Posts Tagged: asheville wedding photography
Our Foundation – Wedding Portraits
We’ve been doing little mini-blog series lately and it felt like time to focus on our foundations as photographers: weddings. Photographing a wedding is not something that you shake out of your sleeve, but we’ve been doing it for a long time now and still enjoy the occasion, the logistics, getting to know our couples and their families and capturing the day as it unfolds.
I just thought I would share some of our favorite wedding shots today as a reminder of what we do best and what put Pixels on the map.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License
All photos are ©2018 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
Engagement to Wedding – some portraits of a few of the couples we love
Most couples we photograph for their engagement portraits also book us for their wedding day. Naturally, we LOVE that and we LOVE them. It really gives us extended time to get to know them and to determine fun ways to illustrate and showcase their personalities, their affinities for each other and why they chose each location. We’ve found over the last decade and a half that people want to be in and a part of their environments during these big occasions. They want their surroundings to say something about who they are as a couple. For us, it’s a blast, because you can walk any mountain ridge or urban greenway, but if you put people in the shots for whom that place has meaning – it’s a whole new narrative.
Christine and Adam (below) wanted their engagement portraits taken at a mill that has been a part of the groom’s family history for generations. Their wedding? Surrounded by family, outside, in a traditional (club) format. Her veil was the very definition of making a nod to generations before.
These two women have become true friends. We shot Bonnie Hostetler and Amanda Walling’s engagement photos in Charleston, SC, where the water, salt and history were a perfect backdrop for their lives and love. We then photographed their amazing wedding at On the Windfall – a mountain venue where they could begin their lives surrounded by vistas and friends. With both oceans and mountains, we saw their love of the vastness of place and their love for each other. Also – they are just really cool, fun chicks.
Timothy Mahon and Katie Speight met us for their engagement portraits at the Bilmore House in the mountains of Asheville, NC with their dog in the fall and then celebrated their wedding at Twickenham House. Mountain lovers are mountain lovers.
Kyle and Elizabeth brought their favorite fiction – both on television and in print – to bear for their engagement and bridal portraits. These two love Dr. Who and they both love to read and both were a part of their photos. Her wedding bouquets, and those of her maids, as well as the men’s boutonnieres, we made of pages from favorite books. Unbelievable.
Sherae and David are Charlotteans and we shot their engagement in a more urban setting and their AMAZING wedding in downtown Charlotte at the Holiday Inn. They were so comfortable with each other and the surroundings sort of faded away during both the engagement shoot and their wedding day.
These are only a few, but they show just how much personality and detail is revealed in front of the lens when two people decide to bond themselves for life. We look forward to many more in the coming months.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License
All photos are ©2017 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
a church wedding | two cultures and two families come together
Our hearts go out to the parents of brides and grooms. I think about this every time that Ryan and I shoot a wedding. God Bless the parents. They are exhilarated and stressed, proud and nervous, but mostly in love with their kids – who are no longer kids. How do you go from diapers to driving and then big decisions? How do you go from watching them choose a sport in middle school to a spouse for life? And with grace? To the parents, this must feel like it happens in 72 hours rather than a couple of decades. We honor the parents and love watching them love a celebration of their kids.
The tender moments included watching Ashley’s father place a pearl necklace around her and seeing them both in tears. The mind goes to the number of times they stood that close together as he watched her grow up and now, here she was: a bride.
While Ashley Caudill and Oscar Orozco married young (please read about their engagement to learn how they met), their wedding showed astonishing wisdom, love and faith. Prior to the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom were blindfolded and they joined hands while Oscar prayed for them. I (Misty) was the only other person in the room and it was incredibly touching. I wish that there was a recording of the words in Oscar’s prayer for them, because they were filled with humility, grace and wisdom far beyond his years. 
Both Ashley and Oscar agree that the best moment of the day was seeing each other for the first time. Neither of them could hold back crying tears of joy and reflect on those moments whenever they look back and talk about their wedding day. 
A lasso binding ceremony is part of the Orozco’s culture. A beautiful rhinestone cross lasso was placed around Ashley & Oscar by their parents symbolizing a binding unity as they prayed together and said their vows. We would love to see how the lasso will be used in future generations as an heirloom.
Another outward gesture of unity and symbol of their faith was a binding of three cords which Ashley & Oscar created and performed representing the scripture verse from Ecclesiastes 4:12 “Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
Oscar’s family is from Mexico, and they speak Spanish primarily, but it was amazing to see how these two families, two cultures and two language barriers were brought together in love. They combined elements from both into the wedding ceremony and the reception.
When asked, Ashley and Oscar said there isn’t one thing that they would change about their wedding day. The most memorable moments for them that they want to hold on to forever included performing the cross ceremony during the wedding, spending time with each other during pictures after the ceremony and of course Oscar said the vision of Ashley in her wedding dress.
Ashley and Oscar both recall laughing when seeing Oscar’s car covered in toilet paper after their reception exit.
