Documenting a wedding reception with candid photography

What is the most important part of a wedding for a photographer? What might come to mind is the ceremony, or first kiss, or pictures of the couple after the wedding, even the special dances.  So when I put up a blog post, photography of these things is what I’m usually concentrating on.  But really, what I spend probably half or more of my time at a wedding doing, is just keeping a close eye on the couple and trying to document the event.  I want to catch the emotions and the natural expressions of everyone there.  But at the …

View post

First ever wedding on the grassy lawn at the Caravelle Resort

I was told this was the first wedding on the lawn behind the Caravelle Resort in Myrtle Beach. The reception later in the evening was at the St. John’s Inn across the street. I have done a wedding there before. I thought the lawn was quite a nice area, there was some shade from the large hotel building, and there were plenty of trees around, blocking things you might not want to see.  This was one of the nicer behind-the-resort-type wedding areas I’ve seen. They said if it worked out, they would try more weddings at this location in the …

View post

Highlights from the last few weeks and the importance of a good DJ

I haven’t made a wedding-specific blog post recently, and I’ve wanted to put up something new. I always get so busy in the summer. So I just decided to quickly pull out of my collection a few shots I liked from the last few weeks of August. These come from family beach pictures at the Myrtle Beach State Park, the mother of a bride I had last year getting married at the Grande Dunes Member’s Club, a wedding for a military groom at Brunswick Plantation in NC, and a wedding reception in Florence, SC. There is a lot in this one …

View post

After wedding pictures at the Myrtle Beach State Park

Now that things have slowed down some, I’m going to try and go back and blog about some of my previous weddings and events.  This couple was married the day before and just wanted to do some portraits of the two of them.  The Myrtle Beach State Park is a great place for pictures because of the options, like the oak trees, the pier, and the nice dunes, all in the same location.  Also, it’s out of the Myrtle Beach city limits, so you don’t get in trouble for taking pictures there.  The only thing is, you have to be …

View post

Really cool black and white images

A lot of people don’t have a clear understanding of how black-and-white images are done with modern digital cameras.  It’s not like with film, where you choose to use either b&w or color film.  Even if your digital camera has a black-and-white setting, it takes a color picture inside the camera and then converts it to black and white.  With the nicer cameras, you take your pictures in a raw color format and then adjust and do what you want with an image later in the software.  There is no such thing as taking a black-and-white image anymore, so in …

View post

Highlights from the first half of May 2011

This is such a busy time of the year I can’t really post about each wedding on my blog, I just don’t have time.  But I wanted to highlight a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.  One was a wedding in Andrews, SC, of the same bride featured in my previous blog post.  I’ve also included a few family and engagement portraits from Myrtle Beach State Park.  I discovered a new spot for pictures I really like at the park, at least the way the light is now.  It’s the drainage area for land runoff into the ocean.  …

View post

Wedding at Embassy Suites, Kingston Plantation

I had another wedding at Kingston Plantation up in North Myrtle Beach this past weekend.  Everything went really smoothly. I think it was the largest wedding party I’ve ever had.  I actually just looked at one of the pictures again to count, it looks like 10 bridesmaids and 10 groomsmen.  I had to do one shot during the wedding ceremony where I combined three different pictures into a panorama to get the entire wedding party without seeing the backs of the audience.  Photoshop is amazing for stitching panoramas like that.  One of my favorite shots below was the party pretending to play …

View post