Wedding Tip : Let them eat cake!

I have yet to attend a wedding that didn't have cake. It's a staple of event, as universal as white dresses and tuxedos. Here are a couple of tips about the wedding cake.



It's preferable to keep the cake table away from a corner and not too close to a wall. The reason for this is purely photographic. It will likely be indoor and or dark at the time of the cake cutting which will necessitate flash photography. If the cake table and bride and groom are close to a wall the flash will cast a big ol shadow behind them. If the cake table is away from the wall, then this shadow won't be so apparent.

Cupcakes. More and more often I have been seeing cupcakes used to supplement the wedding cake. This is nice if your reception is more of a "come and go" type of event where some guests might not be staying long enough to be there for the cutting of the cake but would still like to have some baked sugary goodness.



Cake cutting. More often than not I can rely on a small degree of panic from the bride and groom when it's time to cut the cake....
"HOW DO WE DO THIS?!?!?"
Don't stress about it. Nobody can see what you're doing on your side of the cake anyways. It doesn't have to be pretty, just cut out a couple of small bite sized pieces that you can feed to each other. Don't ask for help from your coordinator or caterer because neither of us really want that person to be in your cake shots, do we? How "nice" you are to each other when you feed each other is totally up to you, always careful not to get any on expensive gowns or suits but a little frosting on the face is always fun!

Safety first...

It has been a while since I have done one of my random post that isn't about a photoshoot. In the digital photography world there is a saying: "an image doesn't exist until it exists in 2 places"



You'll have to forgive the very "flowchart" feel to the image above but I wanted to demonstrate how I do my best to keep images safe from every shoot that I do.
1) The very first copy of the image is going to exist on the memory card inside the camera. I have a ton of these things and they don't get cleared off until a job is completely processed, posted, and delivered.
2) The first thing I do when I get home from photographing anything (no matter how late it is) is to download the images on the cards to the computer. So now we have accomplished our goal right? The images now exist in 2 places so we are all done right? WRONG.
3) Connected to my computer is a sizable external hard drive that is set-up to mirror the hard drive on my computer. So as soon as I copy images from the cards to the computer that hard drive kicks on and start to copy the new image files from the computer to the external hard drive. (so now the images exist in 3 places)
4) Usually within a week of downloading the pictures I'll will have picked out the best images. I'll process, edit, and correct them and then they are ready to be uploaded for online viewing and ordering. I use Pictage as my print fulfillment and online previewing partner. My favorite thing about Pictage is that they keep high resolution copies of all my files on their servers indefinitely, this means that I if a freak hurricane strikes East Mesa, and my computer, memory cards, and external hard drive all get washed away I can still recover my images from Pictage as an offsite backup.
Thanks for reading. I hope this post has shown how important keeping images safe is to me and my business. Check back tomorrow for posts of the shoots I did in Pinetop last weekend.

Location, Location, Location

My friend Julie sent me this article at work the other day and I thought it was interesting. It lists the top 5 places in the valley to take pictures.
http://phoenix.about.com/od/wedphoto/a/photospot.htm
In summary here are the Top 5:
1. Papago Park.
2. Scottsdale Civic Center
3. Tempe Townlake
4. The Superstitions
5. Freestone Park

The cool thing is that all of these places are on the east side pretty much. Out of these 5 I have only shot at Tempe Townlake.

My list would go something more like this:

1. Mesa Arts Center
2. The Pecans
3. Tempe Townlake
4. Las Sendas
5. Agritopia

I have done most of my shooting at these 5 places. Where do you take pictures? -> leave a comment!!! I love checking out new places and I totally plan on checking out the other 4 locations listed in the article.

Screen capture video...

I know alot of people that have photoshop and have no idea how to use it. This is an effect that is super simple. If you watch closely you should have no problem replicating on your own pictures.