OLLO Photography - Wedding Photography in Dallas

An awesome couple, just a pleasure to work with. These images were taken in mid-January, and I have not had a chance to post them since then.. and it's a shame! Their engagement photos turned out fantastic!

We met at the Dallas Art Museum and went straight for the backyard sculpture garden, a contemporary winter setting.
I love shooting in that garden, with all that modern scuplture the opportunities are endless.

Melissa looked great, but she was definitely not dressed for the weather.. Zak looked a bit cold, but more within reason. (How many times did I mention that you need to dress for a photography session in a way that makes you comfortable?) I stayed warm by moving around and jumping on benches, and making them rehearse their dacing routine in front of the camera. I really like the results - looking forward to being the photographer for  their wedding in May!
 

February and March are really busy months for me in my full-time job. I am traveling for business alsmost the whole time, and I do not schedule photo sessions during those months.  So there will be no new wedding and engagement images coming up soon.

Instead, I would like to spend this time answering questions that brides often have about digital photography: retouching, photoshop, and how does it matter for my wedding images?
After all, for decades photographer did very little retouching on professional film images, and everything turned out just fine. Why do I need digital retouching for my portraits?

Curious? Well, it is a lengthy subject, so let's attack it one blog post at a time.

Let's start with the basics.

Professional digital cameras are set up with a different expectation compared to consumer camreas. The are not optmized to prduce their best looking images straight out of the camere, The design intent is to capture as much data as possible and give the photographer as much flexibility in editing the image on the computer after the image is taken.
So, if your photgrapher does not do basic retouching for digital files, you are losing out on photo quality.

Let me explain this a bit more.

When you use your little digital camera to take a picture, it captures the image in JPG format and you open it on your computer.  The picture usually looks bright, with good contrast, but is often a little blurry, especially when you zoom in a little closer.  But overall, straight out of the camera and onto your computer screen - it looks pretty good. if you sent it to print  - home printer or mail-in lab like Shutterfly.com or Kodakgallery.com - it normally looks ok, but rarely looks excellent. Your camera software optmizes the image to look it's best on screen straight out of the camera. Can you get it to look great in print? Yes, probably.. but you need digital retouching to override original camera settings.

When your wedding or portrait photographer takes a photo with a professional digital camera, it captures the image in RAW format. (Ok, it can capture JPG images too. But if your photographer is shooting JPG on assignment, you should probably find another photographer.)   RAW format has amazing flexibility for color, brightness and sharpness correction. RAW format brings the best out of your images - for screen and print. But... when you take a RAW image and open it on your computer, it really does not look that great straight out of the camera. And the file size is at least 3 times bigger than JPG, so it opens slowly and painfully. When it does, it is very neutral: colors are a bit dull, contrast is a bit bland, sharpness is not really there. It requires retouching work in specialized editing software to bring the best out of it.  Once that work is done, you can save the result as a JPG file that will look amazing on screen and in print - way better than if you have taken the exact same image in JPG format. 

I hope this explains why you should always make sure that your photographer takes RAW images and does at least basic retouching on all of them.. if it does not happen, you've just hired a Ferrari with a driver who just  won't go faster than 20 mph! Don't let that happen to your wedding or portrait images, ever!
 

Valentine's Day is here, and it's a big day for me and Ed - we got married on Valentine's Day last year.
Our photographer Michael Albert was absolutely great, and since it was a destination wedding, we got all images immediately - unprocessed, but looking fantastic. Michael did not want to risk traveling with all the backups of the images just on his person, so we got a couple DVDs right away, and we made a few copies for our friends to carry back in case our stuff got lost or stolen during the remainder of the trip.
When we came back after the wedding, it only took a couple of weeks to recieve the best retouched images.
I have been making prints throughout the year - some framed on the walls of our house, some pinned to the walls in my office. Since I started my official wedding photography business, I've been using our own images to test various professional labs. So far, WHCC is my favorite for large prints on specialty paper, and Mpix  does a fantastic job with everyday small prints (and I love thier affordable foam core backs!)

But I digress.. this post is really about our wedding album. As a gift to ourselves for our anniversary, I designed a coffee-book album using Michael's photos. It was partly a test of how the album design works, as it's something that I have never done before. I'm happy to report that it was an exciting and exhausting exercise, but now I may be ready to add albums to my list of services!

