This is one of those Italian Wedding Photos that include everyone. I wanted Elle and Kjell a little separate, with everyone else in a tight mass. When there are this many people in a photo, the biggest challenge is to simply see everyone. A low bar, perhaps. I think that in terms of heads per square inch, this about as dense as it gets; once you get past the front row, it’s only heads. They almost look like cutouts. It takes a lot of cat-herding to make sure everyone’s included, and for the guests it was fun because there was only one. Inject variations and there would be a mutiny.

I really try to avoid making posed pictures where people are getting ready, but we weren’t doing any group session and Isabella wanted one with her daughter and mother, the three generations. There’s a frame where they’re all smiling, but I like Isabella’s more neutral expression. I imagine her looking back at a future version of herself holding this photo.

Not everything’s outside in some pastoral setting. Sometimes it’s on the steps at the front of the sanctuary of the church or temple, not that different from my parents’ wedding album except perhaps with better lighting. If the ceiling and walls are somewhat neutral, I’ll bring a large flash and turn the entire sanctuary into a soft, even, flattering light source.

They’re in the same place as the photo above, but I turned them to make the shadows deeper.

When it’s only a handful of people, you can be a lot more casual and organic than with a large group. This says more about their relationship than if they were standing at attention. I’ll never forget those kids, as they gave me one of my favorite wedding pictures:

Joseph and Lauren on the grounds of her father’s house in Virginia. I like the casual arrangement and how the environment is brought in a bit more. The tradeoff is that you can’t see people quite as clearly, but it may not matter, especially if there are tighter pictures with smaller numbers of people.

After all the groups are done, it’s nice to take a little walk with the couple. Sometimes I’ll do it during the reception in the early evening if that’s when the light is most conducive. Either way, it’s a chance to slow down and get into a different frame of mind. Yes, it’s still a picture of a wedding couple, but when it’s just the three of us we can approach it more like a portrait, something a bit more thoughtful and timeless. It’s also a rare chance to – nearly – be by yourselves, to take a break from being gracious hosts and the center of attention.

Yoshimi and Michael were married on the wedding deck in Vail. They wanted the bright, sunlit mountains in the background, but the light was muddy and overcast where we were. Not good, soft overcast, but awkward blue sullen muddy overcast. If I hadn’t lugged a light up in the gondola, either the mountains would be blown out and unrecognizable or they would be silhouettes. I brought a 4′ softbox on a stand, which is helpful as long as it isn’t windy. In which case it becomes a very expensive kite without a string. The light doesn’t exactly blend, but the alternative would be a blown-out wash in the background instead of the mountains.

It did allow me to do this, however. Without the light they would have been dark silhouettes, like the trees on the left.

This was taken in the same location, at the same time, as the picture above. This is more my style, intimate and immediate. In black and white, a bright background doesn’t transform into pastels and unnatural colors. You have a sense of place, but the focus is on them, where it should be.

Back to bowling pins. A downtown wedding in the middle of a hot sunny day. The trick was finding an open area in the shade of a building with yes, a few steps! As much as I’d rather not light things if I don’t have to, when you’re surrounded by tall buildings, or even tall trees, the light may be soft in the shade but it’s still coming from directly overhead. To the camera, it’s like shooting at the bottom of a well. If you don’t help it out, everyone will have raccoon eyes.

It’s important to scout these places in advance. Zoning may require developers to have open park-like spaces, but when a camera comes out security guards will descend and declare it private property. It’s absurd, but bored guards with only a few prime directives and a fear of getting fired will not be deterred. I found out who owned this “public” plaza, and got written permission weeks in advance. The guards did swoop in, then backed off when they saw the letter. I don’t want to play it by ear, wandering around the streets with 50 guests in formal attire in 95-degree heat.

More bowling pins, this time at The Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. They booked a banquet room on the second floor for the wedding. It’s a beautiful Italian Renaissance building with a huge atrium, but all the open spaces were very public, populated, and visually cluttered. Since this was one of their largest groups, a stairway about a hundred feet from the reception seemed like a good option.

All three of these were taken within a few moments of each other. They never moved, but different lenses give different looks.

