Wow so this has been a crazy year. We finally got to do Genesis, Jackie and I quit our teaching jobs, we took many trips out west ... both for weddings and for fun... and we are currently getting ready to leave Monday morning for our last wedding of the year in Hawaii.
After that it is on to Nepal and Thailand until the end of April.
Lots of things learned this year .... overall a great success for both our business and our personal lives.
Jackie and I finally decided that we want to move to Colorado and will be doing so sometime next spring/summer. What happens with our business is still a little unknown but I have faith that we will be able to find better couples that fit our style once we make the move. The hardest part of this year was shooting weddings that were not really "us".

This couple was fantastic and even though they had more of the "black tie" ..."sophisticated NYC" feel to the wedding it was a perfect fit for us. It was another one of our "weekend long" weddings. We did rehearsal dinner and then all day wedding coverage. We love it. We love being immersed in the family gathering from beginning to end and find that we do our best work during those kinds of situations. Even with rough weather and REALLY limited portrait time we managed to produce some of our favorite imagery.

Not sure how much I will be on FM from now until January when we are done in Nepal but I will say that I am humbled to be able to post and have so many fantastic shooters give us feedback. It really does help.

There are a lot of photos. You can blame Andrew Ho and his wordpress sorcery for that.

Whatever anyone has to say is welcome. I could go on and on about what I think we need to improve on. One of my biggest challenges is just trying to produce a variety of imagery so that we are not always showing the same old thing all the time.
1.

How do you manage the balance of yellow/orange and blue/green as in #6?

I do believe I custom white balanced with a Kelvin temp in cam and then I think in LR I might have just taken the WB right off the white table cloth with the WB picker tool.

Hmm, how odd...and saturation/hue/etc. LR adjustments? I can't ever seem to get that kind of mellow balance.

My critique: Less is more

Some good stuff here Doug. Overall though the set feels long and repetitive. There are some gems (like 44) here but it is more difficult to appreciate them amid the all clutter. Nothing from the rehearsal dinner is going to add to your brand so next time just omit those. Cut this set down to about 35 images and the presentation will be much more effective.

Mark

Fantastic set, plenty of action to capture - I like them all
Great moment you caught in #12
I also like the wide view of the kiss in #67

No Graflex this time?

I liked 55 and the first dance stuff was nice. No sun wedding, yet it's nice and vibrant, well done bro.

Thanks everyone!
Mark -- While the rehearsal dinner will not win me any rewards more and more people are coming to us for this kind of coverage. We like doing those and plan on doing more of them in the future. While stylistically they may not be the "bang" images of the set we really feel like it does add to our brand...because our brand is more than just the "bang" images. It is hard to describe (branding is in general) but I often find that the images is the last thing people think about when talking branding.
What is hard for is the battle between what we show and what we do not show from a set. We have even stopped blogging some weddings because like you said they do nothing for our brand or our business.
I wanted to stop blogging tons of images but we just got done with a very in depth client survey and questionnaire and one of the big things was that people wanted to see more rather than less images and overall they were very happy with what we were showing.
So from our perspective it may be better to blog less... but from their perspective it is better to show more. It confuses the hell out of me...so it continues to be something we struggle with (not really struggle...you know what I mean).

Scott- no graflex this time. weather was cold and really rainy and it just was not going to happen. I like shooting the graflex but I will only do it if the perfect situations come up. Sometimes it is a hindrance rather than a benefit. I have to pick and choose my battles

Far too many heads and legs cut off in a less than artistic ways for my taste.

Doug, this is yet another example of the outstanding comprehensive you guys have been doing all year. I missed the Graflex but understand why it's absent from this set. Doesn't matter because you killed it anyway. My attention span is way too short to go through individual images, but your sets always leave me with a feeling of having been there. If you guys aren't the most improved shooters here, I don't know who is. Your work has always been good, but this year I feel like you have stepped up your game big time.

It was great hanging with you and Jackie earlier this year. Hopefully we'll get a chance to do it again in the future...

Thanks everyone! Alan I feel like we have improved a lot but I also feel like we have SO much we can improve on. I am def. my harshest critic. I hope traveling will give us a chance to take a step back and really get our bearings straight as far as creativity goes. Lots of things to work on during the next 7 months afar. One thing is for sure we love shooting weddings and will continue to try to build the business when we get back.

I love the feel of it. Did you convince them to have the ceremony inside of a giant soft box or was that their idea?

brad

Solid, solid coverage man. And I love your bw conversions. Nice and strong.

I'm a sucker for your work man. These kinda posts just remind me how much I have yet to learn about wedding photography- amazing stuff.