And I have a feeling the folks in the rest of the country, who are currently enjoying an arctic blast, wouldn’t mind a Caribbean beach vacation themselves.
photo: Gia Canali
Tag Archive for 'toy camera'
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Remember these guys? This was their engagement photo, taken on a sunny afternoon at California Adventure.
I hope all of you have something exhilarating planned for the weekend!
photo: Gia Canali
In weddings, the imperfections are part of what makes everything so real and vibrant, so personal, so particularly you. The same could be said of wedding photos. We like to give our clients lots of “perfect” pictures. But these sort of messy, imperfect ones always melt me, which is why I will continue to bring my crappy toy cameras with me everywhere. Even to “work.” Even when I am frustrated with their unsolvable probably-part-of-the-charm limitations.
Low-fi photos bear a keen link to memory. Other photos, the refined ones, show the wedding more perfectly than we can remember. Lenses on fancy cameras are more perfect than the human eye … and the human memory. But not these.
(p.s. This couple fantasized about all their guests shooting the wedding on their iPhones with Hipstamatic. I think that would have been fantastic: like cameras-on-the-reception-tables v 2.0).
photo: Gia Canali
Okay: I’m being (more than) a bit flowery, but I think it’s a valid point. Light is our medium.
Congratulations, Amy & Osamu!
photo: Gia Canali
I love the sweetness of Brandon & Serra’s wedding. Everything, everything was fashioned to be personal, to be romantic, to be sweet and meaningful. And the results were just about perfect. Plus, this was one of the thriftiest and most resourceful wedding planning crews I’ve encountered. Brandon and his twin brother, Brian, are the photographers behind Twin Lens Life. And Serra is a maven of vintage fashion, and all-things-vintage, come to think of it. Everything from fashion to decor was handmade or scored from vintage stores and thrift shops around Los Angeles.
Below: a few photographs of Serra & Brandon getting ready. I took just a moment right before the ceremony to get a couple photographs on my 4×5 camera.
{click any image for a closer look}
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Below: some of the ceremony details. Click any image to enlarge. Brandon & Brian made the wooden signs (that fancy W and the plumage!). I love the lace draped tree. And the just-gathered feelings of the bouquets and arrangements. Florals by Amanda Claverie, Rosebud Floral Design.
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Above: one of the zillion polaroids from Brandon & Serra’s wedding. Below: This ceremony was just about perfect (and complete with a rooster strolling through, if you look closely!).
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After the ceremony, while we took group photos and photos of Brandon & Serra, the guests entertained themselves with games and tea. This is handy tip to steal: have something fun for your guests to do while you do your formal photographs. This is especially important if you plan not to see each other (and therefore not do any of the group photos before your ceremony).
It was hard to get Brandon’s twin brother, Brian, to hold still for a photo during cocktail hour. Since the boys are also wedding photographers, Brian made the rounds during cocktail hour getting a Polaroid—er, Fuji instant print—of each and every guest for the escort cards / guest book. They blogged {here} and {here} over on their blog, Twin Lens Life, about this project, which I think would be fantastic at any small wedding. Not exactly diy if you’re not a pro, but definitely handmade and one of a kind. I’m looking forward to seeing—and doing!—more of these unique one of a kind projects at weddings, which seem to be gaining in popularity.
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Everything about this wedding was so romantically-styled, down to the tiniest detail. There were piles of old books, and gatherings of baby’s breath, an old typewriter, candles, vases of a few blooms, tiny ceramic birds. The table was like a tableau. But my favorite little details, besides the “tree” with the Polaroids that Serra and Brandon had taken together over the course of their relationship (pictured below), were their love birds, Frankie and Allie.
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A few more quiet moments before the end of the day:
We had so much fun rotating through our (and Brandon & Brian’s!) collection of vintage film cameras, toy cameras, instant film cameras, et cetera. I loved getting to share in the absolute joy of shooting along side other lovers-of-photography (their crafty guests were snapping as many photos as I was, it seemed!). Congratulations, Brandon & Serra! Thanks for sharing! May your years ahead be happy and filled with lots of Polaroids! This wedding is also being featured {here} over on Snippet & Ink today!
the end!
photographs: Gia Canali, venue: Heritage Square Museum, LA; florals: Amanda Claverie, Rosebud Floral Design; super 8mm wedding film: Tim Neilsen, Flicker Films, shown {here}; hair, Louis Santelices; pretty much everything else: handmade, thrift store or vintage shop finds.
Negar and Peter’s wedding was fantastically formal, glamorous, and richly textured in a way that very few weddings here in California ever are. If I could think of one phrase to describe this wedding, it would definitely be, dressed to the nines. Of course, that phrase makes a lot of sense when a fashion stylist weds a writer.
{click any image to enlarge}
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Above: Tiny Pine Press designed and handmade these formal letterpress wedding invitations for Negar & Peter. I love how they look like they might have come out of grandma’s wedding album … or an F Scott Fitzgerald novel. They make me hope for a return to classical wedding design.
Negar & Peter had a traditional Persian ceremony, fireside, with a beautifully decorated sofreh. In Persian ceremonies, I love when all the girls (sisters, friends, mothers, aunts, etc.) get up and sprinkle the couple with sugar flakes. What wedding couldn’t use a little sweetness like that?
Negar called on her gifted pals, Joseph Free and David Rogers, who are usually busy designing events for Vogue and fashion designers, to design the florals and decor for her wedding. Inspired by their handiwork, and not surprisingly, this is the wedding that made me rethink baby’s breath. Heaps of lacy-soft baby’s breath and the warm glow of candlelight, it turns out, are pure magic. Here are a few of the intricate and particularly stellar details:
Even the wedding’s tiniest guests were dressed up and ready to party:
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We were honored to have this wedding featured in C Magazine’s C Weddings this April and are doubly thrilled that it’s being shown off on Style Me Pretty {here} today as well.
photographs: Gia Canali; venue, The California Club; invitations: Jennifer Parsons, Tiny Pine Press; floral design: Joseph Free; event decor: David Rogers; gown: Monique Lhuillier; bride’s jewels, vintage Neil Lane; shoes, Valentino
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
