Posts Tagged: charleston weddings

Lighting, Weddings and Musts to Know

We thought – with so many in the depths of planning weddings – that we would share some of our expert advice about timing. This is not timing as in “did he propose in the middle of your grandfather’s funeral?” (Guys: don’t do that, mkay?)

We’re talking about timing so that your photographer can get the shots you really want on the day of your wedding. Brides and grooms have gone to the trouble of thinking through what moments and people they would like captured, where they are having their weddings and choosing the season. But one of the things that needs to be considered most during planning is timing. It’s important in comedy and it’s important on your wedding day.

  • What time does sunset occur?
  • What time should your ceremony start and how long will the ceremony portion last?
  • Do you want lots of shots taken outdoors?
  • Where will your reception be and do we need to allow for drive time while the sun shines?

Much of our pricing depends on the amount of photo coverage hours needed, so planning ahead is key.

Ryan and I begin photographing approximately two hours before the ceremony for those couples who do not plan to see each other beforehand, which is customary. I work with the bride, bridesmaids and the bride’s family for an hour and can capture shots of her getting ready and transforming herself and spending quality time with specific people. This allows us to get all the fun of the preparation while still giving the bride time to freshen her make-up and ready herself for walking down the aisle. If a bride wants photos of her hair and makeup being done, we’ll need even more time, but we can help you get that sorted out when we speak.

Ryan photographs the groom, groomsmen and groom’s family during the second hour. This allows us to complete all photos that do not include the bride and groom together before the ceremony gets underway. You’re up, you’re fresh and ready and excited and it just makes sense. It makes the process more efficient following the ceremony and allows the couple to get to their reception sooner.


Firethorne Country Club wedding charlotte NC. Whitford/Kessell wedding photography by Pixels On Paper Photographers photo

Following the ceremony we need 30-45 minutes (depending on wedding party and family size) to photograph the bride and groom together with their families and wedding party. We prefer to begin with family first, then the wedding party, and then with just the bride and groom for the most amount of time. We know that you want to join the party that is YOUR celebration, so having a plan and knowing where the sun will be if you want outdoor photos is something we can anticipate and create for you.

If you’re interested in seeing more of our weddings, visit that page of our blog where you can see the anticipatory beginnings, tender middles and lovely ends to ceremonies across seasons. Here is also a blog of ours for those interested in seeing how lighting can affect the details of a wedding and make them truly shine.

During the reception, we photograph candid moments of all kinds and do not interrupt the bride and groom for posed photos. We want you to mingle and celebrate, dance, eat and enjoy your day. Those moments make amazing photos anyway. The only exception we make is if the couple requests sunset photos at which point we will watch for the perfect moment before stealing the couple away from the reception for a minimal amount of time.

Most receptions last 3-4 hours, so if a couple plans a formal exit complete with sparklers, bubbles, and a getaway car, they will likely want us to photograph that exit and stay until the end. However, if a couple does not plan a formal exit and anticipates staying until the last guest leaves, then they can plan on less photography coverage hours and we will slip out (after hugs, a last check-in and goodbyes) and let you keep partying.

For us, lighting your day is important and we know how to handle it. You have other things to think about, so once you’ve chosen place, season, type of wedding and time of day, we’ll know how to counsel you and make things work.

While your wedding is photographed to memorialize it and is a big production, it is also one of the biggest milestones in a person’s life. We want you to feel the joy of the day and not just like you’re modeling or being posed. So consider the season, the time of day, time changes for daylight savings if those apply, how much of the behind the scenes you want captured, as well as the outdoor and natural light and we’ll do our best. To help, here is a favorite website we use to determine sunset time.
After all the planning, it’s an adventure! Let the magic happen!


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.

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.

October Anniversaries ~ all the best to these couples

Kristen and Jason Lavender, 6 years October 1st

“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” – St. Augustine

Augustine was a smart man. He was a saint, a Christian, a philosopher and a studier of men and their relationship to each other and to God. I like this quote, because while it can apply to every single person who loves well, in a marriage, it describes what bride and groom, husband and wife, father and mother will need to keep the family together: hands and feet ready to help and carry, eyes to see both pain and joy, ears to listen to stories that are exhilarating or boring (don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about) and a big heart that wants to jump in no matter what. And it’s just a start. Happy Anniversary to the couples who married in October – all of you – and most especially to the ones we’ve photographed over the years. We love you. Keep celebrating and showing each other what love looks like.

