Tim’s Adventures
Ceremony Location: Fossile Trace Golf Club, Denver, Colorado
Catering: Three Tomatoes Steak House and Club
David and Jessica’s Denver, Colorado Wedding was really amazing. The weather cooperated to create the perfect combination of moody skies and perfect light. Everything about the wedding was amazing, and I was so fortunate to have the chance to photograph it.
To see more photos of this wedding, visit www.pictage.com/1417587
Technical Images
90% of my wedding images don’t use a lot of specialty equipment. The vast majority of images are capture with nothing more than the camera and the right choice of lens. The image at the right is one of the exceptions. Even though I don’t shoot with a lot of extra gear, I always bring at least a couple of flashes along with some Pocketwizard radio transmitters just in case the need arises.
It started snowing after dinner at this March wedding. I knew the slow falling large flakes could potentially make a good photo. So I took out the flash and attached it to one of the radio receivers. Carin took the flash behind the couple, and after a couple of tries we ended up with this image. The single flash not only back lit the couple but also lit up the snow around them to create a really unusual image.
Thanks to you, Timothy Faust Photography has won the 2013 WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Award, but we still need even more reviews. On June 15th, we will randomly draw a name from anyone that has reviewed us int he last year to win a 16X24 Bamboo print.
About the New Bamboo Prints
Our latest product is the eco friendly bamboo print. Your image is printed directly onto bamboo with 1/4-inch backing. Bamboo is an eco-friendly, renewable resource that provides a subtle but distinctive texture and warmth to your image. As with all fine art prints, your image is printed with archival quality water-based inks. The bamboo is treated with a proprietary receiving layer to further ensure that vibrancy and color do not fade with time.
The finished products arrives to you with all the hardware needed to hang on your wall right out of the packaging. It is available in sizes from 12X18 all the way to 40X60 inches.
Carin and I are always thinking about wedding photography. Often times we get to travel to a new place for the purpose of photographing a destination wedding. Sometimes we are just travelling for fun. Last month, we visited several Caribbean Islands, including Puerto Rico. We weren’t there for a wedding, but we still wanted to do a wedding themed photo shoot, so we brought our camera gear and a dress with us and hired a model in San Juan to try out some ideas.
Model shoots can be pretty complicated from a logistical standpoint. Logistically it is every bit as complicated as photographing a destination wedding, and in some ways more so. We still have all the normal details such as scouting locations, arranging transportation and lodging, and travelling internationally with thousands of dollars worth of gear. But on a model shoot we have the added tasks of arranging for the models, stylists, etc…
When photographing a wedding, we remember that we work for the people in the photos. That means we work around their schedule and needs, and we work to create the type of images the client wants. An actual wedding is no place to be experimenting with new ideas and concepts. A model shoot is the exact opposite. We get to pick the best time of day for a particular location, and the model works for us. So unlike an actual wedding there is no pressure to create something for the client. That allows us to take bigger risks and experiment with concepts that may or may not work.
I think model shoots are one of the best tools a wedding photographer has to maintaining creativity. Photographers that are only photographing at weddings they are hired to photograph, run the risk of disappointing clients with their experimental work which may not be expected, or worse, getting into a rut of “safe shots” that limit creativity.
Read more about my philosophy on model photography in this post:
http://www.timothyfaust.com/model-photography/
Location: Breckenridge, Colorado
Venue and Catering: High Country Lodge
I love Breckenridge in April. April offers the best of both worlds; warmer spring days and still plenty of snow for skiing. Because the weather in Breckenridge this time of year can easily go from a 60 degree day to a winter snow storm in the blink of an eye, photographing can be challenging.
Kristin and Mike’s wedding was an intimate affair filled with family and close friends. In many ways, these are my favorite weddings to photograph because I love photographing the closeness of the guests. Four generations of family attended this wedding, and one of the highlights for me was photographing the children with their great grandparents.
It is easy as a photographer to get lost in the process of photography and forget what really matters when it comes to the wedding images. At the typical wedding we bring assistants, second photographers, and tens of thousands of dollars in cameras and lenses in order to create the perfect image. I do believe in creating incredible artistic images that make people look their best; however, just creating beautiful images is not enough.
