When Kerry came in to meet with us, wow, two years ago now, it was a marathon client meeting where we talked about our families and childhoods and passions in life. Turns out, Kerry and I are very similar… well, almost identical except I like country music and she doesn’t. I’m serious- that’s the only difference. Kerry is also a photographer, and her and Mike’s little girl, Rosie Mae, is only 6 months younger than Autumn. Right now, that means that Autumn is massive compared to this little peanut, but as time goes on, they’ll level off and just be the same age

Anyway, Kerry and Mike had gorgeous portraits from their wedding because Kerry put a lot of thought into them, brought things that were important to her, and dedicated a chunk of time to having them taken(even if that meant freezing on the beach on a particularly cold day!) When they had Rosie Mae, I told her we should recreate one of my favorites (the one that’s in the slideshow at the top of the blog!) and put her in them. Here’s the result, one of my favorite photos from my May Marshfield family shoots.

I couldn’t help myself with the ’90s rap reference (for those of you who, like me, then need to watch the video, here’s the youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL2txMU50CI. I also highly recommend doing a search for the song on you tube because it brings up some hilarious home videos of people backing their asses up.)

But alas, I do not have the opportunity to back my ass up all that much, though I do have a lot of opportunities to back my PHOTOS up. (like that transition sentence, huh, huh??)

A good friend was in town this weekend (holler Joelle!), and as we were getting our INSANE pedicures at Pro Nails in Norwell, she asked me how I deal with the millions of photos Jesse and I take of Autumn (I currently have 1,118 photos on my iphone!!). Like this one where she laughs as she rips Jesse’s face off:

Or this one where she blows a raspberry as she blesses us like the Christ Child. She’s a multi tasker:

The good thing for us is that we already had a system for backing up photos, so we set her up with her own folder on the computer and external hard drives, and got to backing up.

I thought, then, that this information might be of interest to you folks, for your own personal preferences, and to know how we as professionals care for your photos.

Hypothetical wedding scenario to illustrate my point:

Step 1: Shoot wedding (if only it were that easy!)

Step 2: Come home, download RAW files and back them up on hard drive and FTP server.

Step 3: Edit RAW files; save them as jpgs

Step 4: Back up jpgs on external hard drive

Step 5: Back up jpgs on a pay-for-service website dedicated to hosting large files

Step 6: Back up jpgs to flickr. (This is a “just in case” measure in case the first two back ups failed. It’s a royal pain to download from flickr and I hope it never comes to that!)

Step 7: Burn a DVD of the wedding and store in a fire proof safe.

Step 8: After 6 months (or less, depending on how quickly it fills up!), the external hard drive moves to an off-site location.

Step 9: Order a bunch of prints. In the case of weddings, the client orders a bunch of prints, gets an album and whatnot so that the photos don’t just live online. With Autumn, or other personal photos we have, I tack on a bunch of 4x6s and enlargements with almost every order I place for clients. I keep some serious old fashioned boxes of prints in our closet, and it’s so fun to “waste” time when I’m supposed to be cleaning.

Somewhere in the middle of this process, the client is mailed their DVD with instructions for backing them up on their own. While CDs are awesome now, they probably won’t be in the future (hello, remember floppy disks? I have a ton of those with my college papers on ‘em, but no way to ever look at them again!), and they are really fickle (they hate heat, cold, moisture, shard scratchy things…), so backing them up online is good. Don’t just back them up on your computer, because it’s not a matter of if your computer will crash, but when, and don’t just back them up to an external hard drive when your computer fills up because those suckers crash all the time. I’ve had like 3 or 4 of them go, usually at the most inopportune times.

So, for you, this is probably overkill. You can probably just put your photos from your camera or phone onto your computer, and then back them up online (flickr’s a good, cheap option. It’s only $25/year for unlimited space.)  With Autumn’s pics, we haven’t yet burnt DVDs of everything, but I probably will and I’ll probably store that in our fire proof safe here at home. I’m even toying with the idea of dedicating an entire hard drive to just Autumn photos, but then I’m scared of leaving everything on one drive.