Donna & Andrew Gilleland 5 years October 4th

Mickey and Ben Strope, 4 years October 4th

LeighAnn and Jason Moffitt, 3 years October 4th

Amanda and Rich Terpstra, 8 years October 10th

Melissa and Bob Paradis, 7 years October 10th

Katie and Josh Minor, 2 years October 10th

Mary and Gilbert Joseph, 9 years October 11th

Megan and Jeff Barnhart, 4 years October 12th

Lucy and Glen Klamer, 5 years October 13th

Bonnie and Amanda Walling, 1 year October 14th

Addie & Matt 7 years October 16th

Amy & Bobby Pruitt 8 years October 17th

Goforth/Harrison Pixels On Paper nc mountain outdoor wedding photographers photo

Jamie and Daniel Harrison, 2 years October 17th

Annette & Omudhome 9 years October 18th

Laura and Michael Chumah, 6 years October 22nd

Firethorne Country Club wedding charlotte NC. Whitford/Kessell wedding photography by Pixels On Paper Photographers

Christine and Adam Kessell, 1 year October 22nd

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 ©2017 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

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Anniversaries | The Darling Buds of May

Kaitly & Denny Gappens – 4 years on May 4th

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Jennifer & Thomas – 5 years on May 5th

Olivia & James – 6 years on May 7th

Kathy & Phillip – 10 years on May 12th

Andrea & Mike – 6 years on May 14th

Jessica & Zach –  8 years on May 16th

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:

Jessica & Chris – 3 years on May 17th

Maggie & Saeger – 4 years on May 18th

Rachel & Ryan – 6 years on May 21st

Holley & Ron – 7 years on May 22nd

Kathren & Nathan – 3 years on May 24th

Shanna & Ethan – 4 years on May 25th

Ashleigh & Philip – 5 years on May 26th

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18 from William Shakespeare

Candace & Bob – 8 years on May 30th

Congratulations and Happy Anniversary! We love you all and hope the year ahead till the next anniversary is adorned with the blooms of prosperity, good health, laughter, devotion and LOVE!

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What Makes a Wedding ….. A WOW

If you take an informal poll about which weddings people remember and what made them amazing, you’ll get a few surprising answers, but several themes come quickly into relief. The same goes for reading blogs and checking out WeddingWire. There are exceptions, but mostly the same categories bob to the surface.
The dancing. “Everyone was dancing. When it got late, the shoes came off, but most everyone just stayed on the dance floor.”
Amanda Walling and Bonnie Hostetler On The Windfall outdoor Wedding West Jefferson NChaley & cody |boone nc wedding photographer | river run farm | valle crucis | blowing rock | pixels on paper wedding photographersPixels On Paper Photography Charlotte NC Wedding photography photoAmanda Walling and Bonnie Hostetler On The Windfall outdoor Wedding West Jefferson NCThe details. “They spent so much time thinking about each element – from the seating, to the little gifts for the wedding party, to their vows.” The food and drink. “My dad kept saying, ‘it’s all about the food and booze and he was right. Our reception was the highlight. Everyone kept telling us how tasty everything was and how much fun they were having.”
Amanda Walling and Bonnie Hostetler On The Windfall outdoor Wedding West Jefferson NCPixels On Paper Photography Rock Hill SC Wedding Photographers PhotoAs you can see, there’s usually a little bit of everything in the course of a wedding season, especially since the wedding season has become nearly three quarters of the year.
The venue. “We LOVED the views and everyone could roam or go inside to relax and then back outside to eat and dance.”
Ryan and I have shot weddings at some amazing places.
Amanda Walling and Bonnie Hostetler On The Windfall outdoor Wedding West Jefferson NC

This and the shot above taken at On the Windfall.

Pixels On Paper Photograhphy High Country NC wedding photographers Leatherwood mountain resort wedding photo

Pixels On Paper Photograhphy High Country NC wedding photographers Leatherwood mountain resort wedding photo

Above and the preceding photo taken at Leatherwood Resort.

©2016 Pixels On Paper Photographers. http://www.pixelsonpaper.net Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.Those last two were taken in West Jefferson at Twickenham House. The food and music and views matter, but then there is the couple. Often, this is expressed as “how much love everyone felt.” We all need love and many of us cry at weddings, because they are such a fresh, new, pure and unapologetic celebration of it. Marriage is, we all hope, for a lifetime; watching two people say “I do” is a pretty overwhelming.
Firethorne Country Club wedding charlotte NC. Whitford/Kessell wedding photography by Pixels On Paper Photographers photoAmanda Walling and Bonnie Hostetler On The Windfall outdoor Wedding West Jefferson NCPixels On Paper Photography Rock Hill SC Wedding Photographers Photo©2016 Pixels On Paper Photographers. http://www.pixelsonpaper.net Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

The final answer if you’re planning your wedding is YOU. You make it special by bringing people you love together to watch you take an enormous step into your future. Plan well, do your homework, work with the best you can find and afford, but remember that surrounding yourself with people who love you and bringing your heart to the party will make it a WOW. We hope to be there to capture every last detail.
haley & cody |boone nc wedding photographer | river run farm | valle crucis | blowing rock | pixels on paper wedding photographers

Pixels is booking weddings, engagement and bridal portraits now for 2017 and 2018. Contact us! We’d love to work with 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.