Archive for the ‘Weddings’ Category

Chantal and Benoit. Semi-Vietnamese Wedding!

August 14th, 2012

I woke up at 6:30AM, got dressed in 15 minutes. Random thought about how wedding photographers are the first ones dressed up for the day. Coffee. Final weather check. No rain. NO RAIN! A few days before they were announcing 100% chance rain. I guess my streak still continues. I arrive at Chantal’s place, she’s [...]

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I woke up at 6:30AM, got dressed in 15 minutes. Random thought about how wedding photographers are the first ones dressed up for the day. Coffee. Final weather check. No rain. NO RAIN! A few days before they were announcing 100% chance rain. I guess my streak still continues. :D

I arrive at Chantal’s place, she’s getting her make-up done (by my cousin Han!). The flower girl is sitting quietly beside her, mesmerized by the make-up process. Big windows, tons of soft natural light in the room, everything is calm. Fast forward a few minutes, the chaotic nature of weddings starts kicking in gradually. Chantal is late for her appointment at the hair salon and rushes out of the house, flower girl grabs an eye liner and draws all over her face, and suddenly I’m in this room holding a dress in each hand with Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time blasting from the radio.


About 2 hours later, we’re back at the house, ready for the Vietnamese ceremony. The groom arrives at the house with gifts and is welcomed by the bride’s family. And by family I mean Vietnamese family, so that’s 5000 people waiting at the door for him.

The ceremony starts with the father of the bride lighting up incense sticks and mistakenly starting the ceremony with: “Today is the wedding day of Benoit and Tina.” (That’s his other daughter’s name.) I love the shot of his reaction after he realized his mistake.

 

Wardrobe change!


We went to Fort Chambly, a beautiful national historic site. The sun was out blazing with no clouds to diffuse the harsh light, so I had to find pockets of shade like these pictures. Or angle my subjects to be side lit, between myself and the sun.

If I do use the hard light, I usually try to zoom out slightly and grab more of an environmental portrait with more context and less focus on the faces, kinda like this.

Fast forward a few hours, I’m setting up my lights in the reception room in Hotel Mortagne. The DJ and a waiter tell me that my lights are in their way in a very rude way (p.s. it wasn’t REALLY in their way. I just get a lot that people talking down on me, maybe I look too young or something). My reply is always a polite reply said in the nicest way possible to make them realize they were being super rude. Then they feel bad. Hehe.

Okay anyway, it was a fun wedding reception, they had everyone on the dance floor at all times, the first dance was really cool, and it’s the first time I see a piñata at a wedding so some points there.

Congrats again to Chantal and Benoit!

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Kamalina and Steve.

December 22nd, 2011

Finally done with finals! And close-ish to being done with Christmas shopping too. And of course because of exams I’m way overdue for a blog post. So here’s a wedding I second-shot with Vadim several months ago. I was really excited since this was the first Hindu ceremony I got to photograph. We actually received [...]
 

Finally done with finals! :D
And close-ish to being done with Christmas shopping too.
And of course because of exams I’m way overdue for a blog post.

So here’s a wedding I second-shot with Vadim several months ago. I was really excited since this was the first Hindu ceremony I got to photograph. We actually received a PDF file with all the detailed steps of the ceremony (I had to google like half of the terms on that). Unlike weddings in churches with a priest, the bride and the groom, there was sometimes up to 8 people surrounding Kamalina and Steve, making it challenging to photograph them through the chaos. You basically pre-focus, wait for an opening and shoot as soon as you get an opportunity. I kinda felt like a sniper.

So it was a big, fun, colourful wedding at the Centre des Sciences in Old Port. But the highlight for me was working with Ioan Films, the best videographers I’ve worked alongside during a wedding. Robert, Cristina, Mihai and Tudor were friendly, professional and I could tell even before seeing the final result that they were producing high-quality work. (Although I may be biased because they’re Romanian. Cristina also taught me a few Romanian things to say to Claudia’s mom.)

Enjoy the pictures!








I’ll end this post by wishing everyone happy holidays. Take lots of pictures and take time to relax!

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Sue & Arif. My first wedding ceremony in a mosque.

November 14th, 2011

Meet Sue & Arif, my sister’s high school friends and newlyweds. For the first time, I had a second shooter with me, my sister Tina. Since she already knew the bride and groom, and this wedding required both a male and female photographer (you’ll see why), she was the perfect choice for a second shooter [...]
 


