Sam + Gus

Short for Samantha and Augustine. I was excited about this wedding since the original inquiry - because it was going to be held at Public, a restaurant in Nolita that I love. I remember the first or second time I went to Public, I saw that the middle area looked like it had been set up for a wedding, and I thought, "Damn do I want to shoot a wedding here!" I love the space, but I also knew that it was going to be dark, very dark. And while I obviously prefer natural light (I mean, who doesn't?), I like the challenge of getting good flash-lit shots. Most of the photos from my previous wedding blog posts are naturally or at least ambiently lit. In this post, there's definitely a higher percentage of flash-lit shots than ever.

Though it isn't obvious from these first few photos, shot at Sam's adorable studio apartment where she and her girlfriends got ready together.

On to the ceremony. One thing I've noticed with so many brides is that during the vow exchange, they look like they're laughing uncontrollably in the photos. Actually it's more their natural reaction to the fact that they are choked up and can't get the rest of the words out. (Erm, I may or may not shed a tear(s) every time this happens too.)

More details from the night. The two moody shots near the middle are, as you'd expect, not flash-lit. It's always nice to turn the flash off for a few that capture the atmosphere.



Congratulations again to these two. I feel very lucky to have met so many great couples this year.

Tomorrow, I'm shooting a wedding in NJ for this lovely pair. The season's madness is not over yet!

Lately

It's been a bit quiet on Lingered Upon and will continue to be in the next few weeks, as I'm moving apartments tomorrow (!) and allegedly won't have Internet installed until August 28th (yeah, I KNOW. I shudder at the thought.).

Anyway, this past weekend, I shot two incredibly lovely weddings. Here's a little preview for now. :)



These bouquets are so different and I quite love both of them.



Crossing fingers for a smooth move (though, when is it ever a smooth move?), and in the meantime, as it's quiet over here, you can follow my moans and groans over on twitter.

Jessica + Joseph

Earlier this month, I shot another wedding for Daniel Krieger under his brand as an associate photographer. It was held at Empellon Taqueria in the West Village - I must say I am loving these intimate restaurant weddings. I started in the Upper West Side where the lovely bride got ready. Jessica made her own bouquet out of heirloom and vintage jewelry pieces - how unique!



They had a quick sorta unplanned first look at Central Park. Then we headed down to the restaurant - I couldn't help but share a few of the silly group photos.



Then I whisked them away for a photo walk in the West Village, which is definitely one of my favorite neighborhoods to shoot in. Every street and turn, I see a great backdrop for a photo. It was a sticky humid day and Jessica and Joseph were the best sports ever. It was all laughs with them. Even my cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing so much after this session.



We went back to the restaurant where the ceremony was held. They're still laughing!



They Skyped in a good friend who couldn't make it. Isn't technology great?

Sarah + Ian | An intimate NYC wedding

When Daniel Krieger approached me about shooting a wedding at Per Se under his brand as an associate photographer, I could not say 'yes' more quickly. What made the deal even sweeter was that Sarah and Ian are seriously some of the nicest people I've come across working in this industry. So thank you, Daniel, for giving me this opportunity! I chose a few frames from their wedding to share - you can probably tell I was drooling over Sarah's bouquet and dress all day.

We started at the Sofitel near Bryant Park...


... and headed outside for them to do a first look. Check out the sign they made from chemical elements (they are both chemists)! I love some good nerdy fun. We then grabbed a few photos in the charming Upper West Side.


And the ceremony begins! It was a sweet, intimate gathering. I may or may not have shed a few tears myself...


And finally, a few details from Per Se. I had the privilege of eating off the salon menu (which, by the way, is a great alternative to the dozen+ course tasting and you don't need reservations), basically extending my French food gluttony for just a bit longer, as I had just gotten back from Paris. I was sent home with a sleeve of macarons and shortbread cookies from Per Se (thank you, Sarah and Ian!) - seriously, can I shoot more weddings here, please? ;)

Sara + Mike

Wohoo, I am finally getting around to sharing some images from Sara + Mike's wedding back in March. This is all film (mix of Portra 400, Portra 160 and Ilford 3200) except for five images. Enjoy!

After the ceremony, we headed to Clark's Landing in Point Pleasant Beach.

Katie + Tim

Back in October, the super talented Jennifer Sosa had me second shoot with her on this wedding at Mymoon in Brooklyn. This girl is damn good at what she does and she always brings out the fun in her clients. I feel very lucky to piggy back on some of that fun. When I shoot with her, I almost don't feel like I'm "working." Her post on the day is here. :)

Here are some of my shots from the day (picture-heavy ahead - haven't done one of these in a while!):

Peering in

I wanted to share one frame from an October wedding for its cozy and intimate mood. Sometimes it's great to just shut off the flash during the reception and let 'er go at a super high ISO.

Kat & Tommy | City Hall Wedding

I wanted to share a few scenes from Kat and Tommy's intimate City Hall wedding last week. This is picture heavy so I'll keep the text to a minimum. :)


Below - outside City Hall waiting for rides to Long Island City.


These guys traveled in ultimate style in the trunk. I couldn't help but share this picture. They were really great sports!

And finally, the lovely newlyweds.


The city is incredibly beautiful when you get away from it. I had to stop myself from making almost every picture black and white. I'm just really in that kind of mood.

The whole event is here. Thank you to Kat & Tommy for having me - it was a pleasure!

Solange + Andre

Just wanted to share a few film shots from Solange & Andre's Brooklyn lovely no-frills, cozy wedding a few weeks ago. The reception took place at The Farm on Adderley, another one of those restaurants where I would love to go when empty and photograph all the little details and mismatching chairs.

There's a mix of Kodak Portra 160 and Fuji 400H here.