So, to recap, we back everything up in multiple places (hard drive, computer, DVD, online) so that everything isn’t in one place in case something fails on us.

I’ve been trying to think of little things that I point out during the wedding day that could be helpful to post on the blog. So while it’s not rocket science to hold the bouquet of flowers correctly, I might as well point it out because I do at 99% of the weddings we shoot.

Step 1: Commandeer Bouquet.

Step 2: Hold bouquet with both hands

Step 3: Bring the bouquet down. Almost everyone naturally holds it too high.

See how nice it looks at this height? And, if you leave a little space between your body and your elbows, it has a slimming effect:

Step 4: Pretend that you’re resting your forearms on your hips. That’s the right height. See here:

Step 5: Point the flowers out just slightly, so that when I’m taking photos, I see a bit of the top of them, not just the side.

Step 6: Stop worrying that you’re holding them wrong, because it doesn’t really matter. Now laugh. You smiling is all that anyone cares about seeing.

I kid about the title. I have never actually wanted to kill any of my brides, though in the beginning there was a little drama concerning timelines. It had mostly to do with me, as I wasn’t assertive enough to tell my brides and grooms what I thought was best way to get good photos on their wedding day. (Though Jesse might contend that I’ve never not been assertive enough to say anything!) Not anymore folks. This is my way to help you budget time better on your wedding day, and preferably not at high noon when the sun overhead makes you all look like raccoons. Well dressed raccoons.

The photo above perfectly illustrates the need for a good wedding day timeline that allows room for awesome photos. Lisa looks unstressed and happy as she approaches Eric, and Jesse was able to get this artsy photo that we had brainstormed before the wedding. (I love when we say in the car on the ride over “Hey, I want to get a photo of the bride approaching the groom, him cropped from the chest down and out of focus” and it happens! yay us!)

There are a few priorities that we have for good wedding day photos: a clear timeline that tells everyone where to be and when, a timeline that allows the bride to be unstressed, and preferably the times when we’ll be outside taking photos will be when there’s nice lighting conditions.

General Tips for the timeline:

1. Raise your hand if you look cute stressed. If you were here, you’d notice that my hand is not raised. I furrow my brow and squint when I’m stressed and that is NOT pretty. So tip numero uno is that even if everything goes horribly wrong, just smile. In the end, you still get to marry your best friend and have kick ass photos.

2. On a more practical note, remember to factor in travel time. Even if you have the ceremony and reception at the same place, it takes at least 10-15 minutes to move all the bridesmaids across a country club, because everyone will need a bathroom break, half of everyone will forget their purses, and hey, you know you don’t move all that quickly with 15 pounds of dress on and a 30 pound bouquet in your hand!

2. Plan in time to take a breather. At our wedding last Saturday, we did portraits outside for a while and then in the ballroom when the cocktail hour was beginning. At the end of the portraits, I gave the bride and groom 10 minutes alone to eat their appetizers and chat about the fact that they just got married. When they were ready, they came into the cocktail hour refreshed and happy, instead of tired from just doing 30 minutes of photos in the freezing cold.

3. Assume that things will run late, and be ok with that. Yes, you can have a timeline that has dinner served at 7, first dance at 7:20 and cake cutting at 7:35, but that is never going to happen. As long as you have a goal for these three things to happen back-to-back beginning around 7, I think that’s a good plan. Just don’t be upset if dinner isn’t served until 7:30 because it took longer than expected to wrangle all the guests from the bar at cocktail hour!

Here’s a great sample timeline that has worked well for us. Let’s assume the ceremony is at 6.

2:30-3:30 or 4: Getting Ready

Our goal for getting ready photos is to get a combination of fun girl photos, cool guy photos, and sentimental photos, like the one above where the dad is watching the girls get his daughter ready. This is one of my favorite times of the day- there’s a buzz of activity, people are really themselves because no one’s staring at them yet, and for the most part everyone’s happy! There’s no way to make this time completely stress free, but at least it can be fun!

