Subscribe to RSSAngela and JT are awesome.
It's not really fair having a wedding this great at the beginning of the season. It sets the bar unreasonably high for the rest of the year. Katie and David got married at Rancho Chiquita, a private residence, in the hills of Malibu. The grounds of the home were set up PERFECTLY for a wedding and the incredible house was a perfect backdrop to shoot against. The fact that its in the hills overlooking the ocean didn't hurt either. Haha. :)
Here are some favorites from their day!
Ely Roberts is a photographer from San Luis Obispo and when he brought his girlfriend to New York to propose to her he wrote and asked if I'd shoot an engagement session of them while they were in town. I've said it before but I love shooting photographers, haha. They're up for anything and whether they are or not they at least act like they're comfortable in front of the camera.
It was a blast hanging out with Ely and Abby that afternoon and I love the images from the session. Here are some favorites.
If you're a photographer or even just blogger you really need to check out BlogStomp. I've been using their actions to prep my blog images for about a year and a half but they just came out with an App that doesn't need Photoshop to resize, sharpen, create collages, add your logo or watermark, resize and save for web. It's unbelievable. Check it out.
I love this series, haha. Ely was playing around and jokingly got down on one knee reenacting the proposal... I wonder if anyone has ever done that for engagement pictures before?! Haha.
So, I suck. Between travelling, shooting, WPPI and everything else, it’s been a busy month. It’s taken WAY too long but it’s time to wrap this thing up
We have a winner…
Ashley Turner! Congrat’s Ashley, send me an email to claim your Madera Book! For the rest of the finalists I have something special for you too. Shoot me an email and I’ll fill you in!
I want to thank everyone so much for participating. This is a big issue in the industry right now and I’m really encouraged by everyone that sent in entries
Congrats again Ashley!
Last week I announced a contest. I grossly underestimated how much I would hate judging. You think it would be easy… it’s not. It’s a very difficult thing to place one person’s work next to another person’s work and say, “this one’s better”. I got a lot of great entries and saw some great moments. In the end I was so frozen with indecision that I had to enlist the help of my friends. We chose these five because of the strength of the whole collection. Some people had individual images that were stronger but we felt these as a whole conveyed the emotion of the day the best.
That said, THANK YOU so much for participating. Like I said before, I’m far from a pure photojournalist but I still take my job of documenting the couple’s day very seriously. And, in this day of styled shoots and wedding blogs showing almost exclusively details and portraits it seems like photographers have begun shooting for publication more than the couple.
If you weren’t picked please don’t hate me. :) I thought there were SO MANY deserving photographers, but we had to narrow it down to 5. If you click on the photographer’s name it will take you to their post of all of the moments from the wedding. Here are the finalists:
I just heard from one of my brides from last summer that her wedding was published in Manhattan Bride Magazine. I love seeing my images in print... even if the images aren't the ones I would have chosen... or the way I'd crop them... or how I'd lay them out. Haha.
I also got an email from The Knot that their first coffee table book, The Look Book is out on stands with a bunch of my images in it! There are lots of images on the pages so I won't go through and point out mine but if you've been following my blog for a while they should look familiar.
I shot Veronica and Jason's wedding in San Pedro a few weeks ago. As I was going through the images I loved how many great authentic moments there were. It got me thinking about my job as a photographer. Looking back over the images from Cyndie and I's wedding, the images that mean the most are the ones that captured a moment and more specifically an emotion. THIS is what weddings are about. Sure, I love to shoot portraits. I'd probably go so far to say that's my favorite part of the wedding day. But, the fact remains that in the end I'm there to shoot a WEDDING... and weddings are about 2 people coming together to join their lives. That is an incredibly emotional thing and we, as photographers, are given the responsibility of capturing it.
I've never received an email from a client saying, "I didn't even know you were there!" I talk, laugh, joke with my clients throughout the day. It makes them comfortable having me around and I feel like I get better images because of it. I'm definitely not a pure photojournalist but I take the responsibility of documenting their wedding day very seriously.
So after thinking about all of that I decided to do and entire blog post only showing "moments" from the day... no portraits, no details. The only images I had any hand in "staging" were the ones from the "First Look" and those I only told them where to stand. The rest were as real as they get.
So here's the contest.
If you're a photographer I want you to blog an entire wedding with no portraits, no details and no staged or directed shots. I don't care if you've already blogged the wedding. Go through and pick out the best moments and show me what you've got.
Leave a comment below telling me you want to be a part of the contest. You'll have 6 days to blog it. Next Thursday I will go through all of the entries and pick my 5 favorites. On Friday I'll post the finalists and we'll have a vote. Monday the winner will be announced.
One last thing... This is not about getting everyone from Facebook and Twitter to vote for you. I'll be checking up on everyone to make sure their not campaigning. Telling people to check out the contest is cool but none of this "I REALLY need your vote to win this contest" stuff I see all of the time. OK? Cool.
