In February, God provided the opportunity to photograph a wedding for a friend in Pennsylvania!

Of the thousands of photos that Lydia and I will take at a wedding, only hundreds are good enough to be delivered to the couple. And scattered throughout the good ones is that small handful of photos that happen to be exceptional! I don’t know which photos I take will turn out “exceptional” when I’m actually photographing the wedding. I try to make every photo as amazing as it can be! But once the wedding is over and you’re sorting through the pictures, the exceptional ones slowly rise to the surface. It’s part of what makes photography so much fun!

Here are some of the exceptional photos from the wedding in February and a little about how they ended up happening.

I’ve discovered that the best time to take detail shots is the night of the rehearsal. There’s not the same time pressure like there is the morning of the wedding! With the extra time, I’m able to set things up and tweak them to perfection. Like this shot. And this shot was not at all an easy one to come by! I had initially asked Lydia to photograph the wedding dress. She said she got one shot, but couldn’t find a good place to hang the dress. So I went around and started looking for a place to hang it myself. Lydia was right! I’ve never had such a problem with the wedding dress before. I couldn’t even find anything relevant to drape it over! Well, finally, I decided the foyer was our only option. And I spent what must have been a half hour there! I wouldn’t leave till I got something that I liked. You can see in the following image the sequence I went through to find and perfect a unique, out-of-the-ordinary shot. 

The next couple of shots that I felt were exceptional came early on the day of the wedding while photographing the groomsmen. You can see the influence of my love for landscape photography in the following photo. I did deliver photos that were zoomed in more, but there was something perfectly balanced about this shot that makes me just really love it. Scouting played a major role in finding the perfect spot to bring the groomsmen to for the big sky pose I’m particularly fond of.

The following shot had less to do with anything I did as the photographer, and more to do with the perfect expressions on everyone’s face.

When it was time to photograph the bridesmaids, I knew exactly where to take them too, from our scouting the day before. Thankfully, God held off the rain and provided weather warm enough in February for amazing outside pictures!

The next several wedding-day events happened indoors where exceptional photos were harder to get. However, I learned a lot about bounce flash at that wedding! When photographing with ungelled bounce flash in a room lit with tungsten bulbs, wide-angle to mid-range zoom photos would always render the subject the proper white balance with the background very yellow, while telephoto photos would render the subject the proper white balance with the background not very yellow! It puzzled me at first. But as soon as I was able to figure out why, I was able to make the proper artistic decisions on the day of the wedding. Here’s an example of the same basic subject and surroundings taken with a mid-range lens vs a telephoto lens.

The best part of the day was after the reception when we were able to take pictures of the bridal party and couple on a farm nearby. What amazing things you can do with wide open fields!

That last shot, with the wind blowing the brides veil, was achieved by first having Lydia hold the veil stretched out completely, and then me taking photos rapid fire as she released it. I didn’t capture the wind naturally doing that, unfortunately.

At the very end of the day, I asked the bride and groom if I could take a little extra time to set up a little more of an artistic shot. Most of the time, wedding photography is so rushed you can’t take the time to perfect things. Well, since the bride was a photographer also, she of course wanted me to do that. So I brought them into the shadow of the barn, told them how to do a light dip, changed to a specific lens, adjusted the camera to some very specific settings on my camera, and then went and laid in the grass at the edge of the shadow of the barn. I had never done the dip with a starburst before!

And just before we left, we had to go to this spot too. Yes, wedding photography is a lot of fun! It’s a TON of work, and it always surprises me which shots actually end up being the exceptional ones, but in the end, it truly is a lot of fun and worth it to be honoring marriage just like Jesus did in Canna 2000 years ago.

“And [Jesus] answered and said unto them, ‘Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?’ Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder’” (Matthew 19:4-6).