Meet Sue & Arif, my sister’s high school friends and newlyweds. For the first time, I had a second shooter with me, my sister Tina. Since she already knew the bride and groom, and this wedding required both a male and female photographer (you’ll see why), she was the perfect choice for a second shooter in at the wedding.

2-days before the wedding, I photographed Arif’s Pithi ceremony, which is a pre-wedding Indian tradition. It basically involved Arif being bombarded with ketchup, flour, eggs, maple syrup, etc. Everyone had a great time. Hopefully he wasn’t too traumatized.

So on the wedding day, I started off at Arif’s house and I got to eat samosas. Perfect way to start a 13-hour shift. :D We then moved to the mosque where wedding ceremony took place. Shoes off! This was my first muslim wedding, so all the traditions and ceremonies were completely new to me. With men and women in separate rooms, I had absolutely no idea what went on in the other room until I uploaded my sister’s pics.

By Tina Tran!

By Tina Tran!

By Tina Tran!

 

Then, off to Old Port! They must’ve felt like celebrities because EVERYONE was staring. Even the horses.

Best wishes to Sue & Arif, and thank you for the great day!

 

 

 

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Mélanie & Nic. Wedding in Quebec City!

August 30th, 2011

I met Mélanie and Nic through my friend Vanessa when they were looking for a wedding photographer. A few months and a three-hour drive later, there I was at the amazing Manoir du Lac Delage near downtown Quebec City. Nice chalet-style hotel. Huge lake. Basketball and beach volleyball courts. Terasses, big fields, several reception rooms, [...]

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I met Mélanie and Nic through my friend Vanessa when they were looking for a wedding photographer. A few months and a three-hour drive later, there I was at the amazing Manoir du Lac Delage near downtown Quebec City. Nice chalet-style hotel. Huge lake. Basketball and beach volleyball courts. Terasses, big fields, several reception rooms, etc. No wonder it’s a popular destination for weddings. There was a total of 5 weddings the same day!

As the other weddings were going on, Mélanie and Nic were preparing for their big day. As usual, the bride’s preparation room was blasting music and hair dryers, whereas the groom’s room was much more relaxed and mellow. Everything was going smoothly until about an hour before walking down the aisle, we get the message that the wedding ceremony set up has changed because of the announced thunderstorms. Uh oh. Big dark menacing clouds were lurking over the manoir.

Thoughts started running through my head. I hope Mélanie isn’t freaking out. Is the Nikon D7000 weather-sealed? I hope I don’t toast camera gear in the rain. Wouldn’t the pictures kinda look cool? What if there’s lightning during the first kiss. That’s kinda cool. Is my hair gonna get ruined? Why aren’t you on my side today Mother Nature?  Maybe this last thought helped, because everything cleared out by the time we went out, and we didn’t get a single raindrop *cue applause*. Yay.

P.S. Food was great. I ate stuff I couldn’t even name.

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Back with Vadim

August 17th, 2011

I got to work with Vadim again a few weeks ago at this big wedding at the Basilique Notre-Dame. It felt like a celebrity wedding or something since you had (random) people lining up like crazy just to see the bride walk from the car to the church. And it was even crazier after the [...]

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I got to work with Vadim again a few weeks ago at this big wedding at the Basilique Notre-Dame. It felt like a celebrity wedding or something since you had (random) people lining up like crazy just to see the bride walk from the car to the church.

And it was even crazier after the ceremony, as I was taking pictures of the bride & groom walking out, I had hundreds of people around me REALLY REALLY trying HARD to photograph them. There were cameras all around my face fighting for position. It was kinda like the MSTRKRFT mosh pit at Osheaga. And keep in mind that these are random people in the street trying to photograph a bride they don’t even know.

So I’ve seen rice being thrown at newlywed couples before, like in Juliane & Ghyslain’s wedding I photographed a few weeks ago. But this was the first time I saw PENNIES being thrown at them. A good luck thing maybe?

We then went to photograph them around Old Port Montreal, where every bride & groom on the planet gets photographed. Fun as usual.

