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Photographer’s First Trash The Dress Shoot Goes Insanely Viral After Groom-To-Be Bails Days Before The Wedding

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It was just five days before the wedding when Shelby Swink’s fiancé decided to call it off and crush her plans and dreams.

“The next couple days were a blur of calling guests, canceling services, and figuring out our living arrangements“, say Swink, but that did not prevent the 23 year old from Memphis from making lemonade out of the lemons she was given.

Photographer Elizabeth Hoard suggested that they have a trash the dress shoot on the scheduled wedding day, and as the other options were to sit alone at home or have a pity party, Swink agreed to go along with the idea.

With the support of her friends and family, who trashed their outfits as well, Swink and Hoard went ahead with the new plan. But what was not planned was the enormous hype this photo shoot generated.

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How To Photograph A Wedding With One Photographer, One Camera, One Lens and One Flash

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In our recent article How To Make Money As A High End Wedding Photographer, we explored the high end wedding photography market.

But, it seems that the more I am able to charge for a wedding, the more complicated and stressful wedding photography becomes.

So recently I have decided that I would like to simplify my wedding photography a bit – get back to basics – unplug if you will.

In this article I will take you through my simplified approach on how to photograph a wedding with just one photographer, one camera, one lens and one strobe.

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When A Guest-With-Camera Saves The Wedding Photography

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Have you ever knocked on the door of the bride’s suite on the morning of her wedding, camera in hand, ready to go – only to find some guest already there with a better camera than you?

Well, this has actually happened to me on more than one occasion (which either says something about my gear or the confidence brides have in my abilities), but what happened this past weekend was unique.

Read on and I’ll share the story.

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Why It Sucks To Be A Mid-Level Wedding Photographer

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Most photographers have been there at some point in their career – wedding photography.

Some of us move on to other things, like commercial photography.  Some actually enjoy wedding photography and make a career out of it.

But too many photographers are lured into wedding photography under the illusion of quick money, only to get stuck in the evil clutches of the mid-level wedding photography market forever (or until they give up and find a real job).

Lets be honest here.  Wedding photography can be fun with the right clients  – but it is always a colossal amount of hard work.

And life as a mid-level wedding photographer sucks.

In this article I am going to share the wedding photography business plan that is followed by the overwhelming majority of wedding photographers on the planet – and why it is not a sustainable way to make a living.

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Posing, Light And Selective Composition – Getting The Best Out Of A “Nowhere” Location

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Today we are hosting a tip from Neil van Niekerk who also runs the excellent tangents blog.

Framing very selectively in-camera, you can very often pull out quite a surprising image out of “nowhere”.

With Julia and Luis’ wedding, I roamed around the reception venue – a bed & breakfast on the Jersey shore, for interesting spots. There were interesting nooks and crannies that would work for the romantic portrait session. But I also like adding variety, especially unexpected variety.

I went through a back-gate, and into a parking lot behind the venue. This gate was the delivery entrance for the venue’s kitchen, and the parking lot was, well, just a parking lot.

But, I loved the texture of tye wooden fence and gate, and the late afternoon sun really brought out the texture. I hurried back inside and asked Julia and Luis to join me – I think I may have a great idea! I shot it using the following settings: 1/250 @ f/5.6 @ 200 ISO – available light only Nikon D4: Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8.[Read More…]

Please, Trash The Dress Responsibly

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I saw this photo on Tal Zigdon‘s facebook page and at first I was wondering if it was an April 1st photo. The first thing I was looking for when seeing this shot was the fire squad and a bunch of support crew. Titled trash the dress, the context seemed obvious, but I wanted to know more.

Not really understanding what I was seeing, I contacted Tal and asked him about the photo. Tal told me that he has worked on the concept for months and had many, many tests before bringing a live person to the shoot. On the shoot day there were 2 pre-tested fire extinguishers and two ready-to-jump assistants (Daniel & Shiran  Zigdon), and the location was near the sea and there was lots of sand.

Of course not every couple will be willing to assume the risk, and there were a lot of ‘dry rehearsals’ done before the first match was lit.

Still, from my point of view, the bride being an untrained stunt lady, there is so much that could have gone wrong, and even for the epic shot that this stunt produced, I still think it is not worth risking your skin or your life. As the bride / groom / photographer, how would you tackle the situation?

Photographer Cleverly Captures His Own Proposal With Timelapse Trickery

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Wouldn’t it be nice if you had your proposal capture on film (or sensor) so you could not only tell your kids the story, but also show them how it went down?

This is what photographer Mike Bons thought so he set up a clever rig to capture his own proposal.

Mike tricked his (then) five and a half years girlfriend into a valentines photoshoot, where he used a Triggertrap remote control to make a timelapse where the camera captured his and his girlfriend photo every second. For lights Mike, cleverly backlit the photo with his car’s headlights.[Read More…]

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