Felton - Wandro Wedding

I was really happy when John and Tracey asked me to photograph their wedding.  I got the job because their wedding arranger, Gayla is a friend who was familiar with my work suggested me to the bride, Tracey.

I had a long email dialog with Tracey starting months before the wedding but, because of schedules we never actually met until the night of the rehearsal.  I was a little scared that some of my location shot ideas might be a little too out there for the couple but, as it turned out Tracey was very adventurous and was all for it.  She let me have pretty much complete artistic control which was a real pleasure.  Like most grooms, myself included, John was up for whatever would make his new wife happy.

I got lucky because they’re a very handsome couple which helps a lot for making nice photos.  John was really sensitive to the lights from the flash.  There were a lot of photos where I used the strobe and Tracey looked fine but John looked like he was in pain.  That’s because he was.  He rolled with the punches really well though.

When it came time for the location photos, one of the last things that we were going to try was to take a few shots near the Justin, Texas firehouse but, we would need permission to be near the equipment.   Tracey was absolutely awesome.  She turned on the girl charm and knocked on the door where the firemen were in her wedding dress, of course and said “I just got married.  Could we take some pictures on your fire truck?”  The guys absolutely melted.  She could have ANYTHING she wanted.

Thanks to Tracey, the picture I took of her and John laughing at something one of the firemen said is probably one of my proudest images.

This was my first professional wedding shoot.  As such, it was kind of a nail biter for me.  I’ve done photo shoots before but, they were never professional jobs.  Overall, I’m pretty happy with the way things turned out.  I probably took more images than I needed to.  I took about 1,000 in all.  I handed my second camera over to my daughter who was assisting me and she shot about 50 and her friend Alyssa who wanted to do it also took about another 150.   It’s so easy to just snap away, especially at the reception when you’re taking mostly candid shots because there is just so much opportunity for interesting photography.

My Nikon D-90 camera will also take video, though it’s primarily designed for still images.  I took some video snippets here and there.  If there is something that I need to work on it’s my video skills.  Because I was there to take stills, I would shoot what seemed like a reasonable amount of video then quickly switch over to stills again.  In my post-processing I discovered that what seemed like 30 seconds of video was really more like 6 or 7 seconds.  I also took some vertical video thinking that I would just rotate it in post.  No such luck.  I’m sure that there’s a way to do it but, I haven’t figured it out yet.  I’ll still deliver the amateurish video because I think that would be a nice unexpected bonus but, I will polish up my act in the future.

Anyway, cheers to Tracey and John!

All of the images and video can be found here.