Wedding season is full-on, and June kicked off with a fine mountaintop wedding in the North Georgia Mountains, near Helen, Georgia.
Helen is a quirky little Germanic alpine town about 1.5 hours north of Atlanta. Mountain bikers know it for awesome trails like the NORBA race courses at Unicoi, and climbers might pass through Helen en route to Yonah Mountain or Tallulah Gorge.
The more adventurous do what the locals do for fun: monster truck rides, a dip in the river, beer and putt-putt... A huge downpour signaled good luck and cleared the skies for the beautiful ceremony, which was held at Lucille's Mountaintop Inn
Congrats to Vanthan & Adrian, June 5, 2010:
Crew:
My indefatigable assistant Sharif Hassan and my intern Brett May. I try not to leave home without them.
Here's one reason why: shooting at the reception, my Nikon SB800 flash started doing unholy things to the exposure, so I grabbed Brett's brand new SB900 and shot away. It worked, the SB800 did not.
I'm pretty sure the critical difference here was that the SB800 shoots TTL at a maximum ISO of 1000, where the SB900 will work up to 6400. The controls on the 900 are way more intuitive. These together mean better performance in the trenches. I bought one immediately.
Your crew should all shoot the same gear and have it ready to go. It also helps if they can assemble a grease a new racing bike with a multi-tool and a can of mustache wax.
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North Georgia Mountain Wedding
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"I love these!!
...Is it normal to take so many shots?"
I had to think about how to answer that one. I delivered about 60 shots of 5 different locations with 3 different outfits for an engagement portrait session.
This happened last week with Aimee and Shu, two lovebirds whose Maui wedding I will have the pleasure of shooting this fall. Both are world travelers - Aimee just got back from New Zealand - and we wanted to shoot an engagement session loosely themed around travel.
When we started, we all had some ideas in our head, but by the end we followed some different threads. We hit a half dozen great spots in Atlanta, many of which were new to me.
I love it when a simple shoot turns into a little adventure for everyone, where things don't go exactly as planned. It's risky, but, as I answered Aimee, "I'm not a normal photographer."
Behind the Scenes:
I'm pretty sure that when they built the MARTA line, Atlanta gathered the best lighting engineers in the city, brought them down to the underground rail tunnels, and buried them alive. Only that can explain the hideous lighting in the stations. The extreme mix of color temperatures will drive you nuts, but the scale and spaceship-like architecture of Peachtree Station is too cool to pass up.
Below: Assistant Sharif Hassan (in red) and intern Brett May lighting it up.
I pack the Westcott Octabank on almost every location shoot but this time we used the Strip Banks a lot more, sometimes with egg crate grids, for even more control over light.
Recently I've been shooting the Zeiss T* manual focus primes a lot, for stills and video. The edge-to-edge sharpness and lack of vignetting is unmatched, and especially superior for use as a video lens, on a 35mm video adapter like the RedRock M2 for example - more on that later.
In the Lowepro Bags:
Westcott Strip banks and Octabank modifiers
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Where We Ended Up: Aimee and Shu Get Engaged
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I met up with them the other day in Atlanta for some photo shenanigans, based loosely around a sightseeing tour of Stone Mountain (You know, that mother-of-all-exposed-granite-monadnocks with a relief carving of the Southern Generals on its north face.)
Turns out I was on my way to some kind of 24-hour stomach bug, and the Stone Mountain Park nachos didn't exactly help. But we had a blast, buoyed by my mustachioed assistants Jon Kelso and Sharif Hassan and by some Windy City spirit from Emily and Shimby. Super cool cats. Can't wait till the wedding y'all!
Here are some memories:
First stop, Tupac Memorial. Yup, we didn't know either.
We forgot to pick up our photos, but what matters is that we took 'em.
Lunchtime.
True story: We passed a group of young girls, and I heard one whisper to the others, "Oh! She is sooooo pretty!" So Sweet!
Cool purse too.
Obligatory!
Ask me sometime how my assistant John Kelso gets kids to scram when we need to take over the telescopes. Solid gold.
Cutlass.
Airule:
Love ur works
(05.19.10 @ 09:41 PM)
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Two Birds, One Stone
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On May 29-30 I traveled to Asheville, NC to photograph the wedding of Jessica Cullpepper and Justin Martin. The ceremony, reception, and many of the festivities were held on the campus of Warren Wilson College, and the rehearsal dinner was hosted at the Sweet Biscuit Inn, which is also where my assistant Sharif Hassan and I stayed.
mike:
WWC is a beautiful place, and of course don't forget to about Thursday Contra Dancing! Great shots - looked like a lot of fun.
(06.09.09 @ 06:46 PM)
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Jessica & Justin, Asheville, NC
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Thanks for all the info Andrew! Absolutely love the concept and execution on this project. Amazing!
(07.26.10 @ 03:30 PM)pleased to see the photos...its wonderful
(08.02.10 @ 05:06 AM)Love the one with the bride in front of the car!! Great vibrant colors and overall nice composition! :)
(09.05.10 @ 11:30 AM)