Hilton at Kingston Plantation wedding with a beach ceremony

This was the first time I’ve photographed a wedding at the Myrtle Beach Hilton at Kingston Plantation, where the couple had a ceremony on the beach sand. At many of my beach weddings, the bride ends up squinting from the sun. Because of the large Hilton tower in the background, this ceremony area was nicely shaded from the afternoon sun. This allowed me to take really nice pictures of the bride looking at the groom during their vows. The only problem with this area of Myrtle Beach is that it’s very crowded. We had a number of beachgoers standing in the background of the ceremony. Oh well, it’s usually pretty each to remove people from the beach in Photoshop.

This couple, the wedding party, and the family were a lot of fun. I always love when people are relaxed and goofy for the pictures. For example, the father-in-law photobombing the groom and father, the bridesmaids picking up the groom, or all the guests really getting into the dancing. I especially like the picture I used as the featured image above of the groom carrying the bride over the water. You can tell they were having a good time. This couple must have put a lot of work into their first dance. They seemed to have a whole choreographed routine that was fun to watch.

I’ve experimented with some new ring shot techniques. I had some extra time during this reception, so for a close-up macro shot, I used off-camera flash, gels, and water spray to play around with different looks. I’m also using a new layout for the pictures on my blog posts. Instead of doing a storyboard with a forced layout, each picture is fluid and will arrange itself based on your screen size. They can all be clicked individually to view full size. Let me know in the comments below if you like the pictures!

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