Even the hardcore California naturalist in me loves a little glitter every now and then. Don’t you?

photo: Gia Canali

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I am ready for summer. I am.  But I do not think I am not ready for peony season to be over just quite yet.

photo: Gia Canali; bouquet: GD Designers

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What I have come to love most* about taking photographs on my various cell phones is its (my) almost unconscious reaction to a moment or a scene. Point and shoot (nearly without thinking)! These are not relatively technologically advanced—or even competent—camera-machines. Serendipity prevails. Instinct prevails. My ability to make great photographs on my phone is proportionate to my ability to make great photographs period. And so, come to think of it, is yours. (These levelings-of-the-playing-field are good for the art; only when anyone can do it—not just those of us who can afford cameras—will photography become about those who can see … and about how they see the world).

One’s readiness to take a photo (on a cell phone or at a wedding) is essential. And like the world at large, a wedding is a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t kind of place. Wedding photographers are hired for their readiness, an eagerness to see the picture and take it before the moment has flown away.  Cell phones make recording that everyday magic accessible to all of us. Obviously we choose to use sophisticated cameras—for the most part anyway**—to record people’s officially magical moments. But that instinctive reaction to life, to the world—just as in taking photographs on your cell phone—is what sets a good photographer apart, whether or not the person is a “pro,” and whether or not they photograph weddings from time to time.

The other thing I love about taking photos on the phone is that they are inherently and undeniably personal. ***Look at your phone—look at mine—it is filled with the daily joys: my doggy, my husband, my garden, the nieces and nephews, and the lovely bits of the world I take in as I go about my life and work.  Sometimes, however, I get the impression from folks  that wedding photos are supposed to be somehow not-personal (like: not as though they could be from my cell phone). But how is that even possible, much less desirable?

Of course the wedding photos I take are particular and personal to me, almost like they came straight from my phone, if decidedly a little fancier. It is my perfectly subjective point of view, my various passions and excitements that are represented in the photographs I take wherever I take them, on the job or in my back yard.  And that’s what you want!  You hire us wedding photographers for our empathy, for our sensitivity to your beauty, happiness, and love!  (Otherwise, we’d all save the money and have surveillance cameras or robots take our wedding photos, right?)

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* Of course, before you can love it, you have to make peace with the vast and charming/maddening limitations of the camera phones.

** Those of you who know me well know that I have a devoted love of sh—— toy cameras. I can’t help myself.  Memories sort of flicker.  A lot like toy cam pictures.

*** Strong inspiration for this post came a few months ago, when I saw photojournalist David Guttenfelder’s iPhone photographs from the war in Afghanistan.  News photos seem so much less personal than cell phone photos from the news photographer.   I’m not sure why that is, but I was taken aback to realize it …

photos: Gia Canali

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Today is the first really warm day we’ve had in a while.  And I’m celebrating (well, in just a minute here) with a Popshop ice pop break in my back yard.  Last summer’s weddings were hot! Hot, hot.  I kept thinking they could be much improved with a popsicle here or there, to keep us all from melting.  So I’m just putting it out there to the wedding-ready universe, that I want ice pops.  From the Popshop.  Any flavor will do, but avocado vanilla is really my favorite.  Or maybe Mexican chocolate. Or coconut vanilla (which is wedding white for all you melt-a-phobes).  You pick.

I think: sharing childlike pleasures with a bevy of wedding guests could be pretty grand.  No affair is too formal for that kind of happiness, right?

photo: Gia Canali

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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.

{click any image to enlarge}

♥

photographs by Gia Canali

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I think … we should rethink our eschewal of baby’s breath.  In lavish quantities, all-by-itself, it’s so pretty and so soft.  Like lace.

photos: Gia Canali

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{Click any image to take a closer look!}

♥

photos: Gia Canali

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Yesterday, I visited Atelier Des Modistes in San Francisco.   I wanted to meet Suzanne Hanley, the designer behind two of my favorite brides’s dresses and to see the beautiful shop where she and her crew design and make the gowns.  We had fun talking shop and while I sat there, chatting, I wondered yet again why, even though I had my dress made for me, I never went dress shopping when I was engaged.  Sigh.  Anyway.  Suzanne’s shop is certainly the best of both worlds (lots to try on and lots to dream up out of your own imagination).  I dearly hope there’s a big return to handmade in 2010.  What better than a one-of-a-kind dress designed and sewn just for you?

A girl can’t carry all her gear all the time, so I’m sharing photos from my iPhone.*  Below: store front sign, capelet (yes, please!), cards, behind the scenes with the best inspiration wall ever, super sewing machine, lace and ruffles galore, wedding gowns and polaroids (two of my favorite things, you know), and more images of the lovely dress-in-the-window (may some lucky bride swoon over it!).

photos: Gia Canali, via her iPhone.

*Yes, indeed, we photographers have just as much fun as everybody else with our cell phone cameras.

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