A tight space on veranda during Emily’s and Phil’s Grant Humphries Mansion wedding in Denver. The only place with consistent open shade (with a 7′ umbrella for fill). Space doesn’t extend outside of this frame; what you see is all there was. I dragged the bench over for some layering. Sometimes kids are distracting and sometimes they save an otherwise conservative group picture. Everyone is crammed in, but it still feels somewhat casual.

…as opposed to this. This is about as tight as bowling pins can possibly be packed, but there were a lot of them and not much room. I think if someone lost their balance it would be like dominos. The guys grabbed each other’s waists jokingly, but I should have had them put their hands in their pockets or something. It feels a little too close for comfort.

They benefitted from a little breathing room. Notice how Phil dutifully keeps his hands in his pockets. Grooms in suits inevitably wrap their arms around the people on either side of  them, but it makes their jackets bow out like Superman revealing his leotard. If you’re the star of the day, keep your hands to yourself and let everyone else hug you.

Looking for redemption for the bowling pin groups. We took a break from the reception. Even though these are clearly posed, I tend to visualize and make them in black and white and see them as closer to my “regular” work. I think the pictures made when the three of us wander away from the crowds tend to blend more seamlessly into an album of documentary work in a way the large group pictures would not. These aren’t really part of either group, somewhere in the middle. I want people to look at pictures like this 25, 50 years from now and recognize themselves, the seeds of who they would become. The suit, the white dress, the flowers; yes, it’s a wedding cliché. But hopefully done in a simple manner, light on cringe.

Stephanie and Darrin’s wedding is one of the galleries on this website, but I’m including it as an example of how very different these traditional images are from the documentary work. Color adds another element to the pictures, but is that element meaningful or just information? I see the green of the grounds, the chosen lilac color, but I don’t think it makes me know them better or feel the moment more clearly than the pictures in the gallery.

Another wedding atop Vail Mountain, but the rain at the bottom of the ski lift quickly gave way to an enveloping snow storm as we climbed higher. The enveloping white silence made it feel like a moment out of time. I spent three hours retouching snowflakes from thirty faces in a large group photo, but to make the pictures indoors where the ceremony was held would have missed the point of…everything. Thanks to photoshop, their faces and skin are miraculously free of flakes, but I let them remain in front of his suit and her dress. To clean it up too much would have been a false memory.

Another snowy wedding, this one near Tabernash, Colorado. I came in the day before, fearing the roads would be closed the day of the wedding (they were). When I woke up, eighteen inches had already fallen. There would be another four by the time I found his parents’ house down an unpaved county road. Power was out throughout the valley, meaning no cell coverage or GPS. I navigated with topo maps and Google satellite pictures I printed before I left Denver and eventually found the place though I could only vaguely guess where the sides of the road were.

They had a long list of group pictures, a number that would normally give me an aneurysm. Fortunately, the cold suppressed blood flow to my brain. But we SAILED through them! I have never worked with a wedding group so disciplined and focused. Maybe it was the blowing snow or the single-digit temperatures, but they were astonishingly on-task. They fell into each combination like magnets, five seconds to take enough frames to copy/paste the flakes away in post-production then onto the next. Maybe 10-20 seconds of transition between pictures. Simply unheard of. Do NOT assume this will happen at your wedding. It was unprecedented.

My cameras were soaked and it was tough keeping snow out of the viewfinders (you can’t blow on it; your breath instantly condenses and freezes, then you’re looking through a little sheet of ice) but I have to say that for soft, absolutely gorgeous light there’s nothing like a white-out snowstorm. It was enough to distract me from sinking up to my hips in snow during the ceremony. Repeatedly.

After the ceremony, we set out in two Subarus, in case one got stuck, churning through two feet of virgin snow. There was a big 4×4 pickup with 20″ of clearance that couldn’t get out of the driveway. Just sayin’. Off the roads, the snow was much deeper. They’d been holed up in that house with their families for three days and absolutely needed a break. We drove a couple miles looking for a good spot before realizing that every location of 360-degree white looked remarkably similar.

I had to find a place with trees, just for the texture or shadow. Otherwise, it would look like they were in a studio, or simply floating in white space. Once we trudged away from our cars, we had to be pretty efficient. Bringing a bride back with frostbite isn’t a good marketing ploy.

