Every wedding has it's challenges. Some are schedule related, some are vendor related and yet others are weather related. With each situation we have to find creative solutions to overcome the challenges and in the end have beautiful images we can be proud of.
One such weather challenge occurred this past summer during one of our bigger weddings. It was the middle of summer so the weather could be sunny, cloudy or outright nasty and wet. Guess which one we got? You guessed it, rainy and wet. All day the rain poured down from the heavens with no end in sight. As we approached the ceremony at the church it came down even harder. We were still hopeful it would let up long enough to capture some beautiful images at the reception venue, but of course that never happened. We decided to do all the formals inside the church just in case the rain did not stop in time to do them during the cocktail hour. This option was not so bad since it was a very beautiful ornate church. Of course being the artists we are, we wanted to create something different and epic for our couple. Unfortunately it rained the rest of the night and while we could not avail ourselves of the awesome views at the reception venue, we were still happy we created the formal images at the church.
After the wedding as we culled the images we knew were missing that one special image of the bride and groom together alone, lost in themselves. So we got an idea - let's create a composite using a formal image from the church and a landscape image from our art library (one of my second passions is landscape photography). After a few hours of retouching using Lightroom, Photoshop and TonalityPro we had created an entirely new image - one that never happened. Below you will see the formal image we made inside the church on that rainy day, the landscape image I had created a few months earlier at Trexler Park and the final composite in black and white.
The formal image I selected.
The landscape image I selected.
The final image I created.
We share this story because it is hopefully amusing, interesting and enlightening. Despite the challenges we faced due to the rain, by using a little creativity we were able to craft something beautiful and unique for our couple which they can cherish for a lifetime.
Hiring a wedding photographer doesn't need to be only about the images they can capture on your big day, it can also be about what that photographer can craft when the wedding day is over. For this couple it happens to be an image that never happened.
P.S. The neat thing about this story is that the final image ended up on their Heirloom Wedding Album cover and we feel it turned out very nice. Have a look below and tell us what you think?