Posts Tagged: Blowing Rock Wedding Photography

Portraits – stages of life

The temptation to write about the various stages of life we get to photograph – cradle to grave as it were – has been with me for a while, you guys. The grave part seems morbid, but honestly, we do capture the circle and cycles of life. Your parents have your baby portraits taken and before long, you’re scheduling your own kids’ photos.
Heirlooms are magic and they last long after the people in the frames are gone, so we consider it an honor to be the ones behind the camera during all the stages of your life. It seems like every year the baby, family, engagement, wedding and reunion photos become more profound as our own lives advance and expand personally.

Here is a topless newborn (not even 2 weeks old) in a tutu. Are you in? Paying attention? Well, a little pink lamb is always a good place to start.
But we often form our client relationships at the intention to marry. You fall in love and when you find the right one, you make it official – perhaps. Maybe you just start a life together.



Those images from your engagement and wedding are coveted by parents, grandparents and friends and they become markers in your life story. For many of our couples, kids are the next piece of the puzzle and we love taking maternity, newborn portraits, birthday cake smashes, outdoor photos and photos with the siblings that follow the first kid.
Pixels on Paper Photography Outdoor Portrait garden photo

Family’s grow and we love being a part of watching them expand – seeing multiple generations gather for whatever reason.

There are friendships, school milestones, proms and graduations. Again – your family members – those now and those you’ll never meet – will want to see these moments and relish them along with you.


Pixels On Paper Senior Photography Portraits Wilkesboro Boone Blowing Rock Charlotte Photographers

Do people from other regions of the country use the expression, “do life?” I wonder. It feels distinctly Southern, but who knows?
As you do life, no matter what season of life you’re in, we hope that you’ll make time for professional portraits that will put a pin in that particular chapter of your life. Your kids will grow and your family may spread out, you’ll head to college and fall in love or decide to venture forth and want family portraits taken. You’ll also come together for reunions and birthdays. Maybe you just want to document this year in Day in the Life photos. Regardless, we’re here and would love to be the ones to capture this specific moment for you.


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 weddingsbrides, 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.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

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.

The Pinterest Factor – reality vs. pinned photos

A common challenge we wedding photographers have these days involves brides sending us a Pinterest board full of photos they want us to recreate on their wedding day. And believe me, we get it. Inspiration comes from so many different places and directions, people, memories……….. the origins of our muses can be anywhere these days and Pinterest boards are proof of that. They are a 21st century social media phenomenon, born of the old bulletin boards, college wall boards of your favorite actors or bands, and more recently the vision boards people made for aspirational purposes. They have enormous value for those who craft, knit, travel, have a yen for a certain type of fiction, color palette, movie genre, you name it.

from a board about movie stars of the 1940s

But Pinterest boards are just that: they are inspiration boards. And brides love them because they create a central and shareable place to collect ideas. It’s perfect for pulling together your ideas and favorite thoughts as you plan. With photography on your wedding day, it’s a moveable feast. It’s live and it’s subject to dozens of variables.

 

from a board about weddings

all images from Pinterest boards about weddings

When it comes to brides, we love seeing photos from Pinterest boards for this reason and pretty much this reason only: we get to know YOUR sense of your style, where YOUR inspirations are coming from and some of the types of imagery you want us to capture. You’re giving us a sense of who you are, but from someone else’s photos. These are someone else’s moments and that’s the distinction.

Why do you want someone else’s moment? Why not allow us to capture or create photos that are uniquely yours? We don’t mind looking at a pinterest board to get an idea of what you like at all, because we can then use it for inspiration. We want to capture what you want and we are seasoned wedding photographers and great listeners. But to wholesale recreate someone else’s moment is not only difficult and time consuming, that moment may be from a photographer with a different style from ours.

Schultz Crestwood Resort Blowing Rock NC High Country Wedding
Firethorne Country Club wedding charlotte NC. Whitford/Kessell wedding photography by Pixels On Paper Photographers photo
 Amanda Walling and Bonnie Hostetler On The Windfall outdoor Wedding West Jefferson NC photo

If you’ve fallen in love with a particular style of photography, you’ll need to find that photographer or a photographer who can mimic that style. Ryan and I feel strongly about copying other professional photographers images.

Thinking we can create images from Pinterest that only happen naturally where brides and photographers can find themselves in the weeds. Setting up an image based on a photo takes much longer due to set-up and lighting, posing people, etc. than those glorious shots that simply happen naturally.

A wedding is a moveable feast, as it were.

It’s live. It’s a living, breathing bit of joy, community, fun, calamity at its best and history in the making. Every moment cannot be a photo shoot and why would you want it to be? There are rain delays, wardrobe changes or makeup refreshes, lingering conversations, your cast of characters who may go missing, speeches that are lovely to hear but don’t convey on film. To capture every type of image based on other weddings on other days, in other locations and shot by other photographers is to set yourself up for disappointment. Have faith!
YOU need your own images that happen naturally for YOU on YOUR day. Remember that, as you sort through what you’d like to see on your day and trust that there will be magic moments we’ll capture that no one else on any Pinterest board will have.


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 weddingsbrides, 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.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

All photos are ©2018 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

Outdoor Rock-A-Billy Wedding Photos in Wilkesboro NC

When you decide to get married and important members of your family cannot travel, what do you do? You bring your wedding to wherever they are. That is exactly what New Yorkers Elisabeth DeMaio and David Gross did when they married at the Doc and Merle Watson Stage at Wilkes Community College on  July 13th. Elisabeth lost her own parents not long ago and David’s folks moved to Wilkesboro, NC a few years ago. Since the elderly Gross’s are not able to travel, Elisabeth and David made the decision to come south for their ceremony and share the day with their family. We were honored to be their photographers.

DeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDavid, a tattoo artist, and Elisabeth have been together for more than a decade. With their son and daughter by their sides, they planned and pulled off a completely cool and off-beat wedding: a Jewish ceremony with a Rock-a-Billy theme. While the weather was some of the worst we’ve ever shot through for a wedding ceremony – sheets of rain and lots of severe lightning – it still managed to be joyous and fun. The Rabbi who performed the ceremony shared that lighting during vows was a sign of good luck and that this couple was being blessed with more luck than they would know what to do with.

The groom’s mother surprised the bride by having a family friend bring their classic Mercury for photos. It was one of many times Elisabeth shed tears of joy since it went perfectly with their Rock a Billy theme.

DeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photo

This event was all hands on deck. The venue and food were provided by Wilkes Community College. The decorations, wedding planning and desserts for the reception were handled by family and friends. These newlyweds are loved! Some of the sweetest moments included the bride and groom’s first dance, followed by dancing with their children. Most touching was a dance between David and his Mom who only a few weeks prior had suffered a heart attack. When she wasn’t able to dance on her feet any longer, she sat and David laid his head on her lap for the duration of the song. There wasn’t a dry eye anywhere, including ours.

DeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoDeMaio / Gross Merle Watson Stage Rockabilly Styled Outdoor Wedding Photo by Pixels On Paper Photography Wilkesboro NC Photographers photoWe sometimes forget that weddings aren’t just about the couple who are joining their lives; they really are about bonding closer to our own families while broadening our family to include new members. The Gross’s are perfect examples of the love and how it’s manifested. Good luck David and Elisabeth. Come back to Wilkesboro soon!

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