4-4:30: Travel to portrait location

4:30-5:30: Portraits

We split the portraits into 3 sections: First look, family and wedding party portraits, your portraits. The first look only takes about 10 minutes, the family photos are about 20/25, and your portraits are about a half hour. We will absolutely welcome more time for this, but if you only have an hour that’s ok. We try and sneak some more photos in after the ceremony because the light will be awesome and you’ll be a little more relaxed.

5:30-6: travel to ceremony site from wherever we ended up during the portraits and relax

6-6:30: ceremony

6:30-6:45/7: a few more portraits that we can sneak in there (Both of the portraits above were taken after the ceremony when the light was gorgeous and both couples still had time to go to cocktail hour!)

6:45- 7:30: cocktail hour

7:30-9:30: Reception Coverage

All this being said, we make everything work. If we have 10 minutes in the ice cold darkness, we’ll definitely come back with a good photo or two. But, with some thinking done beforehand, we can aim higher than that and really get some awesome photos! Oh, and if our brides want to chat about your timeline, just shoot us an email and we’ll help you craft a custom wedding day timeline based on the time of your ceremony, locations of portraits and whatnot!

I am very, very sneaky. (Pardon the Mr. Deeds reference… which really just confirms my bad taste in movies…)

I love this photo (the first, not the second) because the first is actually just creative use of the second. It just took a little forethought and a lot of wedding experience. Does that not make sense to anyone outside of my head? Let me elaborate…

When I first started shooting weddings I was quite timid (who, me?!) and I didn’t want to interfere with people’s stuff, people’s moments, or just people in general. But as I evolved over the past 7 years (wow!!!), I have learned when I can – and should – insert myself. This is a perfect example of that.

I really love to get some classic bridal portraits before the wedding. I only have a couple of not-so-awesome photos of me standing in my wedding dress in front of a fountain in my parent’s backyard. They’re not very flattering, though I am beaming with happiness (and I like to try and hold on to that happiness instead of the sadness I feel at the technical aspects of the photos.) But I digress. Most of the time, before the wedding, it’s a little crazy. Ok, most of the time it’s a lot crazy. It’s basically crazy-town. I love it. But I don’t love the mass chaos that this craziness leaves in it’s wake. See exhibit B. (I’m sorry Julia for the not-so-flattering photo. You didn’t know that I was planning to show this to the world!! But I know you won’t mind since you heart the WILTP feature so much!!)

I loved Julia’s sister’s orange chair with a strange passion (Jesse can attest to my weird love of chairs. Especially tufted chairs in offbeat colors. There is a moratorium on chair buying in the Ciras household at the moment.) I was eying it all morning. I mean, how perfect?! It matched her wedding colors and the fall theme! So when Julia was all dressed and ready, I promptly took her to that chair. I moved a bunch of stuff out of the way and moved the chair into some nice light. I cropped it so that you can see that her flowers match the chair… I had her scootch (is that a word?!) to the end of the seat so that she could show the back of the chair and sit up nice and straight easily. Her veil cascades down behind her and over the arm of the chair. You can see her necklace, earring and bracelet. The light pours in the window. ahhh. I love this photo! And I’m so sneaky, you’d never even know that it was anything other than peaceful and serene as Julia sat in that chair for all of 5 minutes to get a couple bridal portraits.

So, if you want to skip the first four paragraphs of this rambling post, this is why I love this photo: Because even in the midst of the crazy-town chaos that is getting ready on one’s wedding day, Julia looks like a goddess bathed in divine light.

These things don’t just happen. They take someone very, very sneaky.

To read Julia’s own post about her favorite wedding photo, see here: http://cirasphotography.com/blog/index.php/why-i-love-this-photo-guest-blog/

To read all the Why I Love this photo features, go up to categories, and scroll to the bottom.