Federer Photography - Minnesota Wedding Photographers

Metal Wedding Albums … say what?!?

Okay, the whole album isn’t metal, but the cover is printed on metal, then bonded to a polycarbonate backer… then the whole thing gets a protective UV coating to make it last centuries. It’s pretty slick… take a look:

And of course, is still made with the top-notch quality that I talked about in my blog post about what the physical wedding albums are like a while back. Check out the thick substantive pages, tightly molded and pressed spine, and the look of a full 24×9 spread (they went with a 12×9 album and oriented it horizontally — it certainly made the full spreads dramatic). I was also really happy with the choice Susan and Troon made for the choice of leather – it worked especially well with the tan suit Troon wore (before he jumped into the kilt, of course).

Prior to this, I’d never actually gotten a full metal cover, so I was a bit excited — I’m glad they decided to give it a go, it really gave it a stylish look that worked wonderfully with the tones in the cover image they selected. I personally feel that ‘crazy different’ tends to not be quite a timeless as something with a more subtle approach. This fits in perfectly with my ethos that your wedding photographs should be modern, yet not gimmicky – they must still retain a level of timelessness. The metal cover is unique – but isn’t ‘out there’ or something you’ll shake your head about in 20 years. It offers an almost subconscious, “that’s different” feel. I might have to add this to my sample set…

I’m totally famous…

I just got interviewed by Shane from PhotoProofing’s* new “Business of Photography” section. I think that officially makes me a superstar… Or the only person willing to respond. Jury’s still out … :p

Anyway, if you want to get your photo-biz talk quota for the year (and a little history on your’s truly), go do some reading

It’s actually part 1 of a 2 part series of questions he asked about me and my business over email.  It’s all based around starting a new photography business and trying to give people starting out a little learnin’.  For the budding photographer, it’s a worthwhile site with experiences and viewpoints from many different aspects of the industry.

*I do not use nor endorse photoproofings products. Wait, that sounds bad… I don’t not endorse them I’m sure they are perfectly fine… I just don’t….  bah, this is going terribly…. this newfound big head I have is not working very well…. I’m going to go on time out…

Happy Halloween 2010

For those of you not friends on facebook, here is my 2010 jack-o-lantern.   And to preempt the question I’m sure you are all to have:  Yes, I am wearing a fleece, dress pants, and crocs.

Best part of this photograph…

The really happy bride? Nope. (though that is awesome)
The maid of honor busting a gut with laughter? Nope. (try again)
The family and friends all surrounding the bride? Nope. (love is great… but that’s not it)
The motion captured – dress flying, beads floating in the air? Nope. Nope. (fun, but sorry)

Check on the floor, to the right of the girl in yellow. Yep. A dog, chillin’ on the dance floor… how cool.

What do your wedding albums look like?

One of the more common questions I get is “What are your albums like?”.  I generally respond “Awesomeness in album form”, but that’s not very descriptive; so here is an attempt to actually help answer that question properly.

When you order an album from me, we start by talking about cover styles, number of leaves, size, etc — just getting a rough idea of what my constraints are. I, typically, am then left to my own devices to design the album the best I can to tell the story of the day.  When that first draft is done I send electronic copies of the album out; in a flurry of e-mails or meetings we swap in/out images, change designs and layouts, add pages, reprocess images, etc until we have the 100% perfect album for the client.

Then I go to production and the client receives their album in a month or two.  When it arrives, the 100% custom, handcrafted album is wrapped with handmade pineapple leaf paper, recycled mulberry ribbon, and a skeleton leaf as an accent.  The ‘true’ cover is actually protected by another thin layer of paper.  Check it out:

Great – so it shows up and looks sweet, but what about the actual album?

This particular wedding album is a 9×12 25-leaf album.  The cover is made with a metallic print bonded to the back of a beveled piece of cystal acrylic.  It’s hard to convey what a metallic print looks like – it’s one of those ‘must see’ things; it works awesome on the right image.  I also do covers on metal, canvas, leather, etc.

The back and spine is a textured leather, the pages are thick and stiff, and the binding is solid yet flexible.  The whole book reeks of craftsmanship – you are getting your wedding images to last for generations – your album should too.

The album innards are made of the highest-grade photographic prints.  The image can span the ‘crease’ – allowing dramatic double-page spreads and a ton of creative design options.  (check out the crease photographs below)  The prints, effectively, ARE the pages; this ain’t your grandmas slip-in-a-bunch-of-4×6′s album.  The pages are roughly the thickness of a quarter (yes, for those of you curious, that’s a Minnesota quarter in the image below… ).

This album has one of my favorite pages ever in it.  It’s relatively common that the last song of the night everyone sways back and forth to “Piano Man”,  but those that went to St. John’s University will understand this must be done with all the males pants’ around their ankles.  So, of course, I’ve got more than my fair share of photographs of Nate’s tookus.   As a joke on the last page of the first draft, I dropped in a “The End” page…  Nate liked it and it made the final cut.  I love my clients!

Custom Stoneware

Mindy Erickson, of Custom Stoneware, contacted me to do some product photographs of her cool pottery.  She makes some really beautiful pieces that I wish had found a way into my cupboards.   It was a different job for me, but it was very interesting to do; the attention to every single detail of shadow, light, reflection, and color was significantly different than my standard ‘people’ and wedding photography – where those things are important, but can’t be ‘tweaked endlessly’ and also fall second to the main goal; which, for me, is emotion, connection, and the scene as a whole.  Remove the ‘emotion’ and once-in-a-lifetime-ness, and suddenly the rest of what makes an image falls into stark clarity.

Spending an hour creating only a few images was a frustrating, yet strangely peaceful, zen-like, process.

Mmmm… beer. (and blog issues)

My blog is having problems remembering what I write, it’s making me mad. Grr. I’ll re-write (for a 4th time), but I do it under protest and in super-duper summary mode!  Trust me, the original text was sweet – I bet it would have changed some of your lives.

<Summary mode>
I like beer.  I like ‘traveling’ to places and experiencing cultures via different beers.

If you have any beers (or just caps) that I don’t – I’d like to have them.  Sock away your unique caps and hook me up. 

1st time doing product-style photography.  Eliminating creativity, dynamic lighting, story telling, etc is pretty hard but being able to re-shoot makes things a bit more peaceful than my normal wedding work.

This is a large chunk of my collection but not all.
</Summary mode>

Touching article…

In an e-mail exchange I had recently with another photographer (Rogier van Bakel) I was passed this article…   I wanted to share it with you all.

It’s written by a wedding photographer and contains some interesting, comical, sad, and loving moments. It kind of moseys from place to place over 4 pages…  but where it meanders is touching and thought provoking (at least for a wedding photographer like me, or anyone intersested in the business…).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/29/AR2007082902031.html

I really hooked because he starts by talking about the gripping fear of your cell phone going off — I’m so terrified of my cell going off, I don’t even bring it in the building with me when I’m photographing a wedding… so I could relate.    Here’s a couple quick snippets of the article:

“On average these days, one and a half guests will receive a phone call during a wedding, often smack during the vows, the inevitable tinny strains of Beethoven’s Ninth emanating, just as I’m sure Beethoven himself would have wanted, from the circuit board of a Motorola RAZR.”

…

“…I received an e-mail from a photographer looking for an internship. His short note almost brought me to tears: “I come from Sarajevo, Bosnia, and my life has put me though many challenges. I am saying this because I have had the chance to see the worst in humans and was lucky enough to survive it. Since then, I have made it my goal to help people record their happiest moments, because those moments are rare and precious, and one never has too many of them.” “

That’s all…  no real point other than wanting to share a good article with you all.