Okay so I’m ending this post with super unrelated stuff. I’m finally getting Internet tomorrow. I’ve been living without it for a few months now and I will finally be connected once again. Yay. I swear, living without Internet these days is like disappearing from the face of Earth. Anyway, since I won’t have to go to cafes or school to get access to the interwebs, I’ll get more blogging done. Next post is going to be the ATP Field Guide #2 so stay tuned!

P.S. This flower girl was super cute.

 

Donc voilà pour ceux qui ne savent pas j’ai travaillé l’année dernière avec Vadim Daniel, un autre photographe de mariage à Montréal, et il m’a finalement contacté pour travailler avec lui de nouveau. On aura quelques mariages jusqu’au mois d’octobre je crois. Et avec mariages et mes field trips pour mes cours de bio, j’aurai à peine le temps pour l’école.

Heyyy c’est l’école bientôt. J’ai vraiment hâte. Est-ce que c’est triste? J’ai même hâte aux cours d’ornithologie que j’aurai à SEPT HEURES DU MATIN. Je sais toujours pas comment je vais faire pour me réveiller. Même avec 2 alarmes je passe à travers. J’ai toujours voulu pouvoir prendre une année off, et dormir non-stop. Un peu comme une hibernation. Et ensuite pouvoir rester réveillé pendant quelques années sans être fatigué. Ok, il est 2AM maintenant, ça parait que je suis fatigué.  Byebye, bonne nuit.

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Juliane & Ghyslain. An orange-themed wedding.

July 19th, 2011

Last Friday I got to photograph a wedding where everything was orange, from the boutonnières, corsages and bouquet to the groomsmen’s ties and even decorations on tables (which included goldfish, see below). The wedding was in the Jean-Drapeau park and the reception in the Pavillon du Canada. Outdoors wedding photography often means that I have [...]

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Last Friday I got to photograph a wedding where everything was orange, from the boutonnières, corsages and bouquet to the groomsmen’s ties and even decorations on tables (which included goldfish, see below).

The wedding was in the Jean-Drapeau park and the reception in the Pavillon du Canada. Outdoors wedding photography often means that I have to do the best with the light that’s given to me. And on a bright sunny July cloudless day, it meant having to deal with harsh direct overhead sunlight. Uh oh. This is probably the worst case scenario for a photographer. Because it means dappled light through the leaves of trees creating patches of bright light and high contrast, and “raccoon eyes” which is what happens when the sun from above creates dark shadows around the eyes. Long have I feared this creature called harsh sunlight, but I no longer do. Maybe a little.

 

There’s a way to work with hard light: make sure that #1) your subject is backlit and that #2) your background is darker and is not receiving direct light. If you manage to achieve #1), the lighting on your subject’s face will remain even and soft since they aren’t getting direct sunlight. If you achieve #2), the backlight will create a nice rimlight around them that will make them glow against the dark background. You can see what I’m talking about in this picture:

And as a side note: you know when it rains and you’re trying to take a picture of the rain and then no rain shows up at all in the photo? It always used to happen to me. And I kept thinking “what a stupid camera”. If you want to see rain or snowflakes or rice like in this case, you need the same thing: #1) backlight and #2) a dark background.

 

Now, about the wedding itself. There was a funny game the bride and groom played, to determine who would the boss of the relationship for the next 25 years. As soon as the DJ cued the music, Juliane had to go around the room and kiss all men, and the Ghyslain had to do the same with all women in the room, and the first one back sitting down would win. But as a guest if you were a woman on Juliane’s side, you were able to run away as Ghyslain arrived to kiss you to delay him. After a few minutes of people running around in the room Juliane won. Something new in every wedding! It’s also the first time where the cake was an ice cream cake. I’m hungry now.

 

Guess what people are doing here:

Enjoy the rest of the pictures!

Juliane et Ghyslain sont deux St-Lambertois qui allaient à Notre-Dame de Lourdes, une des écoles secondaires rivales à mon Collège Durocher. Pff, nos uniformes d’école étaient meilleurs! Mais bien sûr, cette ancienne rivalité ne m’a pas empêché de photographier leur mariage. :)

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Lise & Kevin. A wedding I initially refused to shoot.

July 13th, 2011

I got contacted a bit over a year ago by Lise, the older sister of Marc, a biology friend at McGill. She mentionned the wedding and everything and asked me to shoot it. And I said no. NO. Why, you might ask? Here’s what I wrote to Lise over a year ago: First off, congratulations! [...]

