued as I fastened the printed photo to a hardboard and painted in an impressionistic surface with acrylics.

Now art lives in their livingroom

Kelly used a series of framed 4×6 prints to fill her living room with emotional touch points – her wedding photos.

Here’s the same setting from their engagement photos – when the walls were blank.

We encourage you to fill your live with real moments love, service and life this holiday season – we hope our pictures documenting your year remind you of all the blessings you are surrounded with.

We are so blessed to make these pieces, that can work such small joys in your life!

Artisan Works Rochester – is a really wild place to have your wedding…so Dan and Meg just had their rehearsal dinner there with their friends and family.

Who’s watching who around here?

Color, form, pattern – the building blocks of the visual arts.

Don’t get egg on your cocktail dress!

The walls speak – and so do the family gathered to celebrate.

You can see Dan and Meg’s amazing wedding photos over on this post!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7JTS8DzPAM]

Q: When you look at a piece of art, what arouses your curiosity? Is there some irresistable point of contact?

A: I think if you are looking for something….you’re in advance, circumscribing what you will see. You have decided at some level – you can’t afford to do that – you must become absolutely defenseless to the work. I think if you know something about the artist, you can go defenseless with more confidence.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3d8SA2y6Ow]

Q: Do you think all of us are born with the potential to respond to art as you hope we will?

A: I’m sure everyone has this capacity, but it’s not activated. I think a lot of the fault is art critics who speak in a sort of ‘high falutin’ way….people are frightened, or feel they don’t know…..I wanted people to feel as though they could know.

Q: You talk about surrendering to the ‘wonder’ of the story – what do you mean by that?

A: to me it’s a crucial noun or verb; surrender. Because it means that you’re not going to have lables, not going to defend yourself by the ramparts of your own ego. You’re going to open yourself to what this has to give you, and that is not easy to do. Let this work speak to you without setting up pre-conditions.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjFVRXjrjAE]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9pAKdkJh-Y]

So this begs the question when you’re probably purchasing the biggest piece of art you’ve ever commissioned:

Your wedding photography

How do you open your eyes to ‘see’ wedding pictures?

In the discussion I had with Ciara today we talked through two spectrums:

From Photojournalism (realism and raw unexpected emotion)……………..

to…….Romanticism (evoking an expected emotion)

Wall Displays ……………………………..to…………………………….. Wedding Albums

When you’re looking at the whole spectrum of wedding photographers, you have to answer questions within yourself – that will lead you to the answer of which photographer. Looking at the question of which photographer – leads to too many answers and no direction. Talk with your fiancee about your shared preferences on the two spectrums above and then you have a lens of what experience you are looking for from your photographer.

As you think about the photojournalism/romanticism spectrum we include a few articles in the category on Choosing a Photographer that might enliven your discussion together. A solid piece to kick off that discussion would be thinking about the role of beauty in your wedding photos, and it’s importance to you.

To help you on your path our site has mini-discussions based around the ‘display preferences‘ we have the category called “Where Art Lives” and it is started off with this multimedia presentation defining the topic and the creativity that flows when you make your love real. In this category you can read discussions of how we reflect our clients display preferences when we shoot and develop their products. You can also see our projects installed in our client’s homes and how they fit beautifully reflecting their love stories and personal style.

Enjoy how your discussions enrich your relationship as you prepare for your wedding.

So do you know where the best art comes from now?

I didn’t include the story of Courtney and Charlie’s first date, but if you’d like to listen to it here:

…you can see how their engagement shoot reflected their first date and how tucker got included.

In case it’s not totally clear, the framed photos are the shadowbox that I made with Charlie’s input. The frame is antiqued barn wood, and it has a two inch deep sealed wooden shadow frame. The glass is painted from the inside to harmonize with the weathered edges of the photos and handmade paper in the backing. The photos are mounted on raw nails to avoid adhesives which lower the archival stability of the piece.

I look forward to blessing more and more of your lives with joy, strength, memories and moments

[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157610978707980"]

These two images connect the sharpness with the audience watching the climatic kiss and triumphant response by John.

Using this method I create more sharpness and viewable material in the picture ‘space’.

This image Holly said was her favorite from the whole wedding, and in it I have use the same tilted focus to blur the unimportant parts of the image allowing the band’s equipment to not distract from the moment Holly and John are sharing. A normal lens would render Holly’s hand on John’s back equally sharp to her face. By skewing the focus I put all the attention in the picture into Holly’s face.

In this shot I connect the sharp area between the maid of honor’s smile and the raised champaign glasses to improve the focus of the story.

It’s funny that how fast paced the digital wold has become the most old-fashioned feature of cameras has been almost forgotten – just for speed. You see the old ‘box’ cameras were designed to allow the lens to move on purpose, when 35mm cameras were built they were built for speed and ease of use. My favorite lens in my tool bag is a 90mm TSE lens made by Canon. It allows me to focus really close:

(if i DO say so myself, that’s a really killer series from the ceremony)

The beauty of the tilt shift is that it allows you a plane of focus other than parallel to the direction you’re pointing you camera, so in wedding images, it gives me the opportunity to draw visual connections between objects that are important and blur objects that aren’t. So in the last image there, the maid of honor toasting hte couple where the maid and the glasses are in focus better illustrating the ‘moment’ than if the MOH and the fireplace were in focus as a standard lens would have portrayed.

In this picture of Robyn waiting on her bed I was able to make her expectant and thoughtful face sharp as well as her dress on the wardrobe. She is seen in a mirror, allowing for a very interesting perspective.

This one is definately a classic:

The only drawback is speed. I’ve worked with the Tilt and Shift and lenses and I’ve built on my own but for fast paced moments I don’t generally choose them because its just not possible to get the focus sharp and fast.

If you’re one of our mant clients who practice your own photography, you might like to read my tutorial on creating the controlled sharpness and blur of tilt-shift without the expensive lens with controlled use of photoshop.

If you cannot view this flash audio multimedia presentation, then you can also try this page as an alternate viewable source.

Purchase a multimedia engagement session to tell your story to your friends and family all across the world.