pursuing the picture perfect wedding
Eunice & Daniel’s wedding photographs are over on 100 Layer Cake today!! We love being on their very pretty blog! Hurray! Congrats to Eunice and Daniel, the whole Hello!Lucky crew, and all the other talented vendors who worked on this especially magical wedding.
Some of you might wonder where I’ve been, and the answer—at least in part—is that I’ve been locked up in my studio cooking up new things. (I’ve also been fixing my computer, hence the blog-neglect, but that is another story altogether). Anyway, I have been drunkenly in love with encaustic painting (and the idea of encaustic painting over photographs) since I first heard the word “encaustic” two years ago in an oil painting class, and even more so since I’ve seen them in real life. Then I saw some pieces by the ever-innovative Starn twins, I knew I had to figure out how to incorporate encaustic into my commissioned work. Over the summer I finally got a chance to take a workshop in encaustic painting and planned to get working on a series of encaustic photographs right away. But summer and wedding season are what they are, so refining the process and presentation has taken longer than I’d hoped. Encaustic paint is made from beeswax and resin, and because it can be both clear and cloudy in places, it’s very dreamy. I am not the only wedding photographer experimenting in this medium; both Elizabeth Messina and One Love Photo are also working in wax. I think these luminous little paintings are going to be one of the next big trends in handmade photographic prints. The tactile quality of the prints shows best in person, but I couldn’t resist sharing a few images anyway. And I promise to share more soon, as I complete new pieces.
photographs by Gia Canali
As a photographer who enjoys photographing weddings, I’m all for real real weddings. But it’s so much fun to make editorial photographs of all those hypothetical (and totally attainable) picture perfect details. On newsstands now is the 2010 issue of Ceremony Magazine with a few of my photographs from a shoot I did over the summer with Michael Mantalos, the floral designer behind Louloudi Designs. The color palette was so lovely that I left the shoot wanting to do a painting in those colors. I promise to share a few more images soon.
photos, except magazine cover: Gia Canali; florals and design, Michael Mantalos; linens, LaTavola
Well, I kicked off 2010 (for weddings, anyway) yesterday morning … with a glorious although now not-so-super-secret Kara’s Cupcake in my car. It was really such a happy moment, one indicative of—I hope!—a sweet year to come. Now that I think of it, perhaps I should say sweet years to come— a wedding planner I adore emailed me a few days ago asking if I was ready for a magical decade. I hadn’t thought that far ahead, frankly, but the answer is an emphatic yes! Aren’t we all ready for a magical decade?!
Sparkling tablescape by Michael Mantalos. Linens by La Tavola. I’ll share more soon!
I have been pretty busy making and editing photographs these days and I am decidedly behind on the news (by which I mean reading everybody else’s blogs). Even so, we were happy to discover that {Style Unveiled} named our blog one of the top 10 San Francisco wedding photography blogs!
Here’s what they say:
“Filled with tips, advice, ideas, and, of course beautiful photographs, this blog will give you something interesting to read and look at …”
Yay! Thanks, Style Unveiled!
There’s an article in the Sunday Los Angeles Times about winter wedding bouquets. Dubbed “Love In Bloom,” it features Yifat Oren and Krislyn Komarov, two of my favorite people to work with. The article also includes a photograph I took of one of Krislyn’s permanent bouquets, which is decidedly and happily not “in bloom,” as it’s fashioned from balsa wood “flowers,” coral, and Swarovski crystals.
We ♥ Dara & Dan—and their picture-perfect wedding, of course! So we couldn’t be happier to share it with the readers of {StyleMePretty} today! Click {here}, {here}, {here}, and {here} to see the posts.
photographs: Gia Canali
One of the things I have always loved about this art is that it is technical and that in many ways, it relies (as it always has) on the ingenuity of mad scientist photographers in their kitchens and darkrooms. Folks like Edward Land who invented instant photography (Polaroids, if you will) in the first place because his daughter wondered why she couldn’t see the photo he’d just taken of her by the family Christmas tree. What we take for granted now because of digital photography was preposterous, even impossible, back then. And I still love the very real magic of pulling apart a Polaroid. Er. Fuji instant print.
It is no news that plenty of analog photographers are mourning the loss of Polaroid. We are excited one minute about The Impossible Project and freaked out the next about our emptying refrigerators (since nobody is trying to make our most treasured instant films). We have mixed feelings about Fuji film. But in the last two days, I’ve gotten word that emulsion lifts and transfers are actually possible with Fuji instant film and that it is also possible to create a transparent negative from the throw-away side of Fuji instant film. I spent the whole day yesterday in my studio, cooking and bleaching and washing and drying these fragile little first experiments, following and not following and adjusting everybody else’s recipes. It’s different with Fuji, but it’s really exciting, too. I was careful to keep notes and am happy to share them with anyone who asks. Thank you, mad scientist photographers. Let’s keep cooking things up!
Above: a transparent negative, made from the throw-away side of Fuji instant film. Click image to enlarge. Below: a Fuji emulsion lift. A few months ago, I posted its Polaroid sister. What do you think?
