In the company of their closest friends and family (and their dogs), John and Nicole exchanged their vows on the beautiful little island of Nantucket on May 7, 2011. Although legally married the night before, no ceremony is truly complete until that joy and love is shared with the people closest to you.What questions should you ask your wedding photographer? If you type that into your search engine, you'll likely find hundreds of thousands of answers. They're everywhere from theKnot to Yahoo answers, infecting the internet like cute pictures of cats.
Like the aforementioned cats, most of these lists are derivative. They all encourage you to ask about RAW processing and photojournalism, throwing around technical words and phrases like someone's high school term paper. As a professional meeting-taker I've spoken with a lot of brides who have simply slid over a list of questions for me to go over line by line while their eyes glaze over.
The problem is that the answers don't often have any context. While photography has become more accessible in the past 150 years, most people just don't care enough to read up on the finer technical aspects. These questions can only help you find the right photographer if you know why you're asking them.
So today, in the interest of being servicey, I've compiled a top ten list of wedding photography questions, my answers and why you should be asking them. After this, I will also take the five worst questions and mock them.
In Massachusetts, you don't have to travel too far to get to the beach.This weekend, a friend of mine recommended we go on a hike in the Blue Hills. Winter was finally over and the rain had stopped, so it was time to celebrate the spring.
At the bottom of the hill, we looked at the trail map, debating the merits of the yellow trail versus the red trail. Little did I know he hadn't planned on following any of them, and instead he planned on a direct line of attack through stream beds and scrambling up rocks as if we were some kind of bipedal mountain goats. As my feet moved nimbly to avoid the sharp rocks jutting out of the ground, my mind wandered to another difficult journey I was about to take to the island of Nantucket.
I travel all over New England as a wedding photographer. Most of my first season was spent hopping around Connecticut and my second season found me a frequent guest in Western Massachusetts, so a little bit of travel has always been a part of the business model. Planning the way out to Nantucket was a very different beast and I dreaded telling the client what it was going to take.
Apart from the (in)famous man from Nantucket, the island is noted for it's beautiful beaches and rustic charm that make it an ideal getaway for many people. It's also an engaging location for a small wedding.
Unfortunately, there are a number of logistical hurdles to think about when shooting on the island.
First, you have to get there. Your best bet is the ferry, which can whisk you over in as little as an hour if you get the fast boat. You'll have the option to park in Hyannis or take a car over, you'd be surprised to find out that it's much cheaper to simply rent a vehicle on the island since putting it on the boat will set you back $400 (round trip).