A great way to start off the 2015 wedding season: a trip to Center Island for engagement shots! We were able to make this a family day, and Christine and Nash came with us to the island. It was a beautiful day, perfect for shooting under the trees at Centerville. It was also great to have a few hours to get to know Lauren and Dan before their upcoming wedding in June. A great couple, super easy to get along with, which always makes working much easier. Here are a few of my favs from the day...
Shileen & Mark
Mark is an old friend of mine. We met back in highschool, oh so many years ago, and we've stayed friends since then. We've shared a love of all things Subaru, and both had Impreza WRX's done up in the full rally decal treatment as a local tribute to the Subaru World Rally Team (click here if interested in seeing a pic of mine!). If it wasn't Subaru, it was Simpsons. We can't have a discussion that doesn't have at least a handful of Simpsons jokes or references thrown in.
I remember years ago when Mark first met Shileen. They met at yoga class, and it seemed almost daily that Mark would come on MSN and ask tell me what had happened, what he should do next, and how to win over Shileen. I'm not sure I gave him any good advice, but he definitely did something right, because here we are, years later, and they're now married!
I don't think I've been to a wedding more well planned than this one. Even months before, at their shower, the details and thought that went into tying it all together was pretty impressive. They decided to have the wedding in Banff as they wanted a 'fairy tale snowy wedding'. Unfortunately, Banff had its warmest season in years. The day before, we were standing in the field for the rehearsal, and there was grass and dense fog, and everyone was worried there would be no snow, but, by some miracle, overnight it ended up snowing a few inches and the clouds and fog cleared. The temperatures were comfortable for everyone, but they still had the snow they wanted. Win/win for all!
We got to hit a few great locations that I'm sure I'll never be back to, as I'm not a skier or much of a snow sports person. We wrapped it all up at the Fairmont hotel, which might as well be a castle. I doubt I'll ever shoot in a castle again... but who knows!
“Aaron, as per usual, you’ve gone above and beyond with your effort, expertise, and delivery. We are so thankful that you and Ryan agreed to shoot our wedding. It’s sometimes difficult when friends get involved with the business end of things. This was truly a unique circumstance that worked. I’ve got to say, we got compliments about our photographers from our guests! I’m sure that doesnt happen every day.
Thank you thank you thank you!
PS. parking was ample.”
All in all, it was a great time. Not only was it a great place to shoot, but I got to work with my friend and fellow photographer Ryan Edwardson, as he is also a friend of Marks, and he asked both of us to shoot. It was a great few days spent with lots of highschool friends, shooting in some great locations, and capturing some great memories for Mark and Shileen. Thanks for having me out to shoot for you!
As a fun side note, Shileen and Mark requested 1 special picture in the spirit of silly wedding pictures. I think they had seen a dinosaur escape type picture somewhere, but since this was a wintery themed wedding, they thought it would be fun to be running from the monster from Frozen. So, at the end of the editting I put this together in a couple hours.
Promotional Video
At long last, this video is finally done. Off the top, I need to thank a few people. First, Ryan Edwardson for operating the camera, since I couldn't be in front of it AND behind it at the same time. We always work well together and I always enjoy the eye he brings to composition and framing. I also need to thank my couple, Courtney and Chauncey, for putting up with us as we wandered around Toronto setting up locations to shoot here and there. I don't think we released them until close to 2am! Finally, thanks to my buddy Andrew for coming along to help hold and move gear, generally support, and helping me get some of the 3D rendering completed.
Ill write more below, because I definitely have a lot to say about this project, but before I bury the player window under all that text, here is the final product...