In a more amenable season, Michelle and Nick were married on a bridge next to Coohills restaurant. But that bridge was in full sun, with a parking lot and busy intersection in the background. So I brought them about 100 yards away to another one on a bike path and hoped for karma from giving cyclists a wide berth when I’m driving. A 5′ octabox to even out the light, fall colors, and a little rim light on their hair from the afternoon sun. Boom.

Again, with small groups you can come in fairly tight, cropping around the waist, which becomes harder after five or six people. It’s just the shape of the rectangle.

Wedding reception at The Limelight Hotel in Denver. The lobby was crowded, the dinner/dancing space was filled with caterers, but moving some furniture in this upstairs hallway opened up a space. The cocktails were at the end of the hall, and I had someone shoo the guests away so they wouldn’t keep walking into the background. The large open windows kept it light and airy behind them, with a 7′ umbrella evening out the light. Standing on a table gave me a little more height to catch people in the back. It’s always a challenge with large groups just to see everyone. If only we came in heights of exactly 5, 6, and 7 feet.

I dragged a few benches in for the guys. I wish they weren’t towering quite as much, but I thought the women looked better in the front. Also, stilettos on tall, softly-cushioned benches isn’t a good idea.

Yasaswi and Dima in the Carnegie Hall of Architecture in Pittsburgh. I usually get lists saying something like “couple with her family and variations, couple with his family and variations, couple with both families”. It’s too much movement and confusion. I always rewrite things for economy of motion. The fewer people who have to move between pictures, and the shorter distances they have to move, the better. So this is a typical sequence.

…and a five minute walk. Albeit for different reasons, it’s good for everyone’s sanity.

Jordan and Morgan in a slice of open shade that covered most of their families. There’s a larger contiguous patch just beyond the arch, but that slice of sun just beyond it would have been blasting into the image between the heads of the back row. It’s important for people to assemble and get organized quickly in a situation like this, because patches of sun will shift quickly. The girl with the red hair on the left was in full shade when we started, but was hit with sun once the stragglers arrived. If I could do it again, I would have grabbed maybe six more chairs; the grandparents would still be centered in a position of honor, but they wouldn’t look singled out as having trouble standing and it would have reduced some of the density in the back. Coulda shoulda woulda.

With fewer people it’s more manageable, and the aerial perspective always helps. If it’s on someone’s property, I’ll ask them if I can borrow their tallest ladder. Otherwise, I’ll throw a stepladder in my car that gets my camera about nine feet off the ground.

Without the multiple rows of people, I can drop back down and give them more separation from the background. I’ll often shoot at waist level to give them a little more stature.

This was an impromptu group from a rehearsal dinner at Denver Botanic Gardens. As a memory of a gathering, I much prefer it to the more formal pictures. Again, with fewer than ten people you can get away with this.

Even the pictures from the wedding the next day felt pretty casual. They’re still lined up, but it’s imperfect enough that it still feels somewhat organic.

Ilya and Maria. I think the best group photos look like well executed snapshots.

Luke and Teresa’s wedding at Devil’s Thumb Ranch. While I usually try to avoid a long line like this, the environment fills out the top half of the frame so it doesn’t look like a panorama of faces. In hindsight, I wish I had moved the two girls on the left to the back. Aside from Teresa, everyone else was wearing black and the two splotches of color on the end have them competing for attention. I can’t shuffle people endlessly, and I was keeping an eye on the encroaching rain, but I really wish I had caught it at the time.

I did a tighter version of this, but I wanted to include her flowing train and the environment.

I think I could have photographed them halfway across the pasture and they would still pop.

Breaking up the bowling  pins a bit. Again, easier to do if there aren’t too many.

I had this fuzzy notion of them being in a deep forest, like a fairy tale. But she brought a little attitude to the mix, which is more interesting.

Cristi and David in Chautauqua.

I like the straightforward nature of these. They’re devoid of sentimentality, a bit understated and dignified, much like her dress. They feel more like portraits that just happen to have been made at a wedding, but steer clear of Wedding Photography. Their expressions are subtle, and don’t immediately tell the viewer how to feel or respond. I wonder who they are, what they think, what their lives are like. I can look at pictures like this for a long time.

Green should not be an allowable color for DJ lights.

Of course, black & white is a way to avoid this. When shooting in color and lighting is weird and mixed, I have to add my own to suppress it so people don’t look seasick. At the least, one has to be a bit more mindful when mixing different sources.