Megumi and Clinton were married on the day everyone in Vancouver was waiting for… the Victoria Day long weekend Saturday when we cracked twenty degrees. It was a brilliant, warm day with live music wafting between Yaletown streets, cool beverages were extra refreshing, and perhaps even necessary. I started off with the girls getting ready in the OPUS hotel, which has fabulous deep red walls… it’s kind of the Vancouver take on W Hotels. From there we headed out to meet the men along Pacific avenue, and I tried to capture the heady brightness of the day. It’s a good thing, too, since for some reason we ended up shooting in the nether regions of the hotel after that, and Megumi actually asked me to try to make her look like a vampire. I think I did in one shot (not posted here but in the slideshow) – a very pretty, stylish little vampire. After portraits of the bride and groom we met the bridal party back at Goldfish, where they were relaxing with some aforementioned refreshing beverages; then we hopped in cabs and headed to the Buschlen Mowatt art gallery on Georgia Street where the wedding ceremony and reception were to be held. I was able to get some shots of Megumi, her girls and her dad relaxing in a back room full of canvases and sculptures before the walk down the aisle, which was nifty. I especially like the shot of Meg and her dad just about to walk down the aisle with the red sculpture and the metal walls behind them. Not your typical church foyer, although I like some of those too.

The first shot is of the beautiful invitation, folded on pearlescent paper, which was designed by Phil Yamada (website coming soon). Megumi’s dress was a custom Sandra Sung number. Her shoes were silver Miss Sixties, with an engagement ring printed on the bottom! Miss Sixty is not in the bridal industry, but hey, all the better! Since there was no garter toss, the bouquet toss was for single men. I can’t put a slideshow up for every wedding on the blog, but since the music choices for this one are so distinctive, I am posting one here. Clinton met Megumi in Japan when he was working as a DJ, hence the good tunes.

It was great to see that a lot of friends and relatives could make it all the way from Japan (and D.C.!) I’m so glad the weather held for them that weekend.

I enjoyed Erikka and AJ’s wedding for so many reasons: a) We had sunlight to work with. Remember those few days in May? Their wedding day was happily one of them. Other sources of photographic pleasure included very nice, chilled out, beautiful and funny people, the most entertaining bride’s maids possible (watch the slideshow), a friend’s fantastic apartment with black and white wall paper and a green couch. Honourable mention goes to the cherry blossoms, the marvelous reception venue, the Heritage Hall on Main St. with its vaulted blue ceilings and tall windows…oh, and some cool TV lighting later on in the evening. I have put together a little online slideshow set to their music for those who wish to see more. I must also mention Erikka’s bouquet, a hard-won bunch of lily of the valley. I don’t think I’d even seen the stuff before—the smell is incredible. A family friend did all of the beautiful flowers, and somehow secured these prized little blossoms.

You can see more pictures from this wedding in the online slideshow.

I first met Meaghan at her sister Erin’s wedding way back in April 2006, which meant I had the pleasure of seeing a lot of familiar faces at this wedding. Meaghan and Brock were actually married on the meteorologically whimsical day of 29th March, but they were my first couple to try out my new online proofing system, so this blog posting is not as painfully overdue as it otherwise would be. Now that term one of German is wrapping up, I’m feeling pretty on top of things and I’ve got Erikka & AJ’s wedding ready to be blogged in the next short while, as well as an e-session. Now for some of my inter-image commentary:

It was a cold dry day before the hail or frozen rain or whatever it was. Meaghan’s mum got out the Static-Guard and gave her dress a good spray. This brought back childhood memories for me of cold Albertan winters and my own mum’s efforts with Static-Guard, which has a very distinctive smell.

I loved Meaghan and Brock’s expressiveness during the ceremony.

The kiss

A pink dyptich. Cherry blossoms and a perfect curl.

An old-school moment in the cherries.

Awaiting the entrance.

A couple of dance pictures sans flash. When there is some video light or in this case DJ light, I can play around without the flash, which makes images with a very different quality.

I leave some weddings with the hope that the newly weds have children, and soon, and that there is hope for the planet. I know it sounds grand and romantic, but this was such a wedding. I am grateful that I came out of academic hibernation to witness their two wonderful ceremonies of Western and Korean tradition—and of course, their skillful dancing. ( ;

I started the day with the girls getting ready at the Terminal City Club, which is handily only several meters away from the Vancouver Club, where the ceremonies and reception were held. I enjoy weddings at the Vancouver Club because it is close to a lot of great downtown shooting locations, but also because the club itself offers such a variety of rooms, décor and atmosphere. The first ceremony was held in an entirely glass dining area on the first floor of the club, while the Korean ceremony and reception were held in the stately ballroom upstairs.

When we came back from the cherry blossoms Denise and Seungsoo changed into traditional Korean attire and I was very happy to get some shots of them before they formally entered their reception. Once they entered the second ceremony began. Again, I was largely concerned with light and composition, but I can tell you a bit about what went on. There was deep bowing to both sets of parents. Denise had rather large sleeves which were meant to hang in front of her, over her crossed forearms, and so her maids were required to help her up and down. It was also her lot to catch walnuts thrown by her mother in law in a scoop-like basket—I don’t think I reach too far in assuming this was at some point a fertility ritual of sorts. Denise did very well with catching, considering her outfit.

I was also impressed by the first dance—I think I heard something about Seungsoo being a late convert to the swing dance movement which swept Vancouver about ten years ago, but that he quickly went on to dominate the sport. It seemed that they were not alone among their friends in this skill, and I regretted once again that I arrived on the swing dance scene just as it sank over the horizon. (I think there ought to be a revival.) In any case, I was inspired in more ways than one, and I wish Denise and Seungsoo all the best in Italy!

The ceremony was held in the atrium of the VC. It provided a lovely bright contrast to the rich, dark ballroom.

I loved the back of Denise’s dress!

For the record, I had to google the earliest blooming cherry trees, and they happen to be on Alberni Street across from Saltlik. NB

Possibly my favourite picture. A touch of public transit, Chanel, the Korean robes, the yellow line. So Po-mo.

These wedding ducks belonged to Seungsoo’s parents. In Korea they symbolize life long partnership.

Their first dance was brilliantly choreographed.

Seungsoo wanted some cool dancing shots of his friends. This is somewhat experimental, obviously, but captures the dynamism of the dance floor.

I first met Anna at Caitlin and Neil’s wedding last May, which was coordinated by Kerry Reid of Fairy Godmother Weddings. Anna was Kerry’s assistant at the time, and still is I believe, but is now managing her own weddings through the company. Since I love weddings which combine traditions, this was a wonderful wedding to shoot.

In the first set of images Anna is walking back and forth under a tray held by her grandmother at the door of her parents’ home just before leaving for the church. The tray held items similar to the table in front of the couple at the Persian ceremony, if I’m not mistaken. There were crystalline candies, I know for sure because I saw her eat one, there was a Koran, and a little bowl filled with water and flowers which her grandmother emptied as Anna drove off –see below! I only posted two of these pictures which show the back and forth of the matter, but I have a lovely little series which are light and misty like this since the sun was shining brightly and Anna’s father was burning some coals in a little brazier on the front door step. Obviously I wish I had more time to ask questions. ( ;

When I arrived at the nearby Catholic Church, I was met with the sound of bagpipes. Matt is in fact a competitive piper, and had asked some of his piping friends to provide music for the processional. I think I have mentioned it before, but here it is again: I love bagpipes. They make me tingly. I even have Scottish realty pages bookmarked—let’s just say that. One of the best pre-ceremony moments was when Anna’s young nephew, a boy with dashing Persian looks arrived on the scene in his little kilt. You can see him peering out through the kilts at the back of the church below. As for the ceremony, I thought the priest did a fine job of acknowledging both traditions and faiths, yet performing the very Catholic ceremony he was meant to perform. This is why I love shooting weddings in Vancouver. More often than not couples come from different backgrounds, and at weddings I get to see the concessions and innovations which have had to be made—and they are done happily. It’s wonderful, and I don’t think it happens on a regular basis everywhere in the world.

While we were shooting family shots behind the church there was some lovely winter sun coming through the bare trees, over some boulders, so I had Matt and Anna sit on the rocks (because rockiness and kilts go together) and enjoyed shooting them there until I knelt in a bag of dog poo. A sure sign that it was time to move on. The next location was very nifty, but top secret and I have no idea how we got there.

When we arrived at the reception Matt and Anna were piped in through the guests, to the far side of the hall which was set up for the Persian ceremony. The maids did a good job of grinding sugar over their canopied heads, and both Matt and Anna received some fine jewelry. (I want to say bling because when it’s all worn simultaneously it has that effect, but it doesn’t stay piled on for long, and individually the pieces were very tasteful.)

There was live music too—Matt had hired the same singers which sang at their engagement to sing for their first dance. This was a surprise for Anna! There was also fiddling, drumming, and near the end of the evening, Matt got a chance to play his pipes. All excellent.

For those of you looking for great hair/makeup combined, you should check out Wedded Bliss. They did a brilliant job on makeup and two hairstyles for Anna—one done very quickly and expertly at the back of the church between photo locations.

My apologies for the last couple of bleak blogging months! I have had to concentrate on finishing my semester, which I believe I have done, in a very sort of fluid, revisions-can-be-done-later kind of way… Now I just have German all summer. (A whole year in twelve weeks.) However, I have four great weddings to post over the next couple of weeks. One is ready to go… Anna and Matt’s Persian & Scottish celebration was the first of 2008 and will be up shortly!

