x
The story of Sarah and Peter’s beautiful Ashford Estate wedding on September 3rd, 2017. The Ashford Estate has quickly become one of our favorite venues to shoot at and hopefully, you can see why from this blog post. We were lucky enough to get to shoot there a few times in 2017 and we’ll be heading back again in 2018. Sarah and Peter spent the day surrounded by family and friends who helped make this day an extremely special one. The weather was perfect and the perfect example of why we love September weddings as much as we do. It’s also the reason September is one of our busiest months as a studio.
This wedding was shot with a mix of film and digital cameras. All the film shots were taken with the Contax645 on Fuji400 film while all the digital images were captured on either Canon or Leica gear. This venue really calls for film, and it’s a big reason we shot a lot of it. The Ashford Estate property is simply stunning, with a beautiful barn where they hold the ceremonies, a carriage house, grand ballroom, and a lake with a floating gazebo. This was honestly the perfect setting for Sarah and Peter’s wedding as you could tell that this was their style and they seemed to fit perfectly with it.
We absolutely love that the Ashford Estate offers everything in one place. The day starts and ends there, from prep until the last call, and sometimes even the after party like Sarah and Peter had. Being there from beginning to end allows us to truly capture the entire day, telling the story of our clients the best way possible. The day was filled with laughter, tears, and one hell of a party. We were there for all of it and had an absolutely amazing time.
We couldn’t have been more geeked up when Sandi and I found out that Brian and Jacqueline wanted to have us do their engagement shoot at the Eastern State Penitentiary. It’s a place that I had always wanted to shoot at, especially since I had never even been there before, but this wasn’t going to be anything like we had expected. It’s a pretty large place, with lots of hallways, rooms, and passages that you can’t really prepare yourself for. When we arrived, we were met by five guides that worked for the penitentiary, who were going to be escorting us around. We had the entire place to ourselves which was pretty neat, but the kicker of it was – we only had 45 minutes to shoot. Wait. What?
As we walked through the entrance with Brian and Jacqueline, the guides told us that the clock was starting and we had 45 minutes to shoot because we had to have all of our gear packed up and all of us off of the property in exactly one hour. That made things a little more interesting than we had been expecting, how in the hell were we gonna be able to pull off a successful shoot in that short amount of time. Especially, when we didn’t know the layout of the place, nor did we even know where to even start.
Well, the clock was ticking, so we didn’t have any time to really think about it, so we picked a spot and got things rolling. It was cold, dark, dingy, dirty, and had light leaks from all over the place which made for some of the coolest shooting conditions I’ve ever had. I honestly could have shot for three hours in there, and I wish we had. We started off in one of the cells, and by the time I set up some lighting gear, got an idea of what I wanted to shoot, one of the guides yelled out a time check.
“40 minutes remaining”, he yelled.
I hadn’t even shot a single frame yet, and by the time that I did and adjusted my lighting slightly, the next 5 minute time check came echoing down the corridor. Now there were only 35 minutes remaining and I had only shot in one room. Now it was time to speed things up and do my best to simplify each and every shot as best I could while still capturing the creative engagement photos that I know Brian and Jacqueline were counting on. So, we picked up the pace, found some really cool spots along the way, and ended up getting in a good amount of shooting before we were being escorted out of the penitentiary and off the property. Once outside, we had about ten minutes of beautiful sunlight left so, we shot until it was gone. All in all, it was a really amazing experience that also pushed Sandi and I to think creatively under an extreme amount of pressure and time constraints. If you get the chance to shoot here, definitely do so, just do a little more homework beforehand or figure out a way to get in and scout things out a little before your shoot.
Enjoy!
[FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS: The Gear Used On This Shoot]
My name is Matt, I’m a cinematographer and along with my wife Amy, we are photography enthusiasts. We got engaged on October 10th, 2015 in Bar Harbor, Maine during sunrise at Schooner Head Overlook, in Acadia National Part (this is important for later). We spent two months combing through photographer’s online portfolios searching for the right team to shoot our wedding. When we found Twisted Oaks Studio, we spent some time checking out all the work on their website. I don’t usually read the “About Us” section because they all tend to sound the same, but I read theirs on a whim. Sandi’s bio was different. It was honest. Jay’s was very introspective and real. They were both…refreshing. We were confident that we found photographers who shared our aesthetic, felt that we could relate to, and had the key elements we were looking for in a photography team.
This is the story of our wedding from my perspective, something you don’t see too often on a wedding photographer’s website. I wanted to write this to let others learn about our experience with Jay and Sandi. We had no idea just how much of an impact they would have on our wedding day. The four of us had no idea how much of an impact we would have on each other’s lives.
