Styled shoots are a lot of fun and a great way to be creative while teaming up and working with other talented vendors. We didn’t get a chance to do many of them in 2015 with all the work that went into getting Twisted Oaks Studio up and running, but it’s something we plan on doing a lot more of in the coming year. With an extremely talented group of photographers working for us now, these types of shoots are a great way to combine all our talents into one project and all work together creating images that can be used by the multiple vendors who participate.

With 2015 quickly coming to a close, I had wanted to work with a couple vendors I hadn’t had the chance to work with yet, and I’m glad that I did now. I worked with Emily Gillespie, the owner of Narola Design and Letterpress to put the shoot together, and everything went really smooth. We have always done styled shoots outdoors, but since its winter here in Jersey, we switched it up and shot this one inside at pretty unique spot in Philly.

The other cool thing about this shoot was that all of the hair and makeup was done in the new studio space in Hammonton that Sandi and I share with Emily, the owner of Narola Design, and Alex, the owner of Taffeta Hair and Makup Design.

Location:  Globe Dye Works

Model:  Megan Deanley

Photographers:  The Twisted Oaks Team – Jay Cassario, Laura Napoli, & Cecilia Grace 

Hair & Makeup:  Taffeta Hair and Makeup Design

Print Work:  Narola Design and Letterpress

Dress:  Provided by Wedding Belles Boutique from Northfield, NJ

Florist:  Cottage Flowers from Malvern, PA

This past Saturday, I shot my first wedding since moving into our new office/studio. I knew that bringing camera gear back and forth would eventually lead to me leaving something at the studio that I needed for a wedding. I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. Low and behold, as I’m packing the truck to leave for our wedding, something was missing. Yep, I did it, I left one of my favorite cameras, my Leica M240, at the studio. Not only did I not have time to drive 15 minutes in the opposite direction to go pick it up, I really didn’t want to hear the “I told you so” speech this early into owning the studio. So, I sucked it up, and while I was pissed at first I quickly realized this could be a good thing.

I’ve found that anytime I’m using one camera/lens combo too much, its a bad thing for my creativity. I have been using the Leica M240 + 35 or 50 combo A LOT the past 10 weddings or so. Knowing that I wouldn’t have it, I decided to completely change up how I see things and use the Pentax645Z that I really haven’t used all that much because of the 90mm lens that I have for it. I don’t typically like shooting with long lenses, even my 85mm primes, it’s just not comfortable for me. My mind I guess doesn’t work that way. I also wanted to use the tilt-shift lens more since I haven’t been. Lastly, I wanted to really focus on using lines creatively. We were going to be walking around a small town for bride/groom portraits, so I knew there would be plenty to work with. Plus, we had an awesome bride and groom to work with who left everything in our hands as far as creativity goes and the shots we would take.

Below are a few images that I processed already, and wanted to share my thought process a little with three of them. I’m glad I left the Leica at the studio, cause I probably wouldn’t have gotten these shots, I would have been shooting my Leica instead. I really love the lines in these images, so I wanted to share them with you all, and really push you do pick something like this each wedding to get outside of your own box. Lines are something I use a lot in my shooting, but I really focused on them even more at this wedding.

1. The first shot below, I used a very tight ally leading up to their apartment. Normally, for a shot like this, I would go with the Sigma 24mm shot wide open at 1.4. For this shot though, I wanted switch it up and go with a very shallow DOF. In order to get the walls still in the shot, to make use of the lines from the bricks, I knew my best chance of getting the look I wanted was with a pano shot. I chose to take the risk and go with a Brenizer shot, 9 shots merged together in PS, to and luckily since I’ve been doing these more recently… it came out perfectly. I shot this with the Pentax645Z and 90mm f/2.8, which has a pretty large file size with one image let alone 9. Once the images were merged, I had to downsize it from 18k Pixels wide, ha. Theres another Brenizer shot below that I did as well, see if you can figure out which one it is 🙂

2. The 2nd shot, I used the 45mm tilt-shift on the Canon 5D Mark3 to change up the focal plane. Scoping out the area, I knew the lines from the overhead structure at this coffee shop would work for something creative. Since there were so many lines to work with, my eyes were drawn more to the empty spaces in between. I noticed the empty space you see in the image below, and knew I wanted to get their heads or upper bodies in there. The problem was that when I got down low to shoot it, it was a bad angle. It was an unflattering angle since I was using a 45mm focal length. Sandi and I looked at each other and immediately thought the same thing, see if they would hop up on the small tables. Sandi looked over at them and asked how risky they wanted to get, they smiled and said they were up for anything. So, that’s what we did, and it worked perfectly. We had them climb up on two separate tables and hold hands. Once they were up there, I was able to get their upper bodies in the empty spaces without having a unflattering angle. (My favorite shot of the day)

3. This is an image that most would look at and not think of lines, but it was a very big part of how I shot it. The bride wanted a veil shot, and since I have been doing the same thing with them for a while, I wanted to do it a little different. I usually like to put the veil over their heads and try to get a clean shot of them from underneath of it myself. This time, the material was easy to see through, and she had such stunning eyes, I wanted to shoot through it. BUT, that alone wouldn’t be enough, I needed to use lines. I wanted to have the angle of the vale opposite of the lines of their faces. I had her slightly tilt her head back, had him lean his head forward, and I had Sandi hold the vale so that it gave me a straight line. I was using Live View so she could see exactly what I was seeing and she held it at the perfect angle to get the shot we wanted. I took 2 shots, this was one… and we were done.

Hopefully you learned a little something and if nothing else, you’ll pick something to work on at your next shoot or wedding. Below are a few more images I processed from the wedding. You can see how I used lines in some of them as well, a couple of them I just threw in here cause I liked how they came out 🙂

Chris and Maria’s beautiful wedding at one of our favorite venues in NJ, Scotland Run.

Leading up to Lindsay and Alex’s wedding, we were unsure of exactly how things were going to go. Being an artist herself, Lindsay knew how important it was to us to have full creative control, so she left everything in our hands. Being that the wedding was up in PA, we were unfamiliar with the area, and she hadn’t really decided on a place to get her photos done. She knew she didn’t want to have them done at the venue, but she was still deciding on a spot that would fit good with our style of shooting. Things were running a little behind on the wedding day, so after the ceremony ended and family pics in the church were done, Alex came up to me and said, “I don’t think we have any time to go where we wanted to take pics, the bus driver had somewhere else to be”. I asked if him and Lindsay and him wanted to hop in with Sandi and I, so that we could drive them, and his eyes lit up. So, thats what we did. Knowing that they may miss their cocktail hour, I was worried they would still feel rushed. I was very wrong, and getting some epic wedding photos was priority #1. We drove them to a preserve, and we had two choices, play it safe or make things a little more risky and try to find an old hidden farm house. As we hiked through a preserve, over a creek and through the woods, we eventually came upon the old farm house hidden away. It was well worth the hike, and they did end up missing the entire cocktail hour. We rolled up just in time for their announcements… my kind of wedding. We had a blast, and got them some pretty killer wedding photos.

The Importance of Family Photos

I wrote an article for SLR Lounge on why I put so much importance on family photos on a wedding day, along with a very personal story about my own wedding photos that are most important to me today. Click on the image below to see the article and read about the greatest lesson I’ve learned in wedding photography.