Now for the obvious: If you’ve been here before you’ve probably noticed a few changes with the website and blog. I haven’t worked with a graphic designer yet, so things aren’t looking as lovely as they could be, but I just couldn’t wait to get a new site up and running. In the mean time I have cobbled together a treatment of the studio name and a blog header to tell you where you’re at.

Instead of dividing my portfolios into the events of a wedding as I had done before, into categories such as Reception, Ceremony, Getting Ready, etc., I have chosen to divide the portfolios according to themes. A wedding can also be viewed according to its constituent themes of friendship, seriousness, joy, chaos etc. Since my studio name is a Latin adjective, I chose to name all of the portfolios accordingly. Most of the words have English cognates, so it should be fairly accessible Latin. Gravitas = ‘seriousness’ for example, continuitas = continuity, and so forth. It’s a little tongue in cheek—but I have been warned that a dead language could possibly alienate people. Let me know what you think if you have any thought on the matter. Thanks!

My first website went live in March 2005. I worked with a local designer and he did a great job of building an elegant, playful little flash website that served me well for three years. As is often the case, however, good designers get very busy sooner or later with bigger, corporate clients, and are hard to get a hold of for updates. In any case, I wanted a site which showcased larger images, which I could customize without much fuss, and which could be read by search engines—not the case with my first all-Flash site.

Over the last couple of years I have noticed a surge in companies making template websites for photographers: Blu Domain, Parade, LiveBooks, clickbooq, and so on. These sites can be easier for the technically-challenged, less expensive, and certainly a lot quicker than hiring a designer to build a website from scratch. In the end, the basic programming doesn’t need to be very original…just show some pictures…more or less in the middle of the screen.

The decision came down to clickbooq and LiveBooks. Both companies make attractive, simple websites. LiveBooks sites offer a little more aesthetic customization, especially when it comes to menus and navigation, but their image aspect ratio is not the standard aspect ratio of photographs, and I was unsatisfied with having to crop all of my images. As for search engine compatibility, both companies do the only thing that works for flash-based websites, which is to create a ghost html site. Livebooks, however, will not host blogs. clickbooq will host Wordpress blogs, meaning that the web traffic to the blog and the content on the blog can be used by search engines to find my site.
In the end clickbooq won out, and the new site is now live. Please have a look around and tell me what you think. Ich muss mein Hausaufgaben finish.

Alright, I take back what I said about the WPJA not liking me. This time I just entered my two freebie submissions and both placed, and by some weird numeric magic I ended up on the international list of top 100 wedding photojournalists. Too funny. The second place image was taken on New Year’s Eve of Jenny dancing with her dad at the Sutton Place Hotel. I love her sister’s expression in the background! The second was taken at Dayna and Jeff’s wedding in Chilliwack, and was entered in the ‘kids’ category. So often you can catch people behaving badly between posing for formals—kids love the captive audience (not the photographer) and know they can make extraordinary demands if they but stand in front and face the camera…

Oh, I should mention that the WPJA is for more traditional ‘photojournalistic’ wedding images. They frown on significant Photoshop work, unlike the Artistic Guild of the Wedding Photojournalist Association (see below a couple of entries). The WPJA doesn’t even allow sepia tinting on black and whites! I’m glad I know have membership in both organizations.

Steve is one of my oldest friends–and certainly the best technical writer of all of my friends.  He’s the one to turn to with your bibliography–not just for format either.   I’m not able to be at Stephen and Michelle’s May wedding because it’s in Alberta and because I have another wedding here that day, but I hope to be able to attend their Vancouver reception at the end of May!

I just may be in Hawaii at the end of this coming October, so if you are considering a destination wedding (and Hawaii appeals to you) send me an email!  I’m buying my Lonely Planet Maui any day now…  For that matter, if you are thinking about a destination wedding in December, let me know.  I may have some time off then, and if I could combine a shoot with a trip to Cuba or Mexico or wherever, all the better.  Have you seen pictures of old Havana?!  Wow.

So after submitting several times to the WPJA contests (Wedding Photojournalist Association) and never placing, I recently scrolled through the contest winners of the last Artistic Guild of the Wedding Photojournalist Association and found a couple of my images without any kind of email warning! My images placed 5th and 17th (winning extends to some dark recesses indeed!) but I’m pleased to pop up at all among so many compelling images. For a limited time only, AGWPJA membership is not to be had but by placing in one of their contests, so you can go check me out under BC photographers and see me listed beside only one other lucky guy.  Do take a look at all the other images too.  Oh yeah, and Happy Lunar New Year!