Story behind the Photo: 5/27/2007

As many of you know we love to do destination weddings.  And when we do them, yes Katie and Emily assist us. On May 27th 2007 we were able to capture the destination wedding of Garrett and Rebecca Haase on Mackinac Island.  We, as a family, had one of the most enjoyable times in that stretch of 3 days that we had ever had.  As a result Rebecca and Garrett hold a special place in our hearts and actually feel like family to us now as well.  We had several memorable moments during this wedding but here are three that jumped out at me.

The first is during the ceremony when Garrett and Rebecca kissed.  Someone took a flash photo while Bonnie was capturing a creative image form the balcony.  Bonnie’s shutter and the flash snapped at the same time and created such a perfect shadow of the kiss.

The next photo was as the couple were exiting the church Bonnie was capturing video and frantically gave the still camera to Emily (still set to inside exposure settings) who snapped off two photos.  After she looked down at the LCD she almost deleted them as they were so washed out.  Later in photoshop in the raw conversion I brought just enough of the image to result in a beautiful contrasty photo shown below.   

The final image ended up being spur of the moment and almost didn’t happen. It then became one of our most favorites moments and has shown up in just about everything we do including a huge mural in our booth at the Palace and Novi Expo bridal shows last year.  It was late and the party was beginning to slow down.  I left with the family as we were pretty much done.  As I left I checked one last time to see if the sunset was going to peak out from the clouds and give us an incredible view but it was not to be.  I did recognize the texture in the sky and the somewhat turbulent water and thought I will ask if they are interested.  Rebecca and Garrett were actually up for anything, realizing this is a once in a lifetime day we headed to the beach where they embraced and with a little encouraging began to slow dance.  The resulting images I made into a painting and the rest was history: