Kevin and Honey's Wedding

Kevin and Honey tied the knot last weekend! What a fun and beautiful day. I really love what I do. I can't say that enough. I am blessed to be a part of the best days of people's lives.

The wedding was at Weddings on the Water in St Petersburg. This is a very different location. The wedding chapel leaves port right next to the St Pete Pier. The service was out in the bay right before sunset. The party cruises for sunset before heading back to port. It was very cool.

Here are a few of the photographs to share with you. There are so many more at www.proofing.mccrystalimage.com Look for the Kevin and Honey page that has their wedding and engagement portraits.

I will be sharing the album design soon. It is really amazing...

Aaron and Rachel's Album Design

While photographing a wedding I am thinking actively about the page designs I will be creating. My albums are the core of what I do as a wedding photographer. I love the process of design and the way they grow and change with input from the couple. In a day where so many photographers are shooting, burning a disk and walking away, I hope to stand out because of my focus on albums and design. I want a long term relationship with my clients so I can give them my very best.

These are a few of the pages in Aaron and Rachel's Album Predesign. To see the entire book, view the slideshow here.

Aaron and Rachel's Wedding

I shot an amazing wedding this past weekend at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. What a beautiful location!

Aaron and Rachel were fantastic. What a wonderful couple. The plan was for the ceremony on the river walk. It rained and rained... Rachel was awesome. It was difficult I'm sure, but she rolled with changes to the plans and kept her eyes focused on her man. In the end, the atrium in the Performaing Arts Aenter was an amazing and different type of location for the wedding. It was beautiful.

Here are a few of my favorite images to share with you. The full day's photographs is online at my proofing site if you would like to visit them there.

TJ and Maggie's Wedding - Beautiful

Last weekend I had the privilege to photograph Maggie and TJ's wedding. What a beautiful couple. Their love for each other and for God were so evident throughout the entire wedding. Also, there was a wonderful sense of fun that ran throughout the entire day. Their friends added a great spice to everything with laughter and a certain joy of life.

To see the entire wedding's photographs, visit my proofing site.

Christina and Drew's Album Design

I released the predesign for Cristina and Drew this morning. As I said before this was a beautiful day. Their personalities were really evident all day in every little detail. I love the storytelling possibilities when I do an album design like this. I find that I am designing a bit in my head when I am shooting. It gives an extra level of involvement and expression for me. I love it.
 

Christina and Drew's Wedding

Another beautiful wedding. Christian and Drew are such a sweet couple. I am always honored to be a part of such important days in people’s lives. I met them for the first time about a year ago and was so pleased to be included in their plans.
 
The slideshow above is available through i-Tunes as a pod-cast. If you would like to share these moments with friends, feel free to download it to your ipod and carry it wherever you go.

Brandy and Derek's Wedding

I have been photographing weddings for a long time now. (Since 1989... Yikes, I think I’m getting old now...) There are some couples that still strike me as special. Brandy and Derek are one of those couples.

They are young and very much in love. Derek came home from serving in the military in Iraq and married his high school sweetheart. I love this kind of story.

To make the event even better, they chose Cross Creek Ranch for their wedding and reception. It is such a beautiful location with a warm country feel. It was the perfect backdrop for their love story.

Visit my online proofing page to view their entire wedding and engagement session.

2007 Starts With a Wedding

I just realized I have been too busy to visit the blog world for quite a while. I will try to catch everyone up with what has been going on. I will post a few of the highlights in the next day or two.

The first highlight to share is the beautiful wedding on January 1st. Al and Melissa met me at a friend's wedding in July and I was their choice for their New Year's Day wedding at the Florida Aquarium. What an amazing and beautiful wedding. This was my first at the aquarium and I'm looking forward to more of them now that I've seen one there. The huge panoramic tank is an amazing backdrop for your ceremony and the lobby of the aquarium made a beautiful location for the reception.

Please take a few moments and visit the album design slideshow HERE Melissa and I have been fine tuning the design and will be getting her album started very soon. I can't wait to see the final product. It will be gorgeous. I might need one to show off...

Wedding Photography

I have been doing a lot of thinking recently about why I photograph weddings. It was kind of a shock for me to realize I have been doing weddings since 1989. That's a long time!

My junior year of high school my logic teacher told me I was going to photograph his wedding. I told him he was nuts, that I hadn't done one yet and that I wasn't about to photograph someone who could influence my graduation as my first. He insisted that not doing it might effect my graduation as well.

