Seaton Shoots Photography News

Two hours drive from Guilin on the banks of the Li River. I’m thinking about what drew me to this scene when I photographed it. We were in amazing Yangshuo ( or Yangsoo ) waiting for a week before the weather broke … which helped prove the point made by a travel photographer that I met on a plane to Hong Kong. “It’s the waiting that will break you”. It gets expensive. More so in Hong Kong than in Yangshuo!

From the wikipedia entry for Yangshuo it looks like this place, as with all “best kept secrets”, aint so secret anymore!! Sitting in an open air cafe for breakfast, I took this from across the street. I don’t know what she has in the wooden barrel, guessing rice, but I’ve got a better idea what the miles per gallon rating is for their vehicles!

Tiz “zzz” Myers and I rented bikes for the day and hit the road, and river. Any road. We didn’t care. We ended up seeing Moon Hill and plenty of people dealing with flooding in their daily lives. And the obligatory cormorant fisherman. Well worth the wait.

PHOTO TIP: look where the girls heads are in the frame. With auto focus it is so so easy to leave faces and heads smack in the middle, with all that space above wasted, and legs, feet etc chopped off. A composition starting point should be to keep your images “grounded”. So, focus on faces and then move them up in the frame – that is, point the lens down a little. Make this a habit, and you’ll find yourself doing it even for grab shots without realising it! In this image, I could have raised them just a little more to see more of the bike wheel in the puddle ….. and now I’m thinking about what if … what if we went vertical and saw their reflections in the water?

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Where is this bandwagon headed?

Where did this come from, and what do you think about it?

It appears the last bastion of traditional wedding photography is giving way and being popularly re-invented. Even discovered for the first time. Certain areas of the country seem to be have been far more into having formal bridal gown portraits made than others. Photographers in a number of areas apparently didn’t even offer bridal portrait sessions until recently since there was no demand. Some still don’t.

As a result there were a lot of new photographers drawn in with the digital age who did not even know that brides would, could, should have a portrait made separate from the hurly burly of the wedding day.

Fortunately for me, I came to Tennessee in 1995 where it was the norm to have a 16×20 bridal included in top packages. While bucking the norm was certainly my inclination from the beginning, I was not in a position to turn away brides wanting something extra like a portrait. Formal portraiture however – studio soft boxes, fussing over hands and sculpting people – was not my thing at all. Mostly my reaction to this product was Eeegch!!

So, what to do? All I really needed was to find permission to do my thing. I already knew this was possible by having done it with the wedding day itself and telling the whole story instead of cookie cutter packages that everybody else was doing. [Read more →]

Slide film and an Olympus OM10

One of my favourite images from Australia. Early mornings are definitely not my forte, except for some reason when travelling ….

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So, what makes your wedding special?

Answer, you.

Chances are we don’t know you. How are you introducing yourself to your photographer?

After photographing my very first wedding I was exhilarated. Fifteen years later I still feel the same way. Two families take me in as part of the celebrations throughout the weekend. There’s a buzz of excitement that comes from being a part of this central day in these people’s lives and knowing that I have it for them to relive again and again. I used to be an auditor. Trust me, job satisfaction matters. As does appreciation.

While a good proportion of initial inquiries from brides come on the phone, email is the easiest way these days for most people to get in touch. Especially if they are coming direct off of the website, or the blog here. In this connected world however, how we put our first step forward can appear very disconnected and cold if we are not careful. It is all too easy to cut and paste into twenty emails.

Photographer Aric Hoek sums it up best (and inspired this piece) here when he asks “Who do you think I am going to contact first?”.

Checking messages first thing in the morning, a large majority of emails that come in have the title “wedding packages”, and basically say “if you are available for our date, send packages and prices”, and not much else. ie Get in line. There’s a certain ring to this that sounds like “well of course you would want our business, we’ll let you know whether yours was the best deal”… Isn’t there?

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This slideshow is ripped straight from our website, and I thought I’d post it here too. Extra bonus, you can browse the gallery by clicking bottom right, but there’s some lovely music synched when you press the play triangle bottom left …. so, what ya gonna do??….maybe hit the “read more” button underneath the show controls?

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