My goal is to also make images that are absolutely timeless. For that I create images that show genuine emotion from the day. I can’t imagine a couple that will look back at their album in 20 or 30 years and say, “Wow, wasn’t the lighting great in these photos?” I try to create images that will allow couples to look back in 20 years and relive personal emotions and memories of loved ones.
The following are some of my favorite images of timeless moments during weddings. In most of these the subjects were not even aware that a camera was there. The only set up that was done on any of these was to create situations that allow true emotion and interaction to happen.
Upset Flower Girl
One of the main reasons I love photographing with two photographers is for photos like this. At this wedding my assistant, Nate, was working creating formal portraits with some of the family members. With many studios, the primary photographer handles the formal portraits while the assistant photographs candids and details, but that isn’t how I like to work.
These days I mostly photograph with my wife, Carin. She will handle many of the group formals. Her excellent attention to detail makes her well suited for those types of images. While she is doing that, I am free to be on the look out for moments like the one in this image. This was not a complicated image. It was just a matter of having an assistant photographing the formals that left me free to look around for a special moment.
No Perfect Pictures
Photographer, Joe Buissink, once said to me, “There are no perfect pictures, only perfect moments.” Photographers can really get lost in a statement like that. When I first heard him say it, I had only photographed a handful of weddings. I thought that it was my job to create moments. However, after I had photographed a hundred or more weddings, I realized that was not the case at all. Perfect moments are all around us, and nowhere more than at a wedding.
This image is a prime example. It was a perfect moment that I was able to photograph before she became aware that I was there. The result was an image that was not only one of the client’s favorite images from the day, it was also one of mine, and won numerous awards, including an Accolade of Excellence from the WPPI International Print competition.
Anatomy of an Image
I decided to start writing a serious of blog entries describing the thought process of what goes into a single image from a wedding shoot. I want readers to understand where I was coming from creatively and what went into the image technically. My goal is to explain an image every few weeks and hopefully, other photographers will pick up some unusual concepts and techniques, and potential wedding clients can see that just because an image is posed does not mean it has to be boring.
Bride and Groom’s new Adventure
All to often when people think of a posed wedding photo, they imagine the couple, looking directly at the camera with cheesy forced smiles. That is not how I like to photograph weddings. I’d say 80% of the images I take are of people candidly interacting that are barely aware of my presence. However, when it comes time to do the posed portraits, I want to create something interesting. First and foremost, I want to make an image that is visibly appealing to me. Next, I want to create something that really fits the personality of the couple and will be something they will cherish. Lastly, I want to do something new. If not new for wedding photography in general, at least something new for me.
Karen and Cliff got married a few hours east of Seattle, Washington in the town of Leavenworth. Driving out their ceremony location, I passed these tracks, and my wife, Carin, and I both instantly knew there was some visual appeal to this spot. As soon as I saw it, I knew certain things I wanted to do. First, I wanted to use the tracks as leading lines to the couple. Second, I knew the image would be in black and white because of all the texture it contained. I also knew that if I shot this just after noon, which supposedly is a bad time for lighting, that I could accentuate the couple in their white clothing, while the trees in the background would be in their own shadow since the sun was directly behind them. From a composition standpoint, I looked for a spot where the tracks curved. This allowed the space between them to close rather than going on forever into the distance.
Those were my thoughts based on the technical attributes I wanted the image to have. From the couple standpoint, I knew they were adventurers. In fact, I had the pleasure of joining them on a climbing expedition on Mount Rainier the previous summer. I thought that rather than having them just stand on the tracks, having them hold hands and walk into the distance would symbolize the new adventure that their lives would be taking together.
The result is that although everything about this image was planned, set up, and posed, it still retains the feeling of adventure I hoped to capture.
Current exhibition will be on display through mid summer.
Visit Sevens Restaurant at the bottom of the Independence Superchair this winter and spring to see Timothy’s landscape print exhibition. There will be several never before seen prints on display as well as old favorites. The exhibition will feature new images from Colorado, California, Utah, and Arizona. Sevens restaurant is located in the Grand Lodge at Peak Seven.
For more information and reservations visit the website.
Breckenridge, Colorado
