Gresham Photography 101: Our Style

The first thing I tell a bride and groom who are considering having us shoot there wedding is this:

"If you don't like our pictures, than we're probably not the right photographers for you."

A little harsh? I don't think so.

The worst thing we can have happen in the photography business is a client who is unhappy with our images after the fact. It's hard for them and for us as artists who love nothing more than a client who is pleased with our work. That said, we encourage everyone interested in our photography to look at past pictures we've taken, and picture themselves in that situation. Do you like the focus, angles, color, background?.....you get the idea.

Every wedding is different, of course, which means the same picture will NEVER happen twice. But as photographers that shoot 30+ weddings a year, we start to approach certain situations, say, the bouquet toss, in a similar fashion. Stacey is always going to get the shot of the bride throwing her flowers, while I am always going to get the shot of the rabid girls behind her as they start throwing punches. (I've seen it happen. No lie.)

If you're thinking about hiring us...look at our pictures. Look at a full wedding in our proofs section.

If you like what you see than we might be the right fit for you. But if your seeing a good number of shots that you feel like you wouldn't want for your wedding, than we might not be the best fit for your big day.

We want you to be happy with your pictures, and in turn, we want to be able to take the pictures the way we best know how.

On that note, here's what we know how to do...

Trying to define our style into one particular category, such as "photojournalistic" or "traditional" is about as easy as getting our beagle Bailey to stop chewing on things. (If you saw our apartment you would understand)

We've definitely developed what I would call a "look" over the past few years, but we prefer to not limit ourselves to shooting one "kind" of photography. Every wedding, every bride and groom, and every day for that matter, provide different challenges to both us and our subjects. While some people are more comfortable and feel relaxed when they're getting 1200 pictures taken of them in an eight-hour period, it's not as easy for others. That said, we're going to get great images of our couples regardless of if they're nervous or not -- with the only difference being how "posed" (ahhh! We hate that word) the images will look.

So we've clarified that we do not do well as photographers with words such as "style", "posed" and "chewing". However, some of the things that we've noticed in our images, in our honest opinion, set us apart from other photographers. It doesn't make us better or worse....just different. Here's some of the characteristics we've come up with to describe our images:

Genuine

Every wedding is going to have that image of the bride and groom standing at the alter looking at the camera. And while we always try to get this photo when we're shooting, it's not always the image that our couples ooh and ahh over after the wedding. We love catching our two subject in the moment...when they've forgotten about the camera and are so busy looking at the person they love that they will oftentimes not even remember we were taking their picture. Here's an example:


This is the type of shots that we look for during the wedding day. Lauren and Kevin knew we were taking pictures of them dancing, but I shot this from across the dance floor while they were enjoying a moment between just the two of them.

"Photographer? What photographer?"

Colorful

We shoot all of our images in full 14-bit color. The nice thing about digital is, we can go back and switch some over to some classy B&W when need be. Our favorites, hence the motto "simple.color.", are those shots when there's a gorgeous mix of color.

We work diligently in our post-processing to make sure and bring out EVERY color as much as possible. While there's always a place and time for a classic black and white shot, we're always looking for ways to use alot of different bright colors in our images. Take this one for example:


From the sky to the buildings, to Lori's gorgeous blond hair, this is one of our favorites from recent weddings. (This was taken seconds after the ceremony, by the way, and I can promise you that Lori and Chris were oblivious to us at this point. The veil was blown over Chris' head by the wind, so we avoided the "posed" word!)

Active

We thought long and hard about the best word to describe, what we feel, is one of our most unique characteristics. You'll notice in alot of our images that we take a good number at a variety of angles and vantage points. Not every shot is a straight on, portrait-style picture. I feel like this is a great way to give our pictures life.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, when you seeing something happening in front of you, it's not evenly framed or straight up and down. There's angles involved -- angles that cast shadows and force a different perspective on the viewer. I believe Stacey and I have become very good at this type of shot over the past few years. As in these examples:



These are oftentimes very subtle angles, but they do the trick!

Every week Stacey and I find ourselves trying new things. Which mean, in one way or another, our "style" is constantly evolving. We encourage every one of our couples to constantly check our blog, as we update it at least once a week. Even if their wedding is 10 months away, we hear from some of our brides all the time, telling us how much they liked a shot that we took at a previous event. By tracking our blog, you'll be able to track our "style" and see where we're taking our images.

Thanks for stopping by!