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I got contacted a bit over a year ago by Lise, the older sister of Marc, a biology friend at McGill. She mentionned the wedding and everything and asked me to shoot it. And I said no. NO.

Why, you might ask?

Here’s what I wrote to Lise over a year ago:

First off, congratulations! That’s awesomee

If the wedding was today, I would probably not do it (I’ve declined a few times already). There are so many stories on the internet of people asking friends or family to shoot weddings for them instead of hiring a professional photographer and a lot of stories end in horror and I really wouldn’t want to bring that on you hahaa.

Working in random photo sessions is fine but working in a wedding in a high-pressure situation where you really only have once chance to get the shots is completely different and that’s the difference between an amateur like me and a professional photographer (who would have consistent results over and over).

It’s actually considered really unethical if a photographer like me accepts a wedding job because it’s a huge day for you and for someone non-professional like me taking the job would be risking a lot! Professionals have back-up equipment for EVERYTHING and the highest quality lenses (2K$ and+ for those lenses, ouch).

Sorry if this sounds depressing! hahaha but I really don’t want you to regret it and you won’t if you invest in a legit wedding photographer.

At that time I hadn’t shot any weddings, FELT and WAS probably unqualified, and didn’t have adequate camera gear. So I did the right thing and refused to do the wedding. Lise thanked me for my honesty. Wedding photography is extremely high-pressure (at least for me), and you cannot afford to miss crucial moments. Entrance, vows, signing, rings, kiss, etc. You always need to know where to be.

“Excuse me, could the bride and groom just do the first kiss again please? I didn’t get the shot.” No no no.

And then there’s the whole issue of camera gear. Of course “it’s the photographer, not the camera”. But you need backup gear in wedding photography. And in any event photography for that matter.

So that’s when I started working with Vadim Daniel, another Montreal-based wedding photographer, to get experience and actually know what it feels to shoot a wedding. Eventually I recontacted Lise and told her that I had shot several weddings, showed her my work and asked if she felt I would be the right photographer for her wedding. I was lucky she still wanted me as her wedding photographer!

I’m not claiming that I’ve become this expert wedding photographer or anything. Far from it. There surely are photographers who are better than me. And when I meet a couple to discuss a wedding I don’t pretend to be something I’m not. I’m 22 years old. Of course I haven’t had as much years of experience as other veteran wedding photographers. I show the work I’ve done, tell them how much experience I’ve had, and let them decide. I think it’s important for wedding photographers to let their clients know exactly who they are booking to photograph their wedding.

Ok so let’s talk about fun stuff now! So the wedding was awesome. And Lise and Kevin are awesome. Favorite wedding dress I’ve seen so far. The venue was in Rigaud at the Vieux Moulin. Beautiful! The owner Doug was helpful to show me good locations to shoot around, but really, you could have shot anywhere and the scenery was always amazing.

Everyone was so touched by their (unplanned matching) vows and the amazing speeches (notably Marc’s). First time I see this at a wedding and it’s really cool: each guest had an numbered envelope with a piece of paper for them to write a message. The number represented the anniversary year where Lise and Kevin would open the letter. So every year on their anniversary, they will open a letter and get a message from their wedding day. So cool. The food was delicious. Filet mignon. Apparently the hors d’oeuvres were also amazing but I was too busy/distracted to taste them as they were handfed to me by my cousin Amanda (who was also there as a guest). Also, I had forgotten about the comfort I get when they serve the coffee towards the end of the wedding. Oh yeah. Probably my funnest wedding yet!

La moitié de la famille de Lise est française, il fallait que j’ajoute au moins un petit paragraphe ici, bien sûr! Deux profs, Lise et Kevin, se marient! Et Kevin est un prof de bio en plus. Pour une journée ou il était censé avoir des orages, ça a tombé vraiment bien. Je savais que Mère Nature est de mon bord.

Je commence à reconsider mon “uniforme de travail”. Pendant l’été, photographier des mariages à l’extérieur avec un uniforme complètement noir (+cheveux noirs) est la meilleure façon de se faire cuire par le soleil. Donc quoi porter? Peut-être un maillot G-String comme Borat? Je vous laisserai savoir. Byebye!

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