SANTORINI BEHIND THE SCENES

Erin put this video together for me after going through some of the footage of us in Santorini. We walked all over the island, cameras in hand, and had an amazing experience photographing and filming a client's wedding. The video also features a new logo that I've been working on. What do you think about it?

WEDDING PHOTO BOOTH

I have been working on making a sweet photo booth experience since 2009, slowly tweaking things to make my version more user-friendly, more portable and to make for the best quality photos. A few weeks ago I took my notes from years of photo booths and built an entirely new system. The camera, light, and monitor are all built into one box. This reduces the amount of space I need, protects the equipment, and gets the camera and monitor very close together. This is important because many times, as the guests are taking photos of themselves, they are looking at the monitor instead of the camera. Having them close together gets guest to look toward the camera, even if they are viewing the monitor.

It still works the same way: guests use a remote control to take photos one at a time, when they are ready. After the photo is taken it pops up on the monitor. Guests can take as many photos as they like, and each is recorded onto a memory card. Once they are finished taking photos, there is a business card with a web address where they can download their high-resolution photos. Each photo is 20 megapixels and very high quality.

There are a lot of cool photo booth options for weddings and events these days. Most of them are still the kind that you climb inside with up to four people, it takes four photos, and then spits out a print (or two). I like my version because 1) you can fit a lot more people in a photo, 2) you have control over when you are taking the photo, 3) you can take more than four photos if you want to, 4) the quality of the photos is better because they are with a great camera/great lens/powerful light, 5) the photos are online and easy to share via Facebook or Twitter, 6) if we do prints, they are only the good ones and we don't waste ink and paper on photos that are just going in the trash, and 7) the background can be changed to fit the event's theme or colors.

I'm sure this is still a work in progress, but I like where it's at!

WEST VIRGINIA WEDDING: MEGAN & BRIAN

Erin and I took a trip to Bridgeport, WV to shoot this wedding for Megan and Brian. This is the perfect time of year to be in West Virginia, with miles and miles of forest land turning red, yellow, and orange. We didn't have a lot of opportunity to shoot the fall colors for the wedding because of the location and timing, but we did get plenty of other great shots around the church and on a hill overlooking a pond right around sunset. We had expected a vibrant warm sunset and ended up with a cloudy day, which gave us a really cool blue dusk for our night shots. I love that look.

Megan and Brian did a great job planning an epic party for their guests. I've never seen so many jaw-dropping dance moves at a wedding. Erin and I took care of the photo booth—with a new design which I'll have another post for. Shenanigans were had, great photos were made, and we considered it a success.