George and I are not ordinarily very sentimental people - perhaps me even more so than him (actually, now that I think about it -
definitely I am less sentimental). Yesterday, we were supposed to celebrate our second anniversary at a reasonably fancy restaurant. I ditched him to go
second shoot a wedding. But here's the thing - George was totally on-board. He wasn't even mad, and we've rescheduled our dinner. (All photos from this post are big thanks to wedding photographer
Angel Kidwell, who photoed George and me recently in our neighborhood).
And I was about to say it's one of my favorite things about "us", but there are just so many many things I love about us. But this is one: we are an eminently practical couple. We will literally discuss the total benefit or inconvenience to our unit for a given situation to determine the course of action. This makes it sound like we don't have fun - which we do - but we've sorta faced up to what is actually fun for us (random adventures, board games, cooking) vs. what we're supposed to think is fun (going to loud bars/clubs, movies, the beach). We're just two years in and some before that, but we've been stripping away what is not good for us and building a life of stuff that is great.
Too many things to say about George, so I'll just share a little family anecdote and hope it tells you something about who we are.
We're wine drinkers. Not fancy-schmancy wine-store wine. No, we drink Trader Joe's wine. And we exclusively drink the $4-$6 bottles because I read somewhere that they are actually much more expensive wine when sold under private label. And who can tell expensive wine from cheap wine anyway? In any case, we drink wine on a regular basis. And after dinner, where I've been dutifully sipping my glass, we'll retire to our "living area" (there are no "rooms" in our efficiency) and I'll bring the wine. And never touch it after that.
But every single morning after we've been drinking wine, I'll be putzing around and find two empty wine glasses. Two because at some point the previous night, my husband finished off my wine. He didn't ask or make a big deal out of it - he just picked up my glass and finished it off. To me, that is something very intimate and sweet - that he a) knows me well enough to know that I won't finish the wine, b) knows I want the wine to be consumed, so as to reduce waste and best yet c) doesn't bother to ask if I'm done.
To me, this is the best part of marriage (or any long-term partnership) - you get to know this other person so well. I thought I knew George soooo well
a year ago. But I know him much better now. I can't imagine what our relationship will be like in five years, ten years, fifty years. I'm pretty pumped about it, really.
So to my enormously gracious husband, who supports absolutely everything I am and want to be, happy anniversary! It rocks having you on my team.
So this image is clearly not my strongest work. I was using inferior equipment and my shutter speed wasn't fast enough to make Colin and Sara sharp as they walked away from their ceremony. In fact, I didn't include this image in my portfolio selection to show those first WPJA people I wrote. That is, until Sara told me it was one of her favorite images from the wedding. Not her portraits (those are sharp) or the dancing - instead the way Colin is looking at her, how happy she is, their bests standing in the background. It was something I learned early - that what really matters is expression, moments, personality.
While Sara and her ladies were getting ready, she wanted to do a champagne toast to everybody. They got all the champagne poured and everybody was holding their glasses. "Now everybody look at me and smile!" I said. Sara stopped me: "No, no, I want this to be real." I consider that simple exchange (an embarrassing one for me, to be sure) to be a really important first step in developing my approach to weddings.
So when I'm at a wedding now, priority number one is not getting in the way - particularly during the ceremony. A wedding isn't a production or a stage show and it's not about photography. My job is to capture what happens, not to falsify anything going on and not to disrupt. I'm frequently asked at client meetings how much I will "stage" or "pose" during a wedding day. And my answer is this: I pose bride and groom portraits and family formals, and take "say cheese" photos during cocktail hour. When a bride puts on her dress, I might ask her to stand in the best light in the room, but then I back off and let her have her moment with her mother, maid of honor or whoever is helping her. I'd say 90% of my coverage is completely unposed and undirected. And that's why it's such an honor to be a wedding photographer - it might be just me with the bride and her father before she walks down the aisle; or just me and the couple as they walk away from the ceremony. And when my couples trust me to capture the moment but stay out of the way, it really is the greatest part of my job.
So to Colin and Sara and each of my couples, thank you for trusting me and thank you for being you.
And sometimes he's not expecting it.
And though I have to remind him sometimes that he needs to put the "little black square" on my face and even so, there are major focus issues (yes, George, major focus issues!) he can still manage to make some very nice compositions. You know, when I force the camera in his hands and say "make me a new 'about me' image."
This one I love. Who knew George had a knack for "moments"?
And, finally, some fun and how I can't tell the difference between two ridiculously different colors. Soooo about my jacket. See up there how it's red? That's the color it is. But when I was in the H&M getting excited about it, I was completely sure that it was "Amber Wilkie Photography" orange. I even tweeted about it! It wasn't until the next day when I looked at the jacket in the bag that I realized "well hey, this jacket looks really red." No, no, I thought, it's just this lighting. But after careful photographic analysis, I have to conclude that the jacket is, indeed, very much red and I am ridiculous.
But then in comes the magic of Photoshop! One red-orange hue slider, a copy of the layer and a mask to bring back the red in my face and glasses and voila! It's an orange jacket! (PS: Isn't it weird having two of me staring at you? We know things...)
And for those of you interested in the whole photography thing from a technical standpoint vs. just looking at nice pictures - these were shot at the edge of an overpass. There is bright, bright sunlight hitting white pavement right in front of me and George, just out of camera. Sun is camera left, but I'm standing in the shade of the overpass. Yeah, boy, natural reflectors!