Got a nice little surprise today when I found that Meredith and Aaron's wedding was picked up by our friends at Beantown Bride!  Go on over and check out all of Brittany's great stylings... Our filmmaking group over at Lozada Visuals, for instance, fully agree with her recent cinematography post!

Last year, we had the privilege of shooting Mary and Donnie's wedding at the beautiful Conoid Farm.  Despite having a lovely ceremony and an awesome bride and groom, there was one problem-- it rained.  Incessantly. We're talking tornado warnings and animals lining up in pairs type weather.

When the forecast called for rain this weekend for the wedding of Donnie's sister, Annie, I was despondent.  I may have even assumed I was the jinx causing our weather issues.

Och, not so fast, laddie...

(Clouds part after the jump)

Every once in awhile, I do a little work completely outside of weddings.  It keeps me fresh, and makes sure that I'm still expanding my skills.  Right before Christmas, I got a call while doing the usual drive from Long Island to Lexington, and it was the art department of a technology magazine based in New York, saying they needed someone to do some corporate portraiture for an article they were running in their February issue.  As you can imagine, they found the pickings pretty slim out in Morehead for photographers with magazine experience, but when they expanded their search to the nearest sizable city, Lexington, my name came up.  Since I was someone who had New York magazine experience, it was a great fit.

Due to logistics, we ended up getting this one done a few days into the new year.  I met with the PR department of the hospital I was shooting at (the subject was their chief information officer), and we did a walkthrough, looking for usable locations for a portrait.  In a lot of ways, it's not much different from looking for wedding portrait locations- you want an interesting background without a lot of distractions, and nice, soft light.  We found about 4 locations that were usable, it was time to start.

For the first time all day, I finally sat down with my subject.  Randy was pretty relaxed, having just gotten back two days before from a Disney vacation.  Since I had taken my little guys out there back in July, and they were about the same age as his grandkids, we started from a little common ground.  This is really important.  Most of your subjects, whether they're brides or executives or kids, they're not professional models.  They don't spend their lives in front of the camera, and they don't know whether that big 77 millimeter eye is going to hurt them or not.  You have to get them to see you as a friend, and you don't always have a lot of time to build the relationship.  I brought out photos from our trip that happened to be on my iPad, and that helped us transition into talking about technology, and what new toys like that mean to people in his line of work.  Eventually, it came out that I once, deep in my past, was a network technology recruiter for 6 years, so the article we were illustrating, about a shortage of tech workers in healthcare, was something I actually understood a little about.

By the time we escaped the office to get to our locations, we had a good rapport, he was able to stay confident looking, and he was up for whatever I asked him to try.  We went through our locations from the walk through and got about 15-30 frames at each spot, and I felt like we had most of it down.  There was still one shot I needed to do in front of a white background (so if the art department needs, they can clip out the subject & throw him in front of any background), but by and large, the photos we had were what a PR department considers nice, but didn't say they didn't say technology.  I mentioned to Randy that it was a shame the server room I'd seen was so cramped that it would be hard to shoot in, and he told me, "Did you know we have a new server building just outside of this one?"  Nope, no idea!  I just got here!

20 minutes later, I'm in a new, open, and clean server room.  We open up a rack to show all the flashing lights, I pull out a prop or two, and in 10 frames, we're done with the shot above.

The moral of the story? No matter who you're photographing, spending time getting to know them and getting to help them find their comfort zone is time well spent.

A lot of times we talk about weddings as an event where two families become one.  In reality, many bride's and groom's families really meet for the first time on the wedding day.  Not so with Drew and Heather's families.  I've been able to spend a lot of time with them, at birthdays and engagement sessions and location scouting, and I can tell you for a fact that they already were melded into one family long before this wedding day.  There wasn't that feeling out process.  Instead, what you see in these images, whether it be from Heather and Drew or their parents, friends, relations, even vendors, is this sense of unbridled joy.

More images after the jump...

Just a reminder: I'll be appearing today at the Kentucky Bride Bridal Show at the Lexington Convention Center (not to be confused with the other show at the hotel downtown, or with the gun show at Heritage Hall. Seriously, I'm not going to be at the gun show.) from 12p to 5p. Brides who are ready to book a wedding at the show will enjoy a discount of $200 off single photographer coverages and $400 off plus a free 20 page engagement photo guestbook ($125 value) if you sign a contract at the show and make a deposit (check or credit cards or Paypal accepted at the show).

Images and story after the jump...

Before I get to talking about Michelle and Kris' July wedding, I want to mention that I'll be appearing this Sunday at Jacki Allen's Kentucky Bride show at the Lexington Convention Center. (Click on the link for $2 off admission)  Stop by and spend some time talking with me about your plans, and ask everything (and I do mean everything) you need to find out to be comfortable working with me to document the wedding of your dreams.  As a show special, I'm offering $200 off single photographer coverages and $400 off and a free engagement photo guestbook (regularly $125) for brides who book me at the show.  Click on the pricing link above for a link to our current signature wedding collections.  As always, we're happy to customize any collection to fit your needs best.

Pictures after the jump...

How much did I love this wedding? Start with a stellar venue for prep time-- Rachel got ready at the lovely Swann's Nest bed and breakfast located just a mile beyond Keeneland on the way out towards Versailles.

She and John had their first meeting that day on the grounds there and it was a superb place for portraits.

Her Vera Wang dress was stunning-- easily one of the top 5 dresses I've seen on any bride in my career, New York or Kentucky or anywhere else-- more importantly, the way she just started bursting with a mix of joy and confidence when she stepped into it... simply breathtaking.

Combine that with an Orthodox Christian wedding, with its own sense of mystery in its rituals, the crowns, the incense, the room full of traditional iconography... you end up with a wedding that really stands out in its uniqueness here in the Bluegrass.

I'm so in love with this wedding that this look at it will be a two-parter, so that you can focus on the beauty of the first half of the day before diving into the fun of the reception next week! Click through for more images from this one after the jump...

In ancient Rome, they used to have a calendar of 355 days in a year, and if the High Pontiff of their state religion didn't add an extra month of 20 days every two years, eventually, the calendar would get out of whack and you'd have the seasons get matched up to the wrong months.

On a day as beautiful as it is today in Lexington, I think we've gone back to that system.

I went down to Keeneland today. One of my recent brides, Heather, is down at the sales, and I wanted to give her the new copy of Jacki Allen's Premier Bride Lexington, because one of the stories in the magazine (pages 192-193) features Heather's wedding. Heather loved the story, and her friends were oohing and aahing over the pictures! Her folks also mentioned that the Christmas cards I designed and the custom gift albums I did for her flower girls' Christmas gifts were a big hit.

After we finished over there, I went down to the sales pavilion to see some of her horses being auctioned off. I tell you, I'm listening to the auctioneer's rat-a-tat-tat delivery, and I'm thinking, "I wonder if he gets enough oxygen in between words to not get light-headed?"

Anyway, it was great to see Heather and her family again. Like I always say, my brides and their families become my friends as we go through this process.