[BLOG POST: Matt & Amy’s Cape May Wedding]
On January 31, 2016, Amy and I went to Twisted Oaks Studio. We were greeted at the door, welcomed in, and ushered to a studio room towards to the rear of the building. We sat across from Jay and Sandi at a table with some albums in the center. Hung on the walls were high-quality prints and canvases of their work.
Sandi led us through the options and choices we could make. Jay offered creative ideas. We laughed a lot. After 20 minutes or so Amy gave me a look, and I gave her a look back. We were sold on Jay and Sandi shooting our wedding. More conversation and laughs, and we realized we had been there for 3 hours! We wrapped up our meeting and Amy and I felt great about our choice. It’s all coming together. Our next step was to choose a date/location for our engagement shoot. Sandi insisted we do an engagement shoot so that we had a chance to work together prior to our wedding. Amy and I ask if Bar Harbor, Maine would be an option, since that’s where we got engaged. Sandi said yes, and we were stoked! We planned a trip together for a long
weekend in September.
Then everything changed.
On April 22, 2016, we called to tell them that we had to cancel our engagement shoot. Amy was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a rare blood cancer. It was devastating, and it changed our entire lives. The good news was that it was treatable. The bad news was that the treatment was serious and would take about six months to complete. We were so upset at leaving Jay and Sandi hanging for the trip up to Maine and that we wouldn’t get to have our engagement shoot to get to know them better. They told us not to worry about anything and to do what we needed do.
Five short months after I asked Amy to marry me, cancer rocked our lives. I quit my job shortly after she was diagnosed to focus on caring for her. When you’re faced with a disease like cancer, you end up having a lot of conversations with each other about what the future could look like, and what it might not look like. The unknown is terrifying. It makes you re-evaluate everything in your life. After a lot of doctor visits and consultations, we agreed on a treatment plan. The plan had a good success rate, but it as it goes with cancer, it wasn’t guaranteed. Throughout the treatment process we both went through every emotion you can go through. I tried to be the guy that I thought I needed to be: The pillar of support, the strong one. My dad was the one who reminded me that I needed to be the man SHE needed me to be. I took that to heart and focused all my energy on doing just that.
September came, and it was sad to not only be missing out on our dream engagement shoot but what was no doubt going to be an awesome trip. Jay and Sandi still made the trip and they took some really beautiful photos, but there was one photo they took that meant the world to us. They went to the Schooner Head Overlook, where Amy and I got engaged and took this photo. with this note:
Hey guys!
Just wanted to share some of the photos from our trip with you, give you something to
look forward to in a couple years 🙂
– Jay and Sandi
It was just what Amy and I needed to boost our spirits. We kept in touch. Amy and Sandi chatted through emails. Jay and I texted a lot and made plans to team up and work together on a couple creative projects. The four of us had become very close friends. It was the hardest time of our lives, but Amy’s treatment had worked! She was (and still is!) in full remission. We called Jay and Sandi, told them the good news, and made plans to meet up to talk over the details of the wedding day. The four of us went out to dinner one night, had a few drinks, and got all the details worked out for our wedding day. It felt good to be back on track again.
A few weeks later Amy and I were at Hotel Icona Resort, Diamond Beach. It was our wedding day.
Two big things I should mention here:
1. From the beginning, I really pushed for shooting a lot of medium format film. Like the two shots above.
2. Our wedding day would be the first time we worked together.
That’s a lot of pressure! I think Amy and I were both so relieved to see them on the day that It felt like working with your best friends. It was the most emotional day of my life, for several reasons. We had a long journey leading up to our wedding day. A journey that made it impossible for me to hide my emotions and hold back the tears as I cried. A lot. There’s no way I couldn’t have. When Jay arrived at the groomsman suite, I was relieved to see him. This was something I had never imagined would happen with my wedding photographer. This is what sets Jay and Sandi apart from everyone else.
We started shooting groom prep and I struggled to piece together the right words to use in my letter to Amy (which you can see photos of in Jay’s Blog Post). Then it was time for me to read the letter that Amy had written. I had walked out onto the balcony, Jay followed. I began to read the first sentence and promptly lost it. Jay shot the entire thing with just the two of us out on the balcony. I had held my emotions in long enough, and it was time to let them go. I felt good to just surrender them to the day. If it had been anyone else shooting that day I don’t know how I would have felt. But it felt like hanging out with a friend, which was exactly what I needed. The day went by in a flash. We said goodbye at the end of the night after requesting a few shots of the four of us together, which they happily obliged.
Two days later I got a text from Jay:
Want to see a shot from your wedding?
A few seconds later, this photo below appears on my screen.
I look at Amy, she looks at me, I well up (because I’m the emotionally strong one). It’s beautiful. It’s…us. We text back and forth and Jay shares some more images with us. Each one cooler than the last. Amy and I are impressed. We’re more than impressed. The decision to go with Jay and Sandi was the best choice we could have made.