I called a good friend and photographic mentor and told her my situation. She easily said that I was ready and all I needed was some prep on the logistics etc. I was still unconvinced. Well, Carolyn had a two wedding Saturday scheduled soon after that conversation. I learned more that day than I realized. I was exhausted but unbelievably excited by the end of that day.

My first wedding went by with a relatively low level of stress. I think I was nursing batteries to make it through the end of the day, but I made it. He ordered reprints from me every year for a few years as an anniversary gift for his wife.

I've photographed a ton of weddings since then. I've made it a point to find opportunities to spend time around other wedding photographers who work in inspiring ways. I have also continued to challenge myself by raising the standard for my own photography. I've realized that I can never "arrive" and stop learning. I will continue to grow as long as I have the desire to do so.

I think I still photograph weddings because I love them. It is a great opportunity for me to spend the best day of a couple's life with them, share their joy, document it and preserve it so they can show the photographs to their kids and grand-kids. I'm creating history for those families.

Other photographers find weddings to be stressful or boring. I find them exciting and fun. There are so many opportunities for amazing photography. The key for me has always been to know a couple and enjoy who they are. When I can do that, my best work happens.

I think it's that emotional investment in a couple that really sets my work apart. I'm not working from a prescribed list of my favorite shots, I'm inventing, exploring and discovering what works for each couple as the day goes on.

One big change I've made in my business approach is I've stopped worrying about how many hours I'm working on a wedding. This opens doors for me to capture even more of the wedding day, create a better story and be available to all the moments of the day, not just the ceremony, formals and reception. I wish I had made that realization a long time ago.

Have a Great Fourth of July!

Album Design

Yesterday afternoon I finished working on the rough design for Amy and Darren. I'm a little biased, but I think their album is beautiful. Decide for yourself.

Amy and Darren

I photographed an amazing wedding this past weekend and I wanted to share it with you.

Amy and Darren are such a lovely couple. I've known Amy for too many years now adn was so honored that she wanted to have me as her photographer. She is a stunning young lady with personality to match her looks. Darren is a very lucky man!

I'm hoping to surprise them by having their images all online before they come home from the honeymoon. I'm halfway through designing their album and the images are on their way to Pictage as we speak.

Enjoy the slideshow.

Kristen and Yancey's Album

I've been working on this album design for a while now. Soon I'll be amaking a sample album from this layout. Kristen and Yancey were such a fun couple to work with. Their zest for life and beautiful morning wedding made for a natural choice for a sample. Since I changed labs and albums I've wanted to update my samples. I'm pretty close now. Soon I'll have it in hand. I can't wait to show it off!

Swamped! In The Best Way...

I have been one busy guy lately. I wanted to catch you up just a little bit on all that's happening.

Saturday I photographed a fantastic 25th wedding anniversary and vow renewal. It was so beautiful. Cross Creek Ranch in Dover is such a beautiful venue for an event like this. There is just a beautiful charm to the whole place. It was fitting for such an amazing family. I love having the opportunity to be a part o the best days of people's lives. Hank and Machele were so cute and they must be doing something right to have 3 beautiful kids too. Friends and family from all over came to share the celebration with them. I was really honored to be a part of it.

Sunday, I Photographed the final performance of People of the Passion. Very powerful. I am so amazed at all the talent that my church is blessed with. Everything was done in house - musicians, singers, actors, lighting, video, scoring of all the instrument, writing of all the narration and scripting the action. The whole enchilada. I was blown away.

Here's my final slide show.

Also, I had the awesome opportunity to lead worship and speak at all three services this past Sunday. What an amazing opportunity. The student band and all the students who lead worship with me were awesome. It's so very cool to see how the church responds to them. Teenagers aren't perfect, but they are amazing worshippers. I love being with them.

Monday night I had a great opportunity for Chick-fil-A. They were sponsoring the kick off of an All Pro Dads group at one of our middle schools. The event was very cool and I had a chance to see some other great dads and learn some myself while I was photographing the event.

Here are some of my images from the evening.

Sheer Joy

I remember when I first started shooting weddings (my junior year of high school) and how all the photographers I knew talked about shooting weddings like they were a huge pressure cooker designed to deep fry photographers. They thought I was naive, maybe I was. Maybe I still am.

I really love doing this. What better job description can there be for a photographer and a believer. I get to share one of the most important days with people who are in love. I get to participate in creating memories that will last a lifetime and beyond. Grandchildren will look at my photographs as they hear the story of the day their parents' parents started their lives together.

I've been looking at some of my archive images and remembering so many different weddings lately. God has belssed me so abudantly with this profession, this gift. I consider what I do to be sheer joy.