Pensacola Wedding Photography - Jehan and Nancy
Ceremony: Cathedral of the Sacred Heart
Reception: Heritage Hall
Music: Sarah Mac Band
Pensacola Wedding Photography: Steven Gray Photography
Last year, when I worked for Hill-Kelly, I met Jehan Clark, the brains behind the relaunch of Pensacola's long-running summer concert series, Evenings in Old Seville Square. Hill-Kelly was (and still is) a major sponsor of the event, and I talked with Jehan quite a bit throughout the summer as I brought vehicles every week and drew raffle tickets on the stage to promote the company.
We kept in touch after my departure from Hill-Kelly and Jehan after he became engaged to the lovely Nancy, Jehan asked me to photograph his engagement photos and wedding.
The photos speak for themselves. It was a great day, with plenty of smiles, plenty of dancing and music by the superlative Sarah Mac Band.
And I think you will agree that this is the best groom's cake ever. I think I put down about a dozen of those things...
Pensacola Graduation Photography - Raegan
Pensacola Graduation Photography
It's that time of the year again. Commencement gowns rustled, mortarboards went airborne and job markets at home and abroad flooded with fresh applicants as the latest crop of graduates strode proudly out of their university corridors. I took that walk myself not too long ago, and I still remember that incredible feeling of relief that comes with the end of your final school term.
On December 15th, the University of West Florida held their winter commencement, and less than an hour later I met up with Raegan and her parents and friends to take some photos in Seville Park to commemorate the day.
As a photographer, I'm very pleased with the way that Pensacola has revamped its downtown scene over the past few years. What was once a park, a church and a few bars has been revived with restored homes, public buildings and photo-friendly business, like the Pensacola Bay Brewery where we swung in for some photos and a pint at the end of our session.
Congratulations, Raegan, and the rest of UWF's graduating class of 2012.
Pensacola Family Portraits - Steven Gray Photography
Pensacola Family Portraits
Beaches, matching white shirts and jeans, the fountain downtown...these are all trademarks of Pensacola family portraits. With our proximity to the beach and the ready availability of spectacular sunsets, families in this area tend to default to the beach without considering all the other options nearby. However, when I am consulted on a good location for family portraits, I try to steer clients away from the areas where everyone else goes. Part of this is my professional responsibility--to give people something different than the Joneses down the street--but part of it is also selfish on my part, because the last thing I want to do to is go back to the beach and take the same images as every other photographer in town.
This is especially true when fall rolls around. I love this time of year. With the changing colors on the ground and in the trees (even Florida's green landscape experiences a little bit of change) the sunsets are warmer and richer. The season almost removes the divide between landscapes and portraiture; outdoor scenes look amazing and people look amazing standing in them. My job becomes very easy.
When my dear friend Karena, with whom I have worked in India for several years, asked me to take portraits of her family. The crew included Karena, her husband John, their daughters Brittney and Jordan, and Britney's boyfriend Brandon and his little girl, Kendall. When the subject of location came up, I suggested that we skip the beach and honor the season and visit a location that looks great this time of year. I used to wander all over the area to find unique places for family portraits, landscapes and even music videos and short films, and I found a location north of town several years ago that swiftly became one of my favorites. It seemed like the perfect place to shoot family portraits in November.
And, you know what?
It was!
Travel Blog: An Indian Wedding
India, Day 9
A wedding? In India? I was excited when my host informed me that we would be in attendance at a wedding after our morning outreach on day nine. Staying at a home in most areas of India means that you surrender your ability to plan anything longer than eight hours ahead of time. It's just the way the culture operates. In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart's Rick has a great exchange with a woman in his cafe:
Yvonne: Where were you last night? Rick: That's so long ago, I don't remember. Yvonne: Will I see you tonight? Rick: I never make plans that far ahead.
[video]
Those lines are snappy and witty to hear in a film, but in India, that attitude is more often than not a region-wide reality. By this point, I was accustomed to surprises in my daily itinerary, and I was happy to learn that this surprise in particular was going to be a lot of fun.
Getting to the wedding took some doing; there hadn't been much rain in our area, but there hadn't been a lot of direct sunlight either. As such, the roads were still slurries of muck, always at least five inches deep. To make travel even more fun, we had a little competition for road space as we pulled up to the group of houses in the village where the wedding was to take place. There was a bus parked on one side of the road and several tractors and ox carts going back and forth, and our faithful Bolero had to take the outer edge of the road to get into the village complex. The truck got stuck for a minute or so, but our intrepid Driver was able to negotiate his way through it.
We disembarked and I took in the scene. I've photographed a lot of weddings, but I've never photographed an Indian wedding ceremony. I've always wanted to, but the opportunity never presented itself back home. And now, I was at an Indian wedding, in India. A Christian Indian wedding, no less. Life is funny like that.
An impromptu wedding venue had been constructed in the courtyard between some houses. An immense tent hung from poles on two sides, with the other two sides attached to the houses. Inside, sunlight filtered through the fabric to wash everything and everyone beneath it in an electric, technicolor glow. Musical instruments were held in readiness for the ceremony, while the pre-ceremony environment was supercharged with music from a boombox connected to a set of speakers that blared chants and songs for a good quarter-mile.
The ceremony began about an hour after we arrived, and the girls raised their voices in a chanted refrain as the musicians began making live music. The groom entered from stage right. He was dressed entirely in white, except for his bright ride Puma sneakers. The bride emerged after nearly another hour of music. The music had died down and the ceremony was underway, with a short "homily" from the officiant preceding the vows proper. The content, all delivered in Hindi, was entirely lost on me of course, but I was content to observe the goings-on and assume that the message wasn't too different than the wedding messages I hear back home.
We had to leave before the end of the ceremony, sadly. The wedding began a full two hours behind schedule (even in India, that seemed pretty extreme to me), and Driver had appeared at our elbows to whisper that he was only on the clock for a little while longer, and we needed to move on if we wanted him to drive us home. So, we left early.
I was intrigued by the expressions on the bride and groom's faces. Unlike the weddings I've attended and photographed for years back home, I saw no signs of emotion in the couple. There are usually some hints of shyness or happiness on one or both faces, but on these two, I saw only stoicism. I asked one of my host's colleagues about this.
"Why did the bride and groom look like that?"
"Like what?" He seemed surprised.
"They looked sad."
He nodded. "Ah, yes. They are actually very happy, but they are leaving their families now, so for that reason they are looking sad."
Intriguing.
Travel Blog: India, Day 8 - The kids at the riverbank.
While at my host's cheerful home village, an oasis in the middle of abject and depressed poverty state in India, we met a group of children doing laundry in the nearby river. Let me see...
A gaggle of village kids. India. A river. An open field of epic proportions.
Why, yes, a photo op was in order.
Every time I visit India, I am always amazed and overjoyed by the people's capacity for kindness, unhindered friendliness and hospitality, and their sheer willingness to participate. Shy though they were, this group of children stayed true to Indian hospitality by eagerly smiling and waving at the camera when I started clicking the shutter. They giggled and laughed elatedely when I turned the SLR around showed them their photos in the camera's monitor. I took dozens of photos of the little guys. I don't know what these children's lives are like on a normal day, but in that environment, with those kinds of smiles, they made this scene look absolutely idyllic.