A few months go by and we heard from Jay again. He wanted us to come to the studio, which we knew had meant that our photos were ready. We were really excited to learn that they do a reveal party where they show a slideshow of photos on a large projector screen with music. We hung out at the studio that night for a few hours, ate dinner, and even got to meet their 3-year-old son Luke who they brought along. It was an amazing experience, the entire evening, and a great way for us to re-live the day all over again. All the photos they took truly encapsulated our day, and the film scans that I had requested came out beautiful. I welled up again as the slideshow played (I told you I’m the sappy guy) and we were both extremely happy with all of the photos, we still are. Jay and Sandi were able to do more than document the day. They were able to capture the essence, how that day felt, and the souls of those they photographed.
That’s not being melodramatic, it’s real, and it’s there in those frames. What an incredible gift.
So…what about the engagement session? Well, here’s the silver lining. We’re heading up to Bar Harbor later this year to shoot that. Only now it will be for our 1st-year-anniversary session.
On the day of Matt and Amy’s Cape May wedding at the Icona Diamond Beach Resort, there was a quite a mixed bag of emotions. I don’t think Sandi and I said too much to each other on the hour and a half ride down. In fact, I don’t really think that we said anything. This wedding was a little different than all the others. Why? Well, I’m gonna try to explain it the best way that I can. This is my 5th attempt at writing this. Matt also wrote a guest blog post telling the story of their wedding and the journey to get there which you can read HERE.
I’ll start this story off by saying that the bride and groom, Matt and Amy, are our friends. Friends that nearly two years earlier had walked into our studio as complete strangers. They were just like every other newly engaged couple stopping by to speak with us about possibly photographing their wedding. On the morning of October 14th, 2017, as Sandi and I packed the truck to make the hour and a half drive down to Cape May, things felt different. The typical wedding day pressure we put on ourselves was amplified to a whole new level. The two of them had been through a lot over the past year. Amy had gotten sick and life took them on one hell of a rollercoaster of a ride making this day that much more special. Amy is healthy today, as she was on her wedding day, and she looked absolutely stunning. You would have never guessed that she had been through a year of hell leading up to this day. Having grown close to both of them through it all, we weren’t there at their wedding as just photographers anymore. We were also there as friends to celebrate the day with them.
On January 31st, 2016, the day Matt and Amy walked into our studio, we had no clue that these two would have such a huge impact on our lives. None of had any clue that today we would all be really good friends. To give a little backstory, they had found us on The Knot and our work stood out to them. Matt is a cinematographer and a creative, so as you can imagine, he was going to be extremely picky about who they hired as their wedding photographer. During that consultation, the four of us hit it off. I think we hung out and talked for close to three hours that night. Matt explained how he proposed to Amy in Acadia Maine, a place Sandi I have been vacationing to for years. They asked if we would be willing to take a trip up there to shoot their engagement photos if they paid the way, of course, we agreed. We couldn’t have been more excited, and this was the perfect excuse for us to take our 2-year-old son up to Maine for the first time. Little did any of us know at that time, but the photo shoot in Maine wouldn’t happen. Sandi and I would be making the trip without them.
Fast forward a few months, we had picked out dates and paid for a place to stay in Maine. Everything was going smooth and it was pretty much all the four of us had been talking about. A couple months before our trip, I received a text message from Matt asking me to give him a call. Not thinking anything of it, I quickly called Matt, expecting to have him tell me about some new idea he had for the engagement shoot. What followed is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget, and the point at which everything changed. It was a call that left me speechless, as Matt explained that they wouldn’t be able to make the trip to Maine. Amy had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a rare blood cancer. Treatment was going to start soon and the trip would be right around the time of one of her treatments. However, we had split the cost of the house in Maine and we couldn’t get the money back. They insisted we still go and enjoy ourselves, something we originally shot down. They insisted and we went, thinking about them the entire time.
While we were there, we drove out to the spot where Matt proposed and took the photo you see below. A photo that up until this point had only been shared with them. We all made the promise to come back up to Maine to celebrate their one year anniversary and capture the photos Amy had dreamed of. While we were there, I took Sandi and my son Luke to the same exact spot that I had taken a maternity shot of her, creating a very cool collage that we could continue to add to over the years.
