Doug and Molly: Married! Part 6: BONUS!!!

Posted by posted by Kevin Barber Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 11:53 AM

First of all, I need to apologize for being late on this post. I had said I'd have it Monday and it is obviously past that!

We have been traveling -- "On Assignment", as we like to call it -- to Washington State and were actually preparing our postings from the road. We have some great photo creations that we'll be sharing with you soon from there.

For this post, we wanted to share with you two of the more creative (or experimental) photographs we created for Doug and Molly. This first photograph was created using our new wide-angle that Kindra was excited to invest in. I'll admit that I was not all that excited about a wide angle lens because I didn't see the need to (as I saw it at the time) wildly distort our photographs. As it turned out, I was able to find all kinds of great ideas using the "fisheye" lens and Kindra had to fight me to get it back!

This portrait of Doug and Molly under the campanile at Iowa State was one of the first portraits I created with the wide angle lens. I wanted to be able to capture all of the campanile as well as Doug and Molly inside because that is where Doug proposed to Molly. There were two challenges to overcome with this, though. The first challenge was fitting the entire structure into one frame and the second was the dynamic range of the lighting (the bright sky and sunlit campanile in contrast with the shadow area inside the campanile where Doug and Molly are).

Obviously, I was able to solve the first problem with the wide angle lens. The second challenge was solved by using High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. This was actually the first portrait I have created using HDR - the challenge there is that several photographs must be captured to contain enough information - so that means that the subject(s) need to be in the exact same position so that everything lines up perfectly - or else "ghost" images will appear.


This second photograph is a technique that I have been working on which creates a "glow" around the subject(s). [I don't have a name for it yet so if there are any suggestions, please leave a comment.] This is created by placing a flash unit behind the subject and directing the light directly toward the camera. The challenge here is that when the subject is a couple dancing, they are moving quite a bit and if the angle is not just right, there will only be a big bright spot filling the frame.

It was a pleasure to be able to try out a few new techniques for Molly and Doug. And yes, we are holding back on even more photographs that Molly and Doug are going to LOVE! Fortunately, they'll be able to enjoy them at their viewing session and will be able to view and share them permanently in their home for years to come.

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Doug and Molly: Married! Part 5: Reception

Posted by posted by Kindra Monday, July 07, 2008 at 8:33 PM

Receptions are a fun part of the wedding for all involved. For us as photographers, there is still a lot of work that we get done since there are still important moments to capture, but we do get to relax, have fun, and do a little experimentation. Often times we need to adjust for drastically different lighting in the reception hall or hotel and many times things change after it gets darker as either the sun sets or the dancing begins.


These are some fun images Kevin photographed during the reception. Doug and Molly had had some Jones Soda printed with a picture they had taken together on Doug's graduation day. Doug had graduated from Iowa State University a month before their wedding. So as they drank these sodas during the reception, it was cool way for them to look back at a great accomplishment of Doug's while they celebrated their future together.


The next is one of the cake from the reception. Kevin did some beautiful, spontaneous lighting with his flash in this photograph. I love the perspective he used to show all the marbles that were on the table around the cake. This shows how simple and elegant the cake was.

The last photograph was taken of Doug and Molly during their first dance. At the end of the song, Doug bent Molly over and they shared a kiss. Kevin had his flash on a stand behind them, which created beautiful lighting and a sentimental mood to the portrait. This portrait looks magical.

We tried out our wide angle lens during some of the dances to get a fresh perspective and to be able to view more of the scene in one frame. This was a lot of fun during the Hokey Pokey where we could have most of the circle (or in this case, crescent) in the frame at once.
And one nice thing about having two photographers capturing the event is that you can also get another perspective without a lens change - such as this photograph that Kindra captured during the Hokey Pokey - Molly's expression is great here.

There were a few more photographs that we wanted to share, so we have a bonus post from Molly and Doug's wedding that we will post on Monday - I think we are saving some of the best for last -- well, actually, we have saved the BEST for the viewing session!


Here are the vendors Doug and Molly used for their wedding:
Church: Collegiate United Methodist
Reception: Holiday Inn Ames Conference Center - ISU
Dress: Weddings by Design
Tuxes: Men's Wearhouse
Flowers: Mary Kay Florist (515) 232-3993
Cake: Lincoln Center Hy-vee

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Doug and Molly: Married! Part 4: Ceremony

Posted by posted by Kindra at 8:28 PM

These are some of my favorite photographs from Doug and Molly's wedding ceremony. I created this image of Molly and her dad, right before her dad gave her away. I love how you can see Doug in the background and the admiring gaze he makes towards Molly.

Kevin captured this photograph during the ceremony from the balcony. As they light the unity candle, Molly looks up at Doug as if to say "I'm so excited we're getting married!" These two moments show just how deeply Doug and Molly care for each other.

One of Kevin's favorite challenges each wedding is to create new and interesting ways to photograph the rings. In this case, he chose to use the wedding program as the background in a way that you can still read the wedding date and location, yet a small enough depth of field to keep the focus on the rings.

