Captivating Imagery: Pittsburgh Wedding Photographer and Professional Photography Services

Lauren and Brandon were married two Saturdays ago at Saints John and Paul Catholic Church in Wexford, Pa., with a reception at the Andy Warhol Museum. It’s been a busy few weeks, so without further ado, here’s a recap of all the fabulous details. We started at Lauren’s family home where the ladies were getting ready. Lauren wore a lovely Pronovais gown with veil that was handmade by her mom and grandma for her mom’s wedding. It was truly gorgeous and the perfect compliment to her gown.

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Lauren found these awesome Calvin Klein heels and knew she had to have them!

Lauren and her bridesmaids had lots of fun making the finishing touches.

Lauren’s bridesmaids wore these green shoes with their little, black dresses.

And here’s Brandon, the handsome groom.

We photographed the guys in front of the church. They shared a lot of camaraderie and Brandon’s smile was infectious.

The church had lots of great places where I could duck out of the way and get interesting angles of the ceremony.

Meanwhile, Alex keeps post in the center aisle which is great, especially when it comes to unexpected kisses.

After the ceremony, we headed to downtown Pittsburgh for some on-location portraits. Note the flowers by Reed and Petals —I’m digging the bridesmaids bouquets.

Then we headed to the Warhol and stopped along the North Shore on our way. These next few images are some magical moments caught by Alex.

I’m pretty excited about this next image. I love the Pittsburgh skyline and love to use it as a background for portraits even in the middle of the day!

Ok, on to the Warhol for some fabulous details.

The staff at the Warhol let us go to the silver cloud room for a few portraits.

After their first dance, we had a little bit of time to slip away and catch a few more portraits at twilight. I love this one by Alex.

Lauren and Brandon, thanks for the opportunity to photograph your wedding! It was such a treat! Many blessings to you and your marriage.

I’ve been offering engagement guest books for a while now and they’re catching on with weddings in here Pittsburgh. Engagement guest books are a great use for the photography from your engagement session and they actually make the guest book something that you’re naturally drawn to years after your wedding. It’s like a mini-album of sorts. We had a standard guest book at our wedding and I honestly can’t say where it is now, but if it had photos of me and Brad from our engagement, I’d absolutely treasure it and keep it close by!

So here is the latest engagement guest book I designed for Corey and Jeff’s session earlier this month. We went to Raccoon Creek State Park and they had a sweet date theme, complete with props: a picnic basket and blanket, a camera, and a guitar! I love their creativity and when clients wants to go for a theme, I will jump right in!

This is the first page. I’m still waiting on the actual book to be delivered, but I figured I’d show the actual page design in the meantime.

The pages are hinged so that they lay flat when the book is open. And that’s a good thing because guest books are typically displayed open so that guests can easily sign it.

The pages alternate so that images are on the front and back of one page and then the next page is left blank for guests to sign.

I have my watermark on these images, but there is no watermark on the actual pages.

Corey and Jeff picked the images to be included in their book from the web gallery that I created for their session. They also get a disc of their edited images as part of the engagement session. After they let me know their selects, I retouched the edited images and designed the book.

I’ve done some sessions at Raccoon Creek before, but I decided to head out a little earlier and scout around to see if I could find anything new and not far from the park was this lovely hillside.

One of the reasons I’ve been drawn to this park is that the lake at North Park in Pittsburgh is currently being drained. And the park just doesn’t have the same appeal without the lake. So clients who want to be photographed by water needed an alternative. Raccoon Creek State park is only a 30-minute drive from Pittsburgh, so it’s a great option. And there’s a dock that’s just big enough for me, my light and a couple if they sit at the very end of it. My wide angle lens makes it look bigger than it really is.

Corey and Jeff are getting married in southern West Virginia in October. They already had a photographer booked when they contacted me about an engagement session in Pittsburgh. If they hadn’t I would definitely have traveled to photograph their wedding. They are so much fun to work with!

The design for this book is one of my newer approaches to albums. The backgrounds are actual images of wallpaper that I’ve altered by neutralizing the color and adding some texture. I like them because they’re not too contrasty so they don’t take away from the photography, but they tie the book together with a consistent look. I can customize the backgrounds for each wedding or engagement session and I think they’re fitting as if the photos were framed and hanging on a wall.

I’m a bit of a realist in my approach to photography and design. I don’t want to go over the top with a trendy look and have my work feel overly dated in a decade. This is a fine line and I’m always happy to adjust my approach depending on my clients’ preferences.

I love switching back and forth between natural light and off-camera flash. Sometimes my approach with flash is subtle and sometimes it is more dramatic.

Well, that wraps up the design for Corey and Jeff’s engagement guest book. It’s a 20-page book and can fit 280 signatures. I designed it so that it could be used for a small or large wedding. There are no numbers on the lines so that guests at a smaller wedding can use several lines to write a short message.

I did a sneak peek of this Pittsburgh wedding about a week ago and purposefully only included three black and white photographs of Colleen as she was getting ready and on her way to the church. It was a bit of a tease and I didn’t mean it to be that way, but wanted to build a little bit of anticipation and bide some time so that I could edit the complete wedding and choose some favorites. I’m happy to finally post a full re-cap of Colleen and Zack’s wedding photography. So here goes!

