We had a fun challenge shooting Ivy’s bridal portraits last month. The goal was to shoot one normal portrait and one creative portrait. Ivy told us to that once the photographs that would satisfy her family were taken that we would then have free reign to do as we pleased as long as we didn’t destroy the dress one month before the wedding.
We chose the Scottish Rite Dormitory to give the main portraits an old world feel. The main lobby gave us quite a few angles to shot in and big glass windows streaming in sunlight. We used both soft natural light, strobe soft light from an 86 inch umbrella and a hard grid to give a speakeasy feel to the piano photograph. The dorm really has great potential and we loved the stares and questions from the young college students as we navigated around their study locations.
While we were at the dorm my buddy Andrew, one of our senior photographers, took 4 portraits with his 1953 Speed Graphic 4×5 film camera. We lit them with a 1×1 FV led light panel and then processed the scans in photoshop to really give the resulting image a vintage almost Hollywood feel to it. It’s the last photograph in this post and we love the way it turned out.
Our 2nd and final location is the graffiti wall at 10th and Baylor. We chose the topside to also photograph the Austin skyline with the Capitol also in view. Ivy made a video to encourage Ellen to attend her wedding and she used this location for part of the video, wearing one of my wedding dresses! (We have 6 now and are always taking donations…) So there was some synchronicity to this location as well, plus it has great colors to use against a white wedding dress.
Thanks to Ivy and her family for allowing us to take a leap away from normal in our bridal portraits. The wedding was a blast and we have lots more images to share coming soon
–JB
Josh loves a good adventure and some of his favorite wedding and engagement shoots have involved “getting crazy” or going somewhere special to the couple.
Josh is a Texas native and long time Pflugerville resident. He started his photography business in 2009 and has never looked back. His photo business even allowed him to be daddy-day-care before his two sons reached school age. Over the years his business has expanded to include just about every type of photography including automotive, editorial portraits, corporate events, sports and food. Through it all, he has continued to love wedding photography for genuine moment, the fast pace and the diversity of subjects it offers. Josh is a co-founder of North Austin Pfoutographic Society and a resident instructor at Precision Camera & Video in Austin, Tx.