OK – back to the wedding day. I knew Matt’s emotions would be running high, and more than likely he would be a mess. Well, a mess he was, and I guess I’ll give him credit, he didn’t hold back in front of me. There was no tough guy act. No pretending that everything leading up to this day was like that of every other couple getting married. It was a long road to get here, and Amy was cancer free! There were tears of joy, tears of pain, and tears that made me well up and cry right along with him. At one point in the day, as Matt read the letter Amy wrote for him, it was only the two of us out on the balcony. I remember he glanced up at me with a look, wiped his eyes, and then looked back down at the letter. Did he want me to stay, leave him alone, or simply put the camera away? Rather than guessing, I just came out and told him to just tell me to leave if he wanted a minute to himself. He simply laughed and told me that wouldn’t happen and that he wanted me there through it all. Something I don’t think I’ll ever forget and it’s because of that moment we have a very unique and close friendship. That day I felt more like a friend than a photographer, and I used that to my advantage with telling their story through my photography.
Groom Prep went as expected at the beautiful Icona Diamond Beach Resort. It was filled with plenty of laughter and tears, but it wasn’t long before it was time to head out to the beach for Matt and Amy’s ‘First Look’. As I walked Matt out to towards the water to get him ready to see Amy for the first time in her wedding gown, I could tell I was losing him. I could see his mind was somewhere else as he slowly stared out into the ocean. I could slowly see his demeanor changing and his eyes already starting to swell, filled with a mixture of emotions that I didn’t even try to understand. He was only moments away from getting to see his beautiful and healthy bride in her wedding gown, a day that at one point I’m sure he was worried would even come. I didn’t say much in those moments, in fact, I had stopped talking at some point as we walked down the beach towards the water. My cameras were at my side and I wasn’t a photographer, I was simply a friend at that moment. I thought of distracting him, but instead, let him enjoy each and every memory that I’m sure was coursing through his veins. I adjusted his tie, fixed his jacket a little, looked him in the eye and simply said thank you (as my eyes quickly filled up with tears of appreciation.) I thanked him for giving me access into his life, into his relationship with Amy, and more importantly for his friendship. As I watched Amy slowly making her way down the beach, I smiled and told him to turn around. I’ll let the photos tell the rest of how that went.
The ceremony was tough, I’ll admit, there were a lot of times I found myself struggling to see through my viewfinder because of the tears blurring my vision. The most difficult part was when it was time for them to exchange their wedding vows. Nothing fancy or handwritten, just the typical wedding vows. I’ve probably heard them recited hundreds of times by now, including when I said them myself over 12 years ago. I’ll admit, I don’t put too much thought into them while photographing ceremonies, it can feel more like a scene from the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. Thinking back to my own wedding, all I can remember was being focused on not fumbling the words too badly. They were simply just words that I repeated back, excited to finally be marrying the girl of my dreams.
However, on October 14th of last year, those traditional wedding vows sounded different. It was as if I was hearing them for the first time, and the meaning behind them was as thick as the mist that filled the air. The promise to “have and to hold through sickness and in health” is one of those vows that most grooms, including myself, try not to put much thought into. It’s something that we tell ourselves we might face one day, just not anytime soon. Who wants to think about that on their wedding day? Most grooms hadn’t been through what Matt had been through, or had to care for their sick fiancé to the point of not knowing if the wedding day would even come. As the officiant spoke those words to Matt, I could see his eyes fill up with emotion as he choked back tears, trying his hardest not to let his emotions get the best of him. He paused for a moment as memories from two extremely difficult years ran through his head. As I watched him struggle, I hid behind my camera to hide my own tears. He took a deep breath, pulled the strength together and got those words out. The rest, as they say, is history.
This summer the 5 of us will be heading up to Maine for that 1-year anniversary shoot, something we are all extremely excited about. We’ll finally get to capture those epic photos of Amy and Matt in Acadia like they both had so badly wanted for their engagement shoot. I’ll also get to capture the third photo in the Mother and Son series that I started 3 years ago, which was made possible from the trip that Matt and Amy had insisted that we go on. Here is the BLOG post of our trip to Maine that year, with the photo that goes along with this one from when Sandi was pregnant with Luke.
I apologize for the long post, but this was a story that needed to be told. Amy was one of the most beautiful brides we’ve ever had the privilege of photographing. Sandi totally killed the bride prep which she had been extremely nervous about, and we ended the night by capturing our most favorite night shot we’ve ever taken. Just a few days ago, the two of them came into our new studio and got to see their photos for the first time on our big projector screen. Matt cried again, and again, and again. Ok, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but talk about an emotional guy… big baby. I at least went and hid in the kitchen each time my eyes filled up watching the slideshow, haha. At the bottom of this post there is a timelapse video we shot of them as they seen their wedding photos for the first time, don’t miss it!
FYI: You will see some inconsistencies in the editing of these photos, but for good reason. A good amount of this wedding was shot on film as requested by Matt, which was developed and scanned by Goodman Film Labs. The digital photos mixed in are shot with my Leica gear and Sandi’s Canon.
TIMELAPSE VIDEO & PHOTOS
PHOTOS FROM THE REVEAL PARTY
