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Articles Tagged with: couple

Mira & Brian Are Having A Baby

Pinterest is a great thing. You can find inspiring photography in just about any practice of the craft. Much like YouTube is for video, you can chase an idea and end up in unexpected places along the way, sometimes going off in a completely different direction.

It’s also a problem. You start to see patterns in a derivative way. A search for maternity photography will garner a plethora of similar results. Some expertly executed mixed in with a bunch of terribly imitated images. After a few minutes, everything seems so similar. Photography really is an insestuous form of art – But I guess every form of art suffers from this. It just seems that photography is more readily copied than any other.

So when Brian & Mira announced they were having a baby (and by announced, I mean I accidentally figured it out, but that’s a story for another time), I was excited to try a different approach to maternity photography.

I wanted to put the couple in an environment that captures who they are and what they represent at this time in their lives. They are both very outdoorsy people, and Mira works a lot with Charleston Area Therapeutic Riding, a horse farm that specializes in improving the lives of children and adults with disabilities. What a perfect environment for these two!

They also recently celebrated a non-traditional baby shower under a tree in Hampton Park. No silly “Guess what’s in the diaper” games going on, just a nice picnic in the park for family and friends to come together and show the new parents-to-be some support.

Earlier in the summer, I snapped this shot of Mira at Folly Beach during the 4th of July celebration. It captures her just as she started to become a little more obvious with her pregnant state:

We’re super excited to welcome “Baby X” into the world with them, I just hope they hurry up and pick a name so we don’t have to keep calling it “it” 🙂

Fran & Coz

Coz contacted me a while back to schedule a “top secret” mission. I was to shoot his proposal to his girlfriend Fran.

As I waited in White Point Garden, which is the park along the battery in downtown Charleston, I was surrounded by bus loads of children. A bald guy with a goat tee in his mid 30’s hanging around a park alone with a camera. I was sure the cops were going to be called. Luckily, the kids left before my couple arrived (I wonder if they were just creeped out and it was more of an escape).

The glow and energy of what transpired was infectious. They really lifted my day up with their happiness. We walked around the battery afterwards and took some engagement portraits as well.

In the short time I spent with them, I could tell they were going to be a happy couple for many years to come. Congratulations Fran & Coz, I hope you two look back on these photos in 50 years and remember the day you got engaged. Don’t forget that bald guy with a ridiculously long goat tee who scared off some school children to capture these memories 😉

Kara & Bryan

I just wanted to share a couple of my favorite shots from a recent engagement shoot I did in Charleston, SC.

We managed to get quite a few looks in two locations, the Charleston Waterfront Park and then sunset shots such as the one below at Mount Pleasant’s Waterfront Park! What can I say, I like the waterfront parks 😉

The couple was great and I hope they have an awesome life together!

Emily & Joe

Last month I shot a really cool wedding on Folly Beach in South Carolina. The couple was amazing as they were willing to do just about anything – they truly had fun at their wedding and it shows in their pictures. Lets be honest, how many people have a wedding party photo like this?

I did do a lot of more formal portraits such as this (which is probably one of my favorite shots of the day because of that amazing southern sunset):

But I’m sure a shot like this will make them smile pretty wide when they’re old and gray:

Joe & Emily really weren’t your traditional couple, which is a perfect fit for me since I’m not a traditional photographer! I did make sure to cover the basics of wedding photography though, such as capturing the elements of an American wedding.

Here’s the bride getting prepared:

And the first look:

The respective wedding party portraits:

The ceremony:

And the first kiss:

The signing:

And then of course, everybody’s favorite part of the wedding, the reception. Here are some elements of their tables:

The first dance:

I did grab the newlyweds to do some sunset portraits during the reception. Joe didn’t know that he was going to be my movable sandbag for a few shots:

After the sun went down, they partied:

And Joe found the garter and Emily fed him some cake:

I can honestly say that with couples as fun to shoot as this, wedding photography can be a blast. I consider myself lucky to have been their photographer for their special day.

Evans Rehearsal Dinner

I had the pleasure of shooting a wonderful couple’s wedding rehearsal dinner at Waters Edge at Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant, SC this weekend.

Beau and Kathryn Evans are two beautiful people whose awesome mother, Donna Evans hired me to shoot this event for their family.

I wanted to share with you some of my favorite pics from the evening. We had a great location at a great time of day with perfect weather – You couldn’t ask for a better combination!

There was music, shagging, and shucking, oh my!

The more events I photograph, the more I realize how important it is to know your camera inside and out. I can’t tell you how often I double-check my camera and almost every time I do I find that a crucial setting has been changed, a button mashed, or dial spun that would have otherwise ruined or missed a moment. I don’t know how many times I would find myself chimping the LCD screen in the past – after a number of phantom setting changes, I do get real paranoid that I’m blowing the shots! The more I do this though, the less I need to check my screen because I accept that while I’m communicating with subjects, and squeezing through crowded bars, my camera is busy taking on a life of its own, so I check my settings before I press the shutter.

It’s also handy to keep a mental baseline of settings for each environment you shoot in. That way you can quickly reset the camera to that baseline and work up from there. I still find shooting people at sunset is the hardest time because the light changes so drastically with every passing second. Event photography is very fast-paced, so any method you employ that will gain you precious seconds looking through the viewfinder is the difference between getting a great moment or just missing it.