Monday, September 10, 2007

Sally & Rob's Lake Tahoe Wedding

Just got back from shooting Sally & Rob's wedding at North Lake Tahoe for Dennis DeSilva over at Studio Seven. Normally I shoot as 2nd for Dennis, but he had other weddings booked, so I took the lead on this job. Wow! What a beautiful setting for a wedding! I hadn't been up there in about 10 years and had forgotten how blue that water really is! We started the day off running around the north shore looking for some nice "Lake Tahoe" shots. Sally & Rob really love visiting the Tahoe area, so they wanted a lot of shots with the lake in the background. The good news was we had most of the day to look for photo opportunities since the wedding wasn't until 5PM. The bad news was mid-day isn't the best time for close-up portraits. So we had to take a lot of long shots like this. Another couple of problems were that, according to Sally & Rob, the beaches were uncharacteristically crowded for a post Labor Day weekend. So we had to carefully frame our shots to get the romantic we were looking for without a bunch of distracting people in the background. Also, many of the beaches were privately owned and operated. So were turned back several times by unsympathetic beach guards. However, Sally and Rob were troopers, and we managed to get some great shots for all our driving around the lake. But, all too soon, we ran out of time and had to get back to the Tahoe Convention Center for the wedding. Again, the light was a bit of a problem at 5PM right out on the beach. In fact, I don't know how poor Sally could see her groom as she was facing directly in to the sun during the entire ceremony. But we just turned the fill flash on high in order to lessen the harsh shadows and still managed to grab some nice shots during the ceremony. Again, that lake just made a magnificent background.

Finally, about 7-ish the light was perfect and I got Sally and Rob to leave the reception for about 15 minutes so we could get some nice portraits and then finish with some walking-along-the-beach shots.

We had pretty much run out of light and had just returned to the reception when I saw how beautiful the arch and decorative lights looked against the lake in the background with the sun setting over the mountains. So I grabbed Rob and Sally for ONE last romantic shot. The light was too dim to really create anything but a carefully posed silhouette shot. So after quickly getting Rob and Sally in place, I had to grab a chair to get the extra elevation I needed in order to see their silhouetted faces against the water. And with the remaining wisps of twilight, I was able to record this wonderful end-of-the-day portrait. I think Rob and Sally will be thrilled when they see it as well as all the rest of the day's photos.

2 comments:

SummitStar Press - Angela Yee said...

Great job Dave! Looks like a beautiful weddng and beautiful picturest too!

Dave said...

Thanks, Angela! I really have to get up there again and look around. I'd like to do more weddings up there. Such a beautiful place.