Cold weather means it's time to start wedding planning.When the cold air has finally penetrated the earth I find myself in a lot of little coffee shops huddled over a tiny table with a couple talking about their wedding. Often they have this beautiful dream of what's going to happen on their wedding day, sometimes that dream has fallen to the relentless press of reality and the Plaza has become the VFW Hall but the passion is still suffusing their voices.
It's rare that a bride and groom can answer the questions that a photographer would really like to know: what color are the ceilings, how is the light at the time you're planning your event, how much control do you have over the lighting? There are a thousand little details that you learn about when you're a photographer, that you just take in automatically the way that some people breathe in air (or that adept school teachers sense mischief).
Still there is at least one point where couples can really help a photographer during a meeting, so the photographer can better help the couple.
Timing is Everything
The one major problem with giving a great new digital camera as a gift during the holidays is that by the time it's opened, all the best moments have passed. Still, a digital camera can be a great gift for the holidays allowing your loved ones to capture the wonderful little moments that make enduring the month of music and garish decorations worth it.
The problem is that there are about a million digital cameras in the marketplace with names that were written by a cat running across a keyboard (S90? LX3? DSC-W190?). Clicking over to B&H Photo will net you 200 different makes, models and colors to bemuse and bewilder you, and that's before you start looking at what these cameras are supposed to do. Relax last-minute shoppers, help is on the way to start narrowing down those 200 to a dozen or so.