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Doug and Molly: Married! Part 3: Fun Before the Wedding

Posted by posted by Kindra at 8:13 PM

These portraits show some of the fun the wedding party had before the ceremony. Molly had four bridesmaids who knew each other very well because three of them are her sisters and one is her niece. I've never seen five girls in a wedding party have so much fun before a wedding! This portrait was taken after a funny moment. I had taken some portraits of the girls without their bouquets and while Molly's dad had started heading to the door, all the girls gave them their bouquets for him to take back to the dressing room so we could take some informal, fun portraits of the girls without their flowers.

Dad was a little embarrassed and the girls thought it was funny to see Dad with all their flowers. One of the things I'll remember about Molly and her bridesmaids is they laughed so hard and had so much fun together. I think they did a great job at keeping Molly laughing and relaxed before the ceremony.

This is a portrait of the guys that Kevin took before the ceremony. Since Ames is a college town, whenever we took the wedding party outside for portraits, there was a stream of cars driving down the street, honking at them and cheering. So this is a funny moment when all the guys waved and cheered back to a car. These two portraits show how lighthearted this wedding party was.

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Doug and Molly: Married! Part 2: Details

Posted by posted by Kindra at 8:00 PM

Kevin and I always make a point of photographing all the little details that make each wedding unique, yet are easily missed as your memories of the event fade.

Molly wore these really pretty silver heels for her wedding. I snagged them from her dressing room before she got dressed and placed them in the windowsill by one of the beautiful windows in the sanctuary. I love how the light shining through this window gave a sepia toned color to the photograph. Most brides choose white heels for their wedding day but these silver heels described Molly's fun personality.


Kevin created this photograph of the sanctuary with our new fish eye lens. Molly and Doug got married at Collegiate United Methodist. The architecture was a mix of traditional and modern elements with a beautiful, older sanctuary complete with pipe organ. The recent addition added newer elements such as a patio with tables and leather sofas.


Here is another detail that we loved in the church - these stenciled details were around the sanctuary in gold paint. Kevin captured this element with a portion of a window to create an interesting, graphical photograph.

Be sure to check back here for our next post from this wedding: Pre-Wedding fun!

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Molly and Doug: Married! Part 1: Individual Portraits

Posted by posted by Kindra at 5:38 PM

We photographed Doug and Molly's wedding this June. Doug and Molly met in junior high and started dating while attending Iowa State University together. Their wedding was held at the church in Ames that they had attended while in college.

We had been looking forward to photographing Doug and Molly's wedding for a while because we've had so much fun getting to know them this year through their engagement portrait sessions (You can see their other photographs here and here). They are easy-going, fun, and affectionate - every time we're around them, we can tell how much they love each other and that these two were destined to united.


This was a unique wedding because I had more time to create portraits of the bride by herself than I usually do before the ceremony. This is one of the portraits I was able to create during that time. Despite the stress of the day, Molly looked elegant, poised and comfortable - like she belonged in a bridal magazine.

This location was meaningful to Molly because her sister had a similar portrait created in the same place in the church - just at the top of one of the front staircases.

Kevin and I both enjoyed photographing this church for all the beautiful architectural details such as the trim work you can see on the walls behind her in this portrait. More importantly was the large, beautiful windows letting in the Heavenly light around Molly.

Kevin created this image of Doug outside the church before the ceremony and, again, you see the same relaxed expression that Molly had in her portraits. This portrait describes Doug well- easy going, funny, nice guy - you can see all that reflected in his expression. (Considering all the groomsmen were gathered around harassing him while he was posing and with a busy college-town street with waving, honking traffic in front of him, Doug was able to keep focused on the portraits.

We will be posting a couple portraits from Doug and Molly's wedding each day this week so keep checking back to see more. We hope you had a great time on your honeymoon, Doug and Molly!

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Horses and a Photo date

Posted by posted by Kindra Wednesday, July 02, 2008 at 7:25 PM

Last week, Kevin and I were in Ames and we decided to have a photo date. A photo date is a time Kevin and I go out and just take photos for fun and spend time together. We don't have a purpose to the photo date. We just go out and take photos of what inspires us. This time, we were on Iowa State University campus and found some horses to photograph. Horses are my favorite animal so I was thrilled! These horses were very tame and used to people come to visit them a lot so they would put their heads right through the fence in hopes that you would feed them grass. It was really funny because there was a bunch of hay in a feeder in the center of their area and only 2 horses found it very interesting to eat the hay and all the other horses crowded around us and begged us to feed them grass. I kept asking Kevin if we could take one home and we decided we could probably take the little colt in the back of our van. We didn't of course, but it sure would've been funny to see Buddy, our dog, get riled up that there was such a big animal in our back yard, eating his grass.

On the way home, there was a beautiful lightning show going on all around us. There was a storm going on in Des Moines but in Ames all's you could see was the lightning and they had no rain. Kevin and I loved watching all the lightning on the way home and it was the perfect ending to our photo date.





The horses also found the fence very appetizing too. It was funny to see their huge teeth!