As a side note, I'll be making some changes to the blog hopefully soon, so if you come by and things look broken and all out of place, you'll know why. One of those changes is going to be to post larger pictures, so I'm making my collages bigger nowadays. You can click here for the bigger version of this one.

An nyc city hall wedding and the rain

If you remember the little teaser I posted a few weeks back, you'll remember the fun Kayla and Tiho still managed to have after their photo session got completely rained out. From the moment I saw Kayla's striking red shoes, I knew it was going to be a great shoot.

I wanted to share some pictures from their day. When the ceremony started, we all kinda cracked up because the officiant had a booming enthusiastic show-time voice. Eventually, we managed to get it together. :P

Wohoo! The day looked sunny and we started the film session with little worry for the weather. Below you can see what ensued...

Aren't they beautiful? It was an honor to shoot their wedding and I can't wait to photograph their "second wedding" in 2013!

Rain on your wedding day

Today I had the privilege of shooting the lovely Miss Kayla's wedding to her man, Tiho, at City Hall. We were all a little worried about the weather but things looked good when we got out of the hall. The sun was even shining. As we headed toward the Brooklyn Bridge, the sky started turning black as night and the air got thicker. We forged onward, determined to get some bridge shots.

Of COURSE it would start torrentially pouring on us around then. We had no cover near us and no umbrellas. Kayla kicked off her shoes and we scurried back. We finally made it under the safety net of this building and we were all still in pretty good spirits despite our wet rat state. Kayla and Tiho - you guys were the best sports EVER. It was such an experience and I'll never forget it!

Aren't they so darn cute? I made this little gif after we got soaked. And now we play the waiting game for the film shots!

Her future

Spent all day making a wedding lookbook/pricing guide and didn't get a chance to leave the house today. I had wanted to share this cute little community garden I came across yesterday while shooting a test roll on the new (old) EOS 3 I picked up, but as it turned out, the focus calibration was completely off on that camera (major womp womp). I had planned on heading out there again with my new 50mm f1.2 (OH YES I DID), but a few fights with Adobe Illustrator left me pooped, and the day flew by.

I went through some archives and came across this shot from a June 2009 wedding where I was a second shooter. I definitely wasn't as technically astute then as I am now but this picture still grabbed my attention.

A gathering of bridesmaids as the flower girl looked on. She was so terribly cute.

Pre-ceremony | t & m

Some detail shots from T & M's lovely wedding in Somerville, NJ a few weekends ago.

I realized that the only way to really shoot in those crazy backlit hotel rooms is to overexpose at least two stops. This was my first full wedding alone. (Poor J assisted and "second shot" on my good old Rebel. Hehe. Some day I better be able to afford a real second shooter. Not that J did a bad job or anything! It would just be cool to be able to pay someone who wants to shoot weddings. :)) It was overall a great experience and I hope there will be many more to come.

An enchanting wedding at haiku mill

For those of you who've liked my facebook page (nudge nudge if you haven't ;)), you may have already seen these shots I posted from Jon & Claire's wedding in Maui. With a romantic name like Haiku Mill, one can already imagine how beautiful and fairytale-like the place is. The details, colors and textures around me were overwhelmingly eye-catching. I wish I had gotten a peak into the main dressing room area, because from what I saw in other pictures, it looked like an absolute DREAM.

Although I was a guest at this wedding, there was no way I could resist taking these shots. At one point when I went to use the bathroom, I peeked in, gasped, and ran out immediately to fetch my camera. Slightly insane, yes. But look at those perfect glass bottle vases just itching to be photographed!

The ceremony was short and sweet. I may or may not have shed a tear or two, but I'm such a sap at these things. The lighting was pretty god awful on that ledge so I'm not sure how the official photographer dealt with that.

For the technical details, these were all taken on Kodak Portra 400. For the whole set of pictures including others not shown here, see the facebook album.

Best wishes to a very lovely couple! I know they'll do some amazing things together.

A lovely wedding at The Palace in Somerset

Blogging wedding pictures is so much more time-consuming and challenging than my usual naturey crap and food/coffee shots! After way too many hours, I still barely have any people shots in this post. Hopefully I can get my act together and muster up another post for those. For now, I will at least share some getting-ready and detail shots.

I think the hardest part of this wedding for me, by far, was not having any natural light. I hadn't touched a flash in my life (okay except for the times I assisted on weddings last year) for any of my personal work, but I had to practically completely rely on one for this wedding, which took place at nighttime and indoors. I went purely on a bit of trial and error with the diffusing and angle of the flash, and figuring out which way to flop it when switching from landscape to portrait and vice versa was always a pain and definitely slowed me down a bit. Still, I felt oddly comfortable and unstressed for most of the wedding. In fact, I felt MORE stressed when I was an assistant last year. I think this time, it was mostly because I was just shooting a less formal reception that wasn't a full-day affair. Plus the bride and groom were amazingly cooperative and patient, and just plain nice people. I greatly appreciated that.

I was pretty excited about all the traditional clothing and chunky jewelry. There were some fantastic colors among the women's garb.

Divya was a beautiful bride who made my job easy.

As I've said many times before (and is pretty obvious throughout my blog), these kinds of shots are just smack there in my comfort zone. People...well, I'm still working on that. All in good time.

When I dip you dip we dip...

I wasn't the official photographer for the wedding last weekend, but thought I'd share a fun shot from the first dance. I felt like I could have gotten better shots, but after being somewhat harshly reprimanded by the official photog earlier in the day, I kept my distance :P. C'est dommage.

Totally inappropriate title from a Freak Nasty song, but I couldn't resist haha.

The little things

Details from Saturday's wedding. Definitely my comfort zone.

Lots of nerves/anxiety running through me right now, and I've just got to remember to keep things in perspective and breathe.