New Year's Eve Wedding

On New Year's Eve I was honored to photograph Christina and Miguel's wedding. I was very impressed by Miguel's initiative to help make his Bride's day a memorable one. Christina's vintage loves combined with her modern loves gave this wedding a unique quality that I fell in love with. I can truly say that their wedding helped define the direction I want to go in. Christina looked gorgeous and she knew how to work the camera for her bridal pictures. When it came time to photograph the groom, Miguel's laid back attitude helped command the attention of the camera. He looked so natural and I know that had to have been a hard thing to do when you are on a wedding rush. I had such an amazing time with Christina and Miguel and you can truly see the love they have for each other by the way they look for one another across the room when they were separated by friends and family and the way they unknowingly reach to hold hands when they are together. Here's a glimpse into this amazing day. To see their entire gallery click here

 

The Wiggles and The Wedding

So this week has been super crazy since I was getting ready for my second wedding to shoot (that I have done by myself) and getting my daughter ready to see The Wiggles Live. The wedding and The Wiggles were on the same day so my husband and my mom took her to the show and sent me videos throughout the night. She had such a good time and it wore her out. Now she is in bed asleep FINALLY. She is cutting two back teeth at once (her teeth always seem to come in two at a time) and she broke out in some funky rash on her face. She is not running a fever and after some antibiotic cream on her face, the rash is gone.

On a good note, I had two friends of mine stop by and say hello. She is a fellow photographer that I have known for nine years.......Has it really be nine years!!! Time flies by. Anyways, she finally got to meet my daughter and we had about an hour to catch up on things. Then, to add to my photography mingling for the night, I spoke to another photography friend, she is really more like a big sister to me, and we chit chatted about my wedding shoot. I love getting advice and from them and just having some adult time. The great thing about these gal photog friends (yes I am from Texas and I say gals lol) is that we all help each other out. If we need advice, criticism or support we all are there to give it. For example, one of the gals thinks I charge too much for a new wedding photographer. I know she is probably right, but my work takes so much time away from my family that if I had to put a number on it to be worth my time, that was it. It takes so much time to get ready for a shoot, shoot the event, edit all of the 800 - 1,000 images, set up the meetings, driving time and so on. I am not complaining, but I have to be honest with myself. If I have to spend all of those hours away from my daughter and husband (and miss stuff like her first concert with The Wiggles) then I want it to be worth it in the sense that it will help my family in the long run. Anyways, back to my point. I find it hard to make photog friends that will KIR (keep it real) with you. There are so many great photographers in my area and we could all learn so much from each other, but I find most photographers are very secretive about their business, equipment and price list. I am very open about all of that and so are these gals. I get random emails every now and then asking me questions and I am very forth coming about it all. The last one I received was asking how I got my own business started. This particular photographer is only 20 mins from me but our styles are so different. Her style is the cool, funky urban thing and I am not sure what you call my style lol. But we are different; even if we were similar I would still help her. We all have to start somewhere and why not help each other out. In my area we have over four million people here and there are plenty of clients to go around. I know I am rambling, but I just feel like all photographers should help each other out. I am not saying we should hand out all of our knowledge that we had to research and study but point the people asking in the right direction. It's all about good karma people and paying it forward.

So, the wedding went well and I am very pleased with the pictures. I feel they are 10 times better than my last wedding (I can say that since my BFF is the wedding I shot and she still loves her pictures). This is part due to a different lighting situation and part because of experience and research. One thing about me is I will NEVER stop doing the research and taking classes. Technology moves way too fast, so I feel I need to stay on top of it. This wedding had it's challenging lighting situations. The room where the girls were getting dressed was a school room. There was a chalk board, flags, metal chairs, tables and green curtains. The green curtains played to my advantage to diffuse the harsh light coming in through the windows and actually gave me pretty decent light. I moved some of the tables and chairs to put the girls in better light and to get the eye sores out of my way. Other than that I just made sure to try to double check the background before taking pictures. There is one picture where the bride is getting her jewelry on and she is in front of a chalk board. Instead of ruining the moment and asking her to move, I just shot it the way it was and worked it into the scene. After all, this is where she is getting dressed and it is a part of her day. Luckily, the church allowed me to use my flash and get very close to the bride and groom. I opened my lens all the way up, cranked up the ISO, and bounced my flash off of where the priest stands. It was all white marble. There will still be a little noise in the pictures but not enough to draw attention to it. I did take it into light room and added a tad bit of warmth and reduced the noise just a bit. One piece of advice Jasmine Star said was to shoot the difficult weddings like the easy weddings. Not all brides have the funds to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on her wedding. Not to mention EVERY wedding has their fair share of challenges. However, I can still take pictures that make the wedding look like it should be in a magazine. After all, every bride deserves that.

Here are a few pictures that I took. They have only been put into light room and I pulled some of the warmth out of the pictures due to the very yellow light I was getting. I haven't pulled them into PS yet.

And so it begins.....

So I guess I am finally jumping onto the blogging train. I am not a huge fan of writing, or  reading at that, but I thought I need a space to write my thoughts. Hey maybe if I am lucky I will actually have some pretty cool people follow me too. If not, well at least my mom will think I am cool! 

I actually got this great idea by watching Jasmine Star's first Creative Live Class online. If you ever need a plethora of useful information, that class is perfect for it.  In this class she has teamed up with the very hunky, Chase Jarvis to shoot and document a wedding live. It is a very different way of learning about weddings. It gives you more of a hands on experience. The best part of all is you get the feel that Jasmine is teaching you one on one. I gotta say Jasmine is one of my photographer crushes (that would be defined as someone I secretly stalk online and fall in love with her pictures). Anyways, after listening to her reasoning behind starting a blog I decided I will give it a go. Maybe there will be someone that can learn something from this and if not, I am sure I am all sorts of fun to laugh at. 

I decided to use the blog name Kim It instead of Emotional Accord. I feel Emotional Accord is too professional and I wanted to be a bit more laid back on here. The name Kim It came from my husband because if someone asks me a question I don't know, I always say....yep you got it...."Google It". So after saying this a few thousand times, he now says, "Hey Kim It". You can still see my business name at the top where my email address is and I will refer to it often www.emotionalaccord.com . 

So what is going on in my life today. I had lunch at Black Eyed Peas (not our first choice, but our first choice was smashed due to them not paying their taxes and the government seizing the building). Our second choice was actually Road House, but they don't open until 4pm! So off we went to eat at Black Eyed Peas with my mom, husband, my adorable diva, Evie, and my grandparents. In just a bit I am going to check out a Church that I am shooting a wedding at tomorrow. I want to get a feel for the lighting and where the bride and groom will be getting dressed. I am also going to stop by and check out the reception hall. I will make a few notes as to the layout of the two places and mark a few places that would be good for taking formals at. I am going at the time of the wedding to judge where to good light is and I will make a note of my readings. They may change a bit tomorrow but since we are in a drought and we are being compared to the Sahara Desert, I think it will be pretty close. Funny and true story, I went to go look up the church on Google to see where about it was and I clicked on the first one that popped up with the correct information. It was a review site and noted below was one review. I read it, and I promise I am not lying, it said, "I WOULD NOT EVEN GIVE THIS ONE STAR". Now not only is that person going straight to hell, but what could be so wrong about a Catholic Church? I mean, I don't totally agree with everything Catholicism says, but come on it is a house of God.....right? So, for back up I am taking the husband. speaking of, I better go get ready.

Kimberlee Peterson

www.emotionalaccord.com