When I started this project, I wanted to make a promo video that was different from all the other ones I'd seen. As I said right in the beginning, I've never been one to follow. I wanted something that reflected me. I had a script written up within a few days of coming up with this whole idea (back in June), but a few weeks ago when I was so close to finishing, I decided to rewrite and rerecord it to be more about myself, my family (my dad), and how we grew up. I wanted a different approach than what I was hearing on other photographers videos, about how much they love working with people, sharing in their special moments, and making new friends. This is not to say I DON'T value those aspects of the job, but I wanted to try and get across how being an artist and photographer has become important to me, and why. This fact has really be driven home to me lately in a very personal way. As I say in the video, thanks to my dad, we have thousands and thousands of photos from when we were kids. This is now especially important for us as he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The memories he captured as we grew, not only for us as we are now adults, but for him as well, are all that much more important to him because of his condition. It's so hard to see a loved on start to fade away, and cease to be the person they once were, but when we look through all those old photos of his, or watch some of his videos, he remembers, and he's happy. All his effort all those years ago has literally given him the ability to hold his now-fading memories in his hands one more time.
Aside from the personal aspect of what I wanted to say with this piece, there was the boat-load of effort it took to get it done. I don't think I've ever put so much work into one single project before this, and my wife can probably attest to that fact very easily. It was a mix of having to learn new things, being very very picky (probably 90% of it is pickiness), having to create a lot of content from scratch, having to do it in my spare time between other work, and of course spending time with Nash. It's amazing how easily a day could get eaten up by a handful of miscellaneous things, and all of a sudden the day is basically done, and I'd barely made any progress.
Every day was another set of things to learn. So much time spent reading, experimenting, learning the best way to do things given what I had to work with. I could have easily done things 10x easier, with some quick drag and drop editing, and generic titles, but again, I wanted to try and go above and beyond. I probably spent over a month alone on the part where we fly thru the camera lens, and see the image captured on the camera sensor. I probably spent a week or more doing just developing the text and titles. As my dad always used to say, "... if you're going to do it, do it right".
Once I had the video edited and started color correcting, I probably started over 3 times again. On one hand I had a look I was going for that I had in mind, and on the other hand I began to realize that even though I was making this video as much for myself as for other people, it had to look somewhat normal. My initial coloring choices were very extreme. In the end, I'm happy with where it ended up. It's a bit on the dark side, but that was part of the mood I was shooting for.
Eventually I got to the point where I realized I just needed to take my hands off the wheel and let it loose. I was getting so hung up on absolute quality, perfect colors, trying to squeeze every pixel of detail and sharpness out of the footage that I could. I finally had the finished version, it looked great, and then came the crushing realization that, no matter how hard I tried, most of my effort is instantly destroyed when uploading it to Youtube for public viewing. So I decided to purchase a Vimeo Plus account, which lets you upload in a less compressed HD format, and looks much truer to the original compared to YouTube.
The other thing I needed to get over (though I'm not quite there yet) is the fact that despite all the effort I put into the coloring of the footage, no one will ever see it the same way I do. Every screen is different. Almost no one, aside from professional artists, has a calibrated screen, and even if they do, moving your head an inch or 2 one way or the other can completely change how the image looks (this is not the case on phones and tablets, but on computer monitors viewing angle still matters). Not only that, but when you start throwing computer color space vs. tv color space into the mix, some encoders just assume you want TV colors, and again, you're left with a video that looks completely washed out from how it's supposed to look. More hurdles to figure out and get over.
In the end, video work is a battle. You fight the tools, you fight software, and you fight yourself. Its a lot of fun and its very rewarding, but to do it right is a lot of work. Most people will watch this and not give any thought about the work that went into it, and that's fine. I wouldn't be able to release it if I wasn't satisfied. So, if you're reading this, now you know some behind-the-scenes details. Hopefully you enjoyed it either way!
Isabell & Stephen
Its been great working with Bell and Steve over the passed year. Normally I only get to see the couple for the wedding, maybe an engagement shoot, but it was great to be able to work with them on their engagement video as well (If you haven't seen that, check it out here).
“Aaron has an amazing talent for capturing all the beautiful moments on your special day. You don’t realize he is there until you see the pictures and then you realize he was EVERYWHERE! Capturing all the moments that made you smile, laugh and cry and then more!
-Bell & Stephen”
I was also glad we ended up with a bit of rain earlier in the day. Fortunately it wasn't raining on us at any time while we were out shooting, but it gave us some nice wet shiny spots in the park for our pictures there. I know no one wants rain on their wedding day, but it does make for some great photos.
A nice church, wet leaves in the park, and a great reception hall.... a good day all over.