Colleen and her bridesmaids got ready at her parent’s home. In the living room, they had a large window that was just perfect for all of the girls to do the make-up.

We didn’t have to go far for some lovely portraits of Colleen. And she is breath-taking!

I adore this bouquet with blush roses, cream roses and peonies. It’s so elegant.

And here is Zack, the groom, looking dapper as ever.

This is one of my favorite moments of the day. There is so much emotion as Colleen walks down the aisle.

The Duquesne University Chapel is a gorgeous setting for a wedding ceremony and the staff are very friendly and helpful there.

Another thing that I love about this Pittsburgh chapel is that as a wedding photographer, I am allowed to get some great angles of the couple during the ceremony.

After the ceremony, we headed to Grant Street for some fun shots of the bridal party.

Then we headed to the West End Overlook for some portraits and this photo of Colleen and Zack walking away is one of my favorites. The light was just naturally perfect. I wouldn’t have changed a thing—it was surely a gift from God.

Colleen and Zack’s wedding colors were blue and orange and they really incorporated their colors into the reception with their cake and uplighting.

And last, but not least, a photo from their first dance.

Colleen and Zack are so sweet and in love. It’s so much fun to be around newlyweds and it was an honor to be a part of their wedding. Colleen and Zack, congratulations on your marriage and many blessings to you!

Here’s a sneak peek of the lovely Colleen as she leaves her parents’ home for the Duquesne Chapel in Pittsburgh where she married her best friend, Zack. This is the first sneak peek of wedding photography from the season and I’m approaching it differently than I have in the past. Just for fun, I’m only showing a few images leading up to the ceremony to build up some anticipation just like the anticipation we experienced on their wedding day.

Oh, and this sneak peek will include only black and white photos, kind of like the Wizard of Oz! Then, when I blog about the entire wedding, we’ll go technicolor! This one above is a moment that Alex caught and I just love it because Colleen is having a good laugh while she’s struggling to be serious with her giggling bridesmaids in the background.

Also, this sneak peek only includes candid shots. The portraits will come later with the full post. I’m just trying this for kicks. If it seems funny, leave a comment and let me know. It’s tough to pick the first three images that I want to show from a wedding and this approach helped me to sort through with a new purpose for the sneak peek.

So there she is! Colleen is at the chapel and nearly ready to walk down the aisle. We’ll catch up with Zack and the rest of the gang on the next post. Meanwhile, the happy couple is in Hawaii (I think) on their honeymoon, so I’m getting their slide show ready for their return.

Last Wednesday, the royal palace announced that Prince William and Kate Middleton selected Hugo Burnand to be their royal wedding photographer. I’m a bit of an Anglophile after spending three months living in London in my early 20s so this is of special interest to me as a wedding photographer across the pond here in Pittsburgh. Right away, I checked out Hugo’s site and it’s very nice. But where are the wedding photos?!? It kills me that there aren’t any samples of his wedding photography on his site and he’ll be single-handedly responsible for photographing the royal wedding. Yikes!

Ok, he has photographed the royal family on many occasions, but wouldn’t the prince and the princess-to-be want the crème de la crème in wedding photography? It’s not something that just every photographer does well. It takes a special breed with a mixture of fearlessness for the unexpected, excellent people skills for putting subjects at ease on what can be a very stressful day, and a thorough knowledge of photography because you have to think fast as a wedding photographer and respond to all types of situations: changes in lighting, tight schedules, special requests, getting all your gear from one location to the next – the list goes on. I don’t doubt that Hugo Burnand can do all of that and do it well, but wouldn’t the royal couple want to choose someone who actually markets him or herself as a wedding photographer—someone crazy enough about it that they make wedding photography the focus of their photography career? There are lots of world-renowned wedding photographers that come to mind when I think of who I would hire if I were them.

I know I’m over-looking something very important in this decision: the royal family needs to hire someone they can trust and who knows how to handle all of the nuances of photographing a royal wedding. There is a need for insight in how to handle royal affairs. A photographer for a royal wedding can’t just blaze in and take over. There is a proper way to do everything in England. And with the pomp and circumstance of a wedding, the photographer needs to have a good intuition for what is acceptable in royal company. Hugo photographed Prince Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005 and the other thing that I noticed after a quick search for those photos is that the royal family will want to be able to trust that their wedding photographer will manage the files well with respect to their agreement. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t have any of the 2005 wedding photos on his site. Perhaps he doesn’t have permission? Although, their are plenty of other royal portraits in his portfolio.

I think it’s sad that when you’re the prince and princess-to-be, you don’t have much say in your wedding photography. Maybe they can do a fun post-wedding session with another photographer when security and time lines are less of an issue? Prince William and Kate, if you’re reading this, I can make myself available for this if you so choose! Anyway, there is some scrumptious wedding photography out there in the world and I just think that as one of the quintessential weddings of our times, Prince William and Kate Middleton should have the wedding photography to match.