Credit Where Credit Is Due

Tonight I was leafing through Wedding Essentials when I was blindisded by a picture on page 95, that I own the copyright on. It's a picture of one of the master pieces created by Rascia at Rascia's Creative Cakes. Originally I took the picture for use in the now defunct Michiana Weddings Magazine. Rasica has a copy on her website, but I was surprised to see it show up in the fall issue of Wedding Essentials, especially badly cropped. I've always been very proud of this picture, it's one of my all time favorites that I've taken of anything. So here is a better cropped and color corrected picture.

Keeping It Green

Surfing the internet today, looking for some gift ideas I ran across reusable gift wrap from Lucky Crow Gift Bags. This is a pretty neat idea. Cloth bags that can be passed on again and again.

A little loud in their design for my taste and I think weddings, but then I'm a guy what do I know. It's a neat idea and they are relatively inexpensive.

This One For The Guys

This one is for the guys. I just stumbled across this site Solid Color Neck Ties and I like it. Solid ties have been my favorite since before Regis tuned them into a fashion statement. I hate stripes, patterns and there are a few picture ties I don't mind but otherwise I'll take one solid color tie any day. And this place has them by the ton.

It's 9:00 On A Saturday... The Usual Crowd Shuffels In...

Last night I had the fun of working for my friend Paul Chamberlin over at the Music Machine. Paul had called me to shoot some footage of him performing to be added to a demo video down the road. So I grabbed my old EZ1 which for the last decade has been nothing more than a shelf paperweight, left my light at home because we didn't want to interfer in any way with the ambience of the festivites since I was only there to get demo footage of Pual in action and crossed my fingers. The one big problem with the EZ1 and the reason I bailed on using it is that it's manual functions are almost impossible to use, so you have to leave it in auto. The main reason the footage looses focus a few times.

Not bad, but the camera sucks in low light as evidenced while Paul is doing the introduction to Piano Man. And it reminded me why I like shooting two cameras, I didn't have any cut aways to hide the camera moves as I swung the camera to get the audience, or the tape glitch that happens half way through the song. Usually the second camera would concentrate on the cutaways while I stuck with the main subject, in this case the B&G. And due to the fact I didn't want to be too obvious, the footage of the B&G singing isn't exactly at the best angle. Following the sing along is the bouquet toss.





Paul is one of he great DJs, besides myself of course. ;-) After shooting the demo footage of Paul, I grabbed the still camera he brings with him and fired off a few still shots, which are below. I love having fun with photography. Especially shutter drags, which are those that are out of focus with blured motion.

The official photographer for the couple, who made a cameo in the video is Scott Leonard from Valentino's Photographics. You can see some different photos that I shot, along with a few Paul shot, over at the Music Machine's blog.


The YMCA


Are you dragging the shutter, or do you not know how to use a caemra? ;-)






What a great gobo!




Pual in action, he probably wants to shoot me for this shot. ;-)







The offical vendors at this reception were
The Music Machine
Palais Royale
Valentino's Photographics

Jennifer & Steve

Here is some raw footage from one of the weddings I'm presently editing. It's only our center aisle camera no cuts to other camera angles.

I love ceremonies like this, they are so fun! When the personalities of the bride and groom can show through, not only in their own vows, but just the interaction with the guests and officiant. So many churches today treat the ceremony almost like it's a funeral, it's their chance to lecture on the failings of humanity. I remember one priest who was ranting about hell fire and brimstone, literally at one of our ceremonies. That wasn't a fun ceremony to record or edit, I'll tell you. Nothing harder to do than trying to figure out what to do with comments like "the devil is out to destroy the world"... Such an uplifting comment on a happy day.

Then you have this clipe, laughter, jokes, happiness... Isn't this what it's suppose to be about! Enjoy.

Brian Peterson



Comparison test. The clip above was uploaded via blogger's video uplink. What did Blogger do to it? The clip below is my originally rendered flv file.