So, a few weeks ago, I spent two LONG and wonderful days in New Haven, CT. The reason – a GREAT wedding photography workshop, held by Justin & Mary Marantz. It was an intense couple of days, to say the least. Justin and Mary are a hugely successful husband/wife photography team. In addition to being outstanding photographers, they also “give back” by teaching several of these workshops throughout the year.
The idea of the workshop is to follow an entire “mock” wedding, from beginning to end, shooting and learning every step of the way. On the first day, we started at Justin & Mary’s home in New Haven. The house was beautiful – built in 1920, it overlooks Long Island Sound. This is the view from their front porch….not too shabby (photo taken with my phone).
We had a few hours of introductions, lecture and practice shooting – the whole time, our models for the day were quietly getting ready in the background. We talked about using directional natural light, to create some really dimensional and detail-rich images.
After lunch, we headed to Stonington, CT (an hour drive), to Elihu Island. It’s a beautiful little island, quite popular as a wedding venue (though only a select few are held there on a yearly basis). Oh, before arriving at the island, we stopped at a church in Mystic, where we practiced some more lighting set-ups, during the pretend ceremony.
The photos that follow are all from Elihu Island. It was COLD and WINDY, but you would never know it looking at the models – they stuck it out without a single complaint.
After shooting outdoors for a few hours, we headed inside for some more lecture and shooting practice. Thanks to some great styling, the scene was perfectly set for us to capture more detail shots, at the “mock” reception.
And one final shot of the bride, Heather.
After shooting until almost 11:00 that first night, I didn’t end up getting back to Windsor until about 1:00 a.m.! It was a long day, but so worth it. And we were back at it the next day, for Part II of the Walk Through a Wedding workshop. We spent that second day talking about post processing, marketing and just photography in general. Again, we worked until well into the night.
So, after two long but wonderful days, I’ve come away with some fantastic new shooting ideas and techniques. I also made some great new friends and I look forward to following their work, seeing how they’ve decided to incorporate all the things we learned. I can’t thank Justin and Mary enough for putting on one of the best photography workshops I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. And I can’t wait to shoot my next wedding, so I can show ’em how their hard work has paid off!