Ashley was the couple’s wedding planner and she also hand-made all of the flowers, bouquets and center pieces, but their other vendors included:
Wedding Attire: Bridal Traditions
Ceremony and Reception Venue: Thanks Be To Calvary Baptist Church, Elkin NC
Cellist for the Ceremony: Steve Holman
Caterer: Oscar’s Father
Desserts: Kathy’s Creations in Sparta
Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brid
What Fuels Us – Part 1
We had a conversation recently about motivations, inspirations, choices we make each day, what makes us happy and other little idiosyncratic things that make us tick as individuals and as a couple of creatives. We could write a book about our adventures and what fuels us, but here is a first pass, from Ryan.
Hi Gang!! I’m jumping in here and hitting the things from my perspective. Hope you enjoy.
Activities that turn us on: Hiking! These do not have to be strenuous by any means, just nice strolls through new places. We are always on the look out for new shoot locations and often find ourselves looking at every aspect of a place. “If we were going to do a shoot here, how /where would we pose people?”
A second thing I love (and this came to mind more than once) is cooking. It’s similar to how we approach photography, taking concepts that we have seen or read about for various recipes and adding a bit of ourselves and our “twist” to make them different is always fun. And we love to go to Boondocks, which is basically our local hangout even if it is 45 minutes away. I love craft beers, so count me in for anything that’s as black as motor oil and aged in bourbon barrels, and typically 10%ABV and up. [In my best Homer Simpson voice: “BEEEEEEEEEEER. Sweet sustainer of life….”]
BOONDOCKS! We love this restaurant and brewery in West Jefferson and the folks who operate it. Family!
What bands/music? Well, you know we cover Merlefest as official photographers, so these answers won’t surprise you…. Avett Brothers, Dave Matthews Band, Pokey Lafarge. But also Dean Martin, Trampled By Turtles, anything solid bluegrass, electronic dance music (EDM), anything with a good bass/drum combo that I can “turn up to 11.”
What faces fuel me? Misty’s for sure. I can tell a lot of what’s going on by reading her expressions. Also the look on a client’s face when we sneak a peek at the back of camera and see the awesomeness we are capturing. That’s the best!
What types of media do you consume out of complete love? Books: Game of Thrones series – before they became a TV show and became even cool-er. I tend to love more of the Lord of the Rings fantasy types of series that require an active imagination with good descriptions so I can “see” the story in my head. Movies: action thrillers like the Bourne series and James Bond, animated Pixar anything. And with TV, I am obsessed with “This Old House,” am a DIY/HGTV junkie as well as stuff on Food Network/Cooking Channel.
What part of a photo session turns you on the most? Trying to get to a location and then figuring out how to shoot it from a perspective that may not be what everyone else would see. Safe shots are still OK to do, but the fun comes in trying something that you think may not work, but if it does, its going to be epic.
Orozco engagement portrait photography by Wilkesboro NC Photographers Pixels On Paper
What’s your favorite time of day? Sunset, it’s a time for magic with lighting, but it goes super fast as the light changes by the second, so knowing how to adapt and adjust quickly is a necessity.
What scriptures do you recite and rely on most? Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
What places or aspects of travel provide a personal or creative “reboot?” For the vacation spots, there are different ways of looking at it: All inclusive for the times where you just want to fully relax and not worry about what to do other than figure out what drink to order next or what pool to go to. I love Charleston. It’s always going to be a favorite spot from a food/site-seeing perspective. Even in the mundane travels, I like taking any combination of backroads when going somewhere leads to a fun antique store or mom-and-pop restaurant. I love finding places that we’d miss if we stuck to the main roads all the time.
What’s your favorite room in your house? The kitchen, not only because we built it basically from the studs out when we moved in, but it’s another place for creativity, to try new recipes and have fun enjoying the hard work after.
Well, that seems like enough, so let’s call that a wrap for me. Have a great weekend, everybody.
Misty? You’re up, honey!
The Pirate Party Wedding of Edith and Kirk
If we had a golden doubloon for every time we were asked to attend or photograph a pirate wedding – we’d have a single coin and a million pirate jokes we’d be tempted to make. But this was no joke and the ceremony itself was filled to the brim with pirate references and joy that only the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott. It started as a party but this year, the host couple added a new element: they got married, …. on their property ……. dressed as pirates and surrounded by their friends, many in costume. It was a blast, down to when the last sword was sheathed and the last lantern was out.
The couple are in beverage distribution, so there was no shortage of beer and ale for the party and their first dance as man and wife was to Chris Stapleton’s Tennessee Whiskey. 
Edith and Kirk have been a couple for 21 years and a dozen of those ago, they started hosting a pirate party on their gorgeous wooded property that boasts a stream that runs through it and a pirate ship. Their place is called: the Piratez Cove. If you find yourself suffering from poverty of imagination for a party or a wedding (or both), take note:
Edith’s processional music was AC/DC’s Highway to Hell. They said their vows on a bridge that Kirk built. No walking the plank. Before the ceremony, they had a parlay party where the bride and groom laid their weapons out on a table. Kirk had a few, but Edith had quite a few more. Peace was established.
The party lasted late in the evening and a chef pal of the couple made Japanese rice hibachi for those staying up and hanging out. We had the best time. These 2 and their friends are a fun bunch of pirates and pirate-loving peeps. Here’s to doing it your way, with your theme!
Whether your wedding is conventional or as non-conventional as Edith & Kirk’s we would love to be part of it as your wedding photographers. Contact Pixels On Paper Photography so we can discuss your celebration and specific needs.