THE WINNER will receive a FREE 8x10 10 spread (20 side) album from Madera Books. (or an equal credit toward another size album).
Okay, now on to the images.
I love how everyone in the room has a hand in helping her get her dress on, haha. Only on a wedding day is that normal.
The first look and a quick prayer.
I LOVE this shot of Veronica and her dad watching everyone enter the ceremony. I was able to get this because I had my good friend and awesome photographer, Victor Sizemore shooting the processional. Good second shooters give you the freedom to take risks on the wedding day to get images you couldn't if you had to get the "safe shot".
Another great father/daughter moment.
A few shots from their communion that I love.
Shooting the recessional is always one of my favorite things. The couple is always so excited and usually shows a lot of emotion.
I also love focusing on the couple during the toasts. There's always a lot of great reactions.
This was one of my favorite weddings from last year and I'm just now getting around to blogging it. It was a collection of some of my favorite people to work with and it was at an amazing venue.
Wedding Coordinator: The amazing Angel Swanson
Florist: Kristin from the Treasured Petal
Cake: Melanie from Sweet and Saucy Shop
Venue: Rancho Las Lomas
Kristin (the bride) is a graphic designer and designed all of the stationary for the wedding. It was amazing. So much thought went into everything. Everything involved in the wedding fit together so perfectly. From the invitations to the color of her shoes, even to the color of the clothes she wore during their engagement shoot! I LOVED this wedding.
I love this shot of Kristin's mom helping her get ready... and if you look closely you can see Jessica Claire in the reflection as well. She's my favorite second shooter. :)
A couple of sweet moments from the first look:
I think parents often get overlooked during the wedding day. I love shooting the father walking his daughter down the aisle. Its always such a great moment, and you can tell how proud Kristin's dad was that day.
I also love shooting the parents during the ceremony. There are always so many great moments.
A few portraits on the amazing grounds at Rancho Las Lomas.
The couple with Angel Swanson, one of my favorite people to work with!
I think burnout is one of the biggest creative obstacles professional photographers have to deal with. We shoot thousands upon thousands of photographs for our clients and when the work is over picking up a camera is the last thing on our minds.
This is something I've definitely dealt with. I love photography and am so happy to be able to make a living doing something I love but after doing something 40,50, or 60 hours a week you need a break. So I gave myself permission to leave my camera at home a few times when heading out somewhere with Cyndie and Makenzie. Then that turned into never taking it out. As a photographer I felt justified. As a dad, I felt terrible, haha.
Then the iPhone came out and since I have my phone with me all the time, I have a camera with me too! The camera on the first iPhone was "good for a cell phone", the second was a bit better but mainly just more pixels. The 3Gs brought selective autofocus and exposure to the party and the iPhone4 is just freaking awesome. I use it ALL THE TIME. I love it. Not only is it super convenient, I actually like the photos and with the iPhone 4 the pictures are big enough to make a decent size print. Also because its a phone you can't really do a ton to the images so there's no real work that has to be done. They look cool and I didn't have to spend all day obsessing over skin tones. Haha.
I've been using an app called Instagram for a couple of months and I love it. Not only is it a really fun way to process your iPhone pictures but its also kind of like Twitter and Facebook. You can follow people's feeds and see when they post new images. You can "like" the images or leave comments. It's really fun.
If you have an iPhone and don't use it already, download it. If you already use it, follow me and I promise to return the favor. :) My username is @michaelnorwood.
Here are some of my instagrams from the past couple of months. I noticed there are a few distinct categories my photos fall into:
FAMILY... and my beautiful basset hounds :)
NEW YORK...we moved here last year and I'm still in awe of this place
FOOD AND DRINK...if you know me at all this isn't surprising
CRAZY/INTERESTING PEOPLE... yes that is NATALIE PORTMAN We sat next to each other last month on a flight, had a nice conversation, then I went into stalker mode and snapped a few pics of her before we got off the plane. She was super nice. :) I saw Santa on the beach in Waikiki last month and the crazy girls on the right were acting out scenes from harry potter while taking pictures of themselves... hence the tripod in the shot. To say it was entertaining would be an understatement. It was hysterical.
ARTSY FARTSY CRAP...
If you follow me on Twitter it will come as no surprise that I'm LOVING the snow here in Manhattan. I really do love it. We've gotten a TON too. In fact this month has gotten more snow than any other month in recorded history! Since December 26th we've gotten about 57 inches! Crazy. I think one of the reasons I love it is that unlike a lot of people I don't have to commute to work. I don't have a car I have to scrape clean every morning. I don't have to shovel steps or a driveway. I just get to look out the window at the beautiful snow. It's totally magical.
This morning we checked in with Makenzie's school and found out that they canceled school today. Makenzie was so excited. I took her up on the roof to look at the city covered in snow.
Here's what we saw.
Happy snow day! :)
