Doug and Amy tie the knot in my new favorite place to marry people

SOME COUPLES GET ALL THE LUCK
The Hawaii Wedding of Doug and Amy

Doug and Amy made it official at Ke'iki beach, my new favorite place for weddings. The beach is great. It's huge, empty, and littered with photographic opportunities. The only drawback is that it's hard to find! Luckily, Doug and Amy were staying with a friend who had a property that literally sat a few hundred yards from Ke'iki beach.

Doug and Amy tied the knot with a just a small amount of witnesses: two of Amy's kids, and two of their close friends. The ceremony was performed by Rev. Elias Parker. One of Doug's friends actually was a highly respected digital photographer in America, and showed up to shoot a handful of shots. He tapped me on the shoulder during the wedding to tell me that there was a rainbow as forming behind the couple and I quickly got into position and took the shot below. Photographers look after their own a lot of times....

Talk about lucky huh? Can you tell how wide Ke'iki Beach is from this shot? It's huge!

So yeah, some couples get all the luck when it comes to photographic opportunities. Actually, I think this was the first time I shot a full rainbow at a wedding that was this clear. Of course, with rainbows, come rain, and in a short time after this shot was taken, a quick sprinkle of rain came down. But with thier luck, it didn't last that long.

This is their sunset shot...

I wanted to take a quick second here to talk about sunset shots and photography. I would say that the majority of my couples always want sunset shots for their wedding. The truth is that many photographers have a hard time shooting sunsets, and there are two reasons: The first being that most photographers are digital photographers. While digital cameras definitely are catching up to the quality of film, when it comes to shooting sunsets, digital lags far behind. The reason? The sky during sunset is extremely contrasty, and the CCD's on digital cameras cannot interpret the contrast and color of sunsets in most situations. Parts of the sky would be blown out, parts would be exposed correctly, and some will be too dark. Sunset shots, if shot in digital format, would have to be salvaged in post-production.

It is important to note that all digital shots have to be salvaged. Digital photographers call this color correction, but truly, they are salvaging the best of their shots. After the original picture is taken, the digital photographer will use a program to saturate their shots, add contrast, add color, add sharpness, and literally create color where there wasn't, in order to make the shot look better. Film on the other hand is color corrected to skin tone, and from there, the rest of the picture basically falls into place. Color doesn't have to be manufactured in order to get great shots. This is why I still shoot on film.

The second reason why many photographers have a difficult time shooting sunsets is because they don't understand weather and it's role when timing sunsets. See, here in Hawaii, and around the world, the sun rarely sets into the ocean, or the horizon. For the most part, the sun sets into a cloud on the horizon, or behind a mountain, or even behind the building. Just because the weather report says the sunset is at 7pm, doesn't mean the sun will set at 7pm. If there are clouds on the horizon, like Doug and Amy's wedding, the sun will set into clouds, about an hour earlier than expected. Most photographers don't take this into mind, and show up to the beaches a little too late, consequently missing their sunset shot.

To get great sunset shots, I always tell my couples to appear at their wedding site about 1 1/2 hour to 2 hours before sunset, therefore we have lots of time to get great shots. We start the wedding during sun up, and shoot until sunset, waiting for the perfect sunset shot.

Getting back to Doug and Amy. What really surprised me was how Amy's kids welcomed Doug into the family. Amy's daughter and son gave Doug a huge hug after the wedding. It was great to witness that type of acceptance and love from Doug's new family.

I think great would be an understatement, it was awesome.



Steven Young
The Hawaii Wedding Reporter
http://www.dreamweddingshawai.com/