Exploring other photographic genres

When photography is something you enjoy doing, even if you have another preferred photographic genre, you cannot refuse an opportunity to shoot something else. After all, you can become creative with any photo shoot, as long as you are enthusiastic about your project. Every new chance to think about your subject, the message you want to convey, composition, camera settings, even more if it’s something outside of your comfort zone (which is landscape photography in our case), can only be a new chance to improve.

With these things in mind getting us excited, we accepted the challenge to photograph a Trash The Dress session for my sister’s wedding.

While doing our to do list and preparing for our new project, we went on the road with a few ideas of our own. So below are some thoughts, that I want to share with you:

• we will not make magazine cover images, that would win awards, this is not our goal. Our goal will be to capture emotions, genuine feeling of the bride and the groom and the images will be their long lasting memories to be shared with their children and grandchildren;
• not go on the road with a specific image in mind, we would let things develop naturally along the way. Usually, when you seek a certain image you get stuck there and keep searching that particular image and miss other great photographic opportunities;
• not focus on couple posing, we will use some positions to get them started and work to obtain surprising moments of relaxation, joy, laugh, thinking, meditation – moments that are genuine and sincere;
• to get everything right from the camera (as much as possible) instead of relying on fixing everything latter in post processing – from composition, to camera settings, to looking around for distracting elements that can be easily eliminated on site;
• head in a clean spot – our mantra when photographing portraits;
• we will seek feedback along the way and collaborate to get ideas that will excite the newly married couple.

Now, there are some sites that might get you started, if you are doing a Trash the dress session for the first time:

• for different posses that you can try, at some point you will run out of ideas and these poses might help you moving, you can find here an interesting article;
• you can watch YouTube trash the dress sessions of Jason Lanier;
• inspire yourself from the creative photographs of Emin Kuliev, some of them are really interesting and nicely composed.

One and a half days latter, after

hiking cliffs

jumping

running

playing with water on the beach

fooling around

smiling

acting elegant

presumptuous

sexi

staying until the sun gets down

getting up at 4AM for a glorious sunrise

this is what we managed to pull out, the story of Madalina & Mihai