Leigh and my daughter Ashlee are best friends. I was honored when Leigh asked me if I would do the photography for her wedding. Little did I know what a beautiful wedding it would be at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I had been there before, but never to shoot. Wow, can’t wait to shoot there again!
Raul was the lucky guy. I had the pleasure of getting to know Raul during our engagement shoot back in August. We had a great time and beat the heat that day as well. One thing I really work hard to do is make it fun for both the bride and groom, but especially the groom. Well, I can’t speak for Raul, but I know I had a good time shooting with Raul.
From a photography point of view, the Wildflower Center offers some challenges, particularly once nightfall occurs. We try to avoid just blasting on camera flash at people. This is unflattering light and also drops off rapidly leaving the deep black cavern in the background. One technique is shooting without flash with very slow shutter speeds and high ISO. Holding the camera steadily with image stabilization on the lenses allows some nice natural light captures. Another approach is to use a tripod which I did for the captures of the scenes with the moon. This lets us shoot with multi-second shutter speeds at ISO’s that will be less noisy. The final technique you see around the dance area is to put up two or three off camera flashes to provide some reasonably balance light over a broader area.
