Asley and Spence's Wedding Album

Here's a quick video I did of Ashley and Spence's wedding album. The album is planned to be a traditional 10" square design, resulting in 20x10 2-page spreads. This is a flush-mount design, meaning that the pages are printed as composite images, rather than printed individually and matted into an album. The look is more contemporary - like a magazine spread. This is the first draft of the Album. Ashley and Spence were given a high resolution electronic version of the album in Adobe Acrobat for review, but the resulting file, at 15 MB, is too large to share with family and friends, so I created this video here, and a higher resolution HD version published on YouTube that you can also view by clicking here.

The ceremony was held at The Church of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Jacksonville, with the reception held at the Flemming Island Country Club. Both were simply wonderful venues, and I can't wait to photograph at either venue again. I just love the German stained glass at this church.

Music is "The Wedding March" performed by guitarist Michael Lancaster.

Church of the Immaculate Conception

This stunning panorama was taken during Ashley and Spence's wedding, and highlights the dramatic interior of this landmark church. I'm hoping this photo will be a 2-page spread in the couple's album. I'm seriously considering a canvas for myself to hang for my clients to see when they visit my residential studio.

The stained glass is German. During some recent renovations, the glass was cleaned and restored to it's original beauty. I fell in love with stained glass while on temporary assignment in Portugal and Spain, which gave me ample time to visit many churchs. Unlike here in the United States, churches in much of Europe stay open and are busy with tourist traffic all year round. This gave me a lot of opportunity to see a lot of very old churches.

This photo was taken from the balcony of the church. Father Murphy was very forgiving in allowing me nearly full access to the church during the ceremony.

The Rings

Another tradition in wedding photography is to photograph the rings, and many photographers study this very intently. By their very nature, jewelry tends to provide many reflections and spectral highlights that make them difficult to photograph. More than simply a "product shot," though, in wedding photography we must place the rings in some sort of context. I think these elements from Spence's uniform and the wedding invitation really put the rings in context for the day's event.



This is a standard that I've come to really like. If the light's just right, rings in the spine of a bible will form a shadow in the shape of a heart. Instead of a bible, I used a hymnal, since there was a dated entry that helps tie back to the wedding day itself.

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Immaculate Conception Church

Ashley and Spence were married on July 10th at the Immaculate Conception Church. The only clear view of this church is from immediately across the street, and my regular wide angle lens was not wide enough to capture this enormous, nearly cathedral size church. So I reverted to taking photographs in sections, and combining them into a mosaic, carefully splicing, adjusting perspective, and oh, yes, cloning out the homeless man perched on the steps.

Not quite sure yet how this photo will be featured in the album, but it will have to have some prominence. It was very important to Ashley and especially Spence's family, who attends this church regularly, that the wedding be held here.

Wait until you see the interior!

For more about the church and it's history, please visit The Immaculate Conception Catholic Church of Jacksonville web site.

The Wedding Dress

It's something of a tradition to photograph the wedding dress before the bride gets dressed. I hoped to reinforce this tradtion by capturing the image in black and white. The bride got ready in a small alcove beside the church foyer. Hanging the dress in the gate to the foyer allowed me to capture both the dress, and some details of the church.

Ashley and Spence's Wedding

Ashley and Spence were married last Friday, at Church of the Immaculate Conception in Jacksonville. I'm busy working through the photos, but Ashley was really looking forward to this photo being taken in front of the fountain in the church's courtyard.

I'll post more as I get some finished, so stay tuned!

Ashley and Spence Engagement part 1 of 5

Last weekend, we had a terrific time photographing Ashley and Spence for their engagement session. We got up real early and headed to the beach to catch the sunrise. It was about 60 degrees outside, with a stiff breeze that made it feel even colder. They must have thought I was nuts to ask them to roll up their pant legs and step in the water.

They were real troopers, though, and we got some terrific shots. I'll be sharing some of my favorites this week here on my blog.