I ran across this article on the Digital Photography Forum site and I thought is was a very good read. It clearly explains why photographers charge what they charge, and how a 2 hour photo session is really a full 8-10 hour day of work for your photographer (or, in my case - 2 hrs every evening for 4 days after the photoshoot!).

http://www.caughtonfilmphoto.com/costofphotography.html

I had the pleasure of photographing a very exotic wedding in Weatherford, TX yesterday. It was a delightful blend of cultures, foods and pumpkins. I loved the orange/brown theme that perfectly matched the natural fall setting. Enough words - let the preview speak for itself! 

I get asked that a lot, so I decided that a post on this subject will be a useful addition to my blog.

Comfort: The single most important thing is for you to be comfortable during the photo session. If you are not comfortable in what you are wearing, or in how it fits, it will show in your facial expressions and body language. Some people are comfortable in stilettos, and that's great! But if you are only comfortable in flip-flops, please wear the flip flops!

Matching outfits: when I say 'matching', I don't mean identical. Identical sometimes looks ok, but most of the time, it's an overkill. It is important to have the same level of "dressiness"  - if  one person is dressed for an upscale wedding reception, and the other one is wearing jeans and t-shirt, the couple will not look like they belong together.  It is also good to think about the colors - do all colors in both outfits coordinate to some extent? Are the patterns complementing or confilcting?

Color and texture: I generally recommend wearing solid colors, preferably muted (not too bright/saturated). I advise against stark white or deep shiny black. Bright colors detract atention from the faces, and bright white and deep black do not photograph as well, because they bring a lot of shart contrast to the images. I also advise against patterns or large details and logos on the clothing - they will also detract attention from you. Having said all that, these are my recommendations, not requirements. If you love bright pink Juicy Couture tops, and they express your personality better than a muted dress - go for it!!  

Change of clothes: I recommend bringing 2-3 different outfits along for the shoot, or at least 2 tops to change into. It will give some variety to the images. Extra accessories work well for women -  some jewelry, a scarf or a shawl - these can instantly change your look without too much work. For men, it is not as easy - but if your woman has a dressy outfit packed, consider bringing a tie - it can quickly dress you up from the waist up for some close up shots (and I'll make sure that your jeans are not in the frame for those shots!)

Some inexpensive clothes: why does this matter? Sometimes, the mood, the weather and the environment set us up for some real fun creative shots: rolling in the grass, wading in the fountain, sitting on the pavement, and so on. It's a real shame if your nice clothes prevent you from having fun and getting those unique images that express your character. So wearing something that you don't mind getting a little wet and a little dirty is often a good idea. 




 

Yesterday I had the pleasure of photographing a beautiful wedding at Fairy Tale Manor in Frisco. It's my first wedding at this venue, and I was very impressed with the efficiency of the staff and lightning fast turnaround. I only wish the wedding lasted longer - it was very fast paced! 
I did engagement photos for this wonderful couple in the summer, and this time I got to meet their 3 year old son Carter. What a cute and well behaved kid! He was a real trooper running down the aisle with the ring pillow! 
Here are a few photographic highlights from their wedding:
 

My husband and I took a quick weekend trip to Ohio to visist my parents a couple of weeks ago. I did not take my camera with me - what a mistake! The fall leaves were absoultely astonishingly beautiful, and my pittle pocket point-and-shoot did not do justice to the fall colors. This would have been an unbelievable setting for enganement or wedding portraits... But, this time l am featuring leaves only - no people! 

On Sunday, I met Lori and Jerry by the garden entrance for an introduction and an engagement photo session. What a lovely young couple!  They were a little shy at first, so we started our warm up by rehearsing some first dance moves on the lawn, and then things only got better...

We found this wonderful pond with a fountain. I asked the couple to go to the far side of the pond and just be themselves, occasionally remembering about the camera.. and here is what we got:

Then, things were getting steamier and sexier by the moment:

Both Jerry and Lori are very photogenic, so it was easy to find a flattering angle.. My favorite individual portraits are here... note that Jerry actually smiles all the time, but I wanted to get a serious look out of him for this one portrait.

And at the end of the session, we added some Cowboys themed fun at Jerry's request: 

Thank you for a great session!

Here is to the new beginnings!