Brides Dress: Designed by Maggie Sottero, From Russell’s Bridal in Linden, NJ

Tuxedos: Dante’s in East Brunswick, NJ

Venue: The Primavera Regency in Stirling, NJ

Flowers: Mallory at 1 800 Flowers in South Plainfield, NJ

DJ: Enchanted Celebrations

Matt and I braved the frigid weather… all in the name of music. Matt specializes in Irish music and is available for hire! During our little shoot with his mandolin it was a fun creative challenge to work with a big teddy bear of a guy who plays a teenie tiny instrument. Enjoy some of my faves!

Location: East Jersey Olde Town. Piscataway, NJ

The bow tie thing… It’s kind of a big deal

Before the engagement shoot I like to pick your brain a little. It helps me get to know you better and get to know your style, interests, hobbies…  It might even give us some fun ideas for where we can do your engagement shoot. Whenever possible I like to help my clients think outside the box when choosing a site for the engagement shoot. We can do anything! We don’t have to shoot at a park. We can go to fun downtown locations, a historical landmark, a bookstore or how about the place you met? Let’s go somewhere that is unique and reflects who you are as a couple and how you came to be.

For clothing don’t be afraid of color or pattern. Please don’t be too matchy-matchy and don’t think you need to dress up. I don’t know any guy who feels most like himself in stuffy and confining dress clothes.  The most important thing is that you feel comfortable and feel like yourselves.

The best light to shoot in is just before sunset so ideally we should schedule the shoot for an hour and a half before sundown. This evening sun gives a nice warm glow to the images.

The engagement shoot can be a lot of fun if you come prepared to focus on one another, laugh and be affectionate. Affection is really key here. If you get in a big huge fight before your session we might have to reschedule. Most of the time I’m encouraging you interact and focus on one another rather than on me shooting you. That is the whole point after all.

Visit the Engagement Photo Gallery to view more images.

After a shoot, your raw, unedited, untouched images are downloaded (and backed up! I will get on my soap box about this one!) They are edited down to only the best images. Each and every one of those selected images are then taken into professional editing software and adjusted for overall exposure, color, contrast, saturation, highlights, shadows… Blah blah blah, its all mombo jumbo that means I make it look beautiful! This is by far the most time consuming part of the process. At this point your raw image has become a proof! Yay! If included in your package, these are the images you will get on a CD or have little 4×6 proof prints made from. These images will remain in the standard crop ratio that all professional digital cameras create images (2×3)

So you get your proofs, you love them and say, “Jenna I love this one image so much I want it as a 16×24!”

I will then take that image and process it further to become a Final Print. A final print means there are more adjustments made, but to specific areas, such as removing blemishes, slimming down body parts, smoothing out skin, removing distracting elements in the background, etc. If necessary, it will also be cropped to the proper crop ratio and sent to print.

See examples below of the evolution of a raw image to a proof to a final print.

Black & White vs. Color?
As I go through the process of creating your proofs I will process some in black and white. The reasoning behind this varies from image to image. Sometimes it’s because the color simply doesn’t add any interest to the overall image. Sometimes there are colors being cast onto the subject due to a brightly colored wall nearby. Sometimes the image has a really strong emotional component and I just want to clear away all the elements and distill it down to focus my viewer on the emotion. Basically there is always a good reason as to why I make an image black and white. Some people might ask to see it in color but I can promise you, It was made to be black and white for a reason and it will look better that way.

However if you wanted to order a 5×7, 8×10, or 11×14 (which are not the same aspect ratio as a 2×3) a significant portion of the image will be cropped out.

Check out the examples below. You’ll notice in the image of Jaimie and Brian against that awesome brick factory. Cropping it to a different ratio isn’t all that detrimental to the image. Yes, we still lose some of the building but all the important compositional pieces are still there.

Now check out this image below of Kate eating pasta. This image is particularly dynamic because of the elements on the very top and very bottom of the image. As we crop away to ratios that consume more of the image, you can see it loses it umph.

But not to fret… there is a solution.   As I mentioned earlier, you can always get larger prints made to custom sizes to keep all the awesome pixel-ey goodness in.

Be sure to check out some of my absolute favorite shots of the entire wedding season… Jaimie and Brian in front of this gorgeous old factory. Right up my alley!

Jaimie planned a couple games to play… The Newlyweds game being one of them. Jaimie and Brian won (and no it wasn’t fixed!)