At the end of 2009, I said that 2010 would be our best year ever. I said it again at the end of 2010. At the end of 2011, I didn’t even have to say it, because I already knew that 2012 was going to bring us to an entirely new level – I just had no idea it would happen THIS fast….
It’s providence that “A Whole New World” is playing on Pandora right now. Bear with me, I’m very chatty – I’m like the Spider-Man of Las Vegas Wedding Photographers (except without the web shooters, strength, speed and agility), so I’m going to get right to the good news part:
Check out the latest issue of Spectacular Bride magazine – Our photo is on the cover!!
This was a HUGE surprise. We were setting up our booth at the Bridal Spectacular show and I sent Sarah to the front desk to grab some hooks to hang photos. After a couple of minutes, I went to go find her to grab a tip for the nice fellow that helped us haul our stuff from the car. As I approached the desk, I saw the cover and flipped out! It was one of those moments that I’m so glad was not caught on camera, because I likely sounded like a 12 year old girl at a Justin Beiber concert and the jumping up and down thing was probably equally unflattering.
Every photo we take has a little story behind it and this one was particularly interesting – this was a ‘test’ shot and almost deleted right on the spot! In the middle of our Ravella shoot back in November, we were switching up our spot and moving over the lighting and gear bags (which are so big that we have this awful shopping cart thing that we carry them around in) and our bride/model (she’s a model, but also a bride to be!) was standing next to a wall. Behind her and to the left was an open area with late afternoon sunlight spilling in, drenching her veil with all this golden-honey coloured light.
The beauty dish and strobe weren’t set up yet and I knew we had around 1 minute to get the shot before the sun dipped below the horizon, so I told Sarah to grab me a 30″ silver reflector, which I used to reflect that golden light onto her face just so I could take a light meter reading and determine where I wanted to place my strobe light. I almost never use reflectors for front fill lighting, as they’re absolutely *blinding*, but Alex looked so peaceful and I was so worried that we’d miss that golden light that I dialed a slow shutter speed into the camera, braced myself against the wall to steady the camera and started shooting anyways.
When I looked at this shot in camera, I thought “cool lighting, but dang is that ever yellow” and almost deleted the shot, as I was preparing to switch to strobe lighting, which I felt would look a little more ‘snappy’. Sarah loved the shot and told me to keep it and the rest is history.
Moral of the story is that you can bring $3000 worth of artificial lights with you to a shoot, but nothing in this world beats good sunlight, a $5 EBay reflector and timing. All of the preparation and equipment that we as wedding photographers put into every shoot, our favorite shots are always off the cuff moments: a bride’s veil getting caught in the wind, that instant right before a bride and groom kiss or the perfect sunset.
The Bridal Spectacular show was absolutely incredible – we got to see all of our friends in the professional wedding community, meet with clients both old and new and as anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot of me will tell you, I have absolutely no shame about singing and dancing while we set up our booth or at very random times during the show. THAT is fun.
Seriously, even if you have your photographer already booked, you need to come down to the next show in August just to dance with me. I’ve already decided that at the next bridal show, I *will* be bringing large speakers and at least 50,000 embarrassingly bad pop songs from the 80s and 90s. Do you remember the song “Mmmbop” by Hansen? Yeah, I’m gonna go there.
One of the ‘big changes’ I was constantly talking about on our Facebook page last month involved limiting the number of weddings we accepted in a calendar year. As artists, making a limited commodity of our work not only prevents burnouts, but gives us time to really get to know each wedding couple as individuals and treat each wedding as the unique and special event that it is, rather than “wedding #46″. The number I originally came up with was “20″, however what I wasn’t anticipating was the overwhelming response we have received in the last few months – by the time of the bridal show, we had already booked around 15 weddings for 2012 and were receiving 5-10 new requests per day!
—As I write this, we have just booked our EIGHTEENTH 2012 wedding and expect to be fully booked for the year *very* soon!!
I have so much to say, but this quickly goes from a ‘blog post’ to a ‘big ol’ wall of text’ in a hurry, so I just want to thank everyone that stopped by our booth from the bottom of our hearts, I want to thank my friends in the community, all of our clients that support us and….this is really starting to sound like the Oscars, isn’t it?
Anyhoo, check out the latest issue of Spectacular Bride magazine and we look forward to hearing from more brides and grooms *VERY* soon!
- Deacon
P.S. – just to clear up the confusion, ‘Deacon’ is my actual name and not a church title 
Merry Christmas!!!
