Don't you just feel the peace, serenity and love in this stunning image by Gabe McClintock, a photographer based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada? Gabe calls these portrait sessions before a wedding, “Connection” Sessions (instead of the ubiquitous and somewhat boring E-Sessions). Makes sense to me. This is what wedding photography should be all about!

Feel free to visit Gabe's website which is so full of amazing moments that are gentle, quiet and graceful. Thanks, Gabe for the opportunity to host one of your images here.

Post your comments below. Tell us, if you are a wedding photographer, how you portray the connection your couples have between each other or the connections that families make in multicultural weddings.

This is a guest post by Scott Jarvie, a photographer based in Utah.

So this is Holi: The Festival of Colors

The Holi festival in Utah is one of the largest of it's kind (outside of Asia) in the world. This is what wikipedia says about Holi.

Two years ago I first heard of the event which had been growing over the years from some devotees and handful of local college students to where it is now some devotees and a mass of college students and others. I was lucky enough to take the iconic picture that year (Below), which is still probably one of my favorites.

Last year one of my biggest regrets of the year was taking an out of state wedding instead of heading back to the festival. This year I would have none of that and not only went to the event but organized 12 other photographers to come and take pictures to amass in a huge gallery for the benefit of the attendees and the temple. Between the 10+ photographers we walked away with 10,000 pictures and in the end we came up with a gallery of 4992 pictures. The reason for so many is because this was for the attendees and when you have well over 15,000 people there are rarely duplicates of the same person… unless of course they were doing something fun or were covered uniquely. You can see the pictures divided by each photographer here. Including mine of course.

In some circles I'm known as the Jarvie of the “Jarvie Window” experience. (Strobist) So of course I snapped a few pictures ala that style.

Wedding photographers might find it interesting that I also arranged for some clients and friends to show up in wedding dresses.

BUT what is the Festival of Colors?

It takes place at the Radha Krishna Temple located at 311 West 8500 South Spanish Fork, Utah 84660.

(Above) The temple is a unique and perhaps out of place building in the middle of a farming community in a highly LDS (Mormon) Utah. They pack them in. Estimates vary widely. They don't do an official count … but my guess would be somewhere between 15-25k (that range is pretty safe, I know).

(Above) this is hours before the color starts, but close parking is limited so they come in early.

The temple's priest, Caru Das Adikari (Below) runs the show and helped make the temple and the Krishna community happen in Utah County.

They have dancing and of course chanting but the big event is when they do the count down, burn the witch, usher in the spring and throw the colors.

A crowd this size makes for more than a couple wonderfully candid and fun moments (Below)

(above) and the not so candid

There are a lot of people with cameras (Below) Both DSLRs and everyone with their own point and click. It's actually a whole lot safer to go in with a nice sealed Pro camera than these little point and clicks, but a bit of plastic bags to go around and anyone's camera is decently safe from the colored (Corn Maize) powder found in one of the 50,000 bags they sell on the property.

Of course… People get covered with colors. That's kind of the point for those going.

They come dressed pretty uniquely (Below)

While the majority of people are students is also very much a family event. Good clean fun you may say (Below)

Other details and portraits

If you're in town next March or you want to go out of your way to make it down here, get a hold of me, because I'm sure we're going to do it again. Maybe even have a larger group of photographers this time.

I used to write posts about how to protect the cameras but after 2 events I've decided that this is actually such a non-issue that I will no longer coddle the weak. I said to myself why am I so concerned about curing people's worries and getting more photographers there? All are invited (by the organizers and of course me) but it's not for everyone. I didn't do anything to protect my stuff the first time and this last time I used saran wrap and gaffer tape and both times my cameras were totally fine. So this is about all I'll say on this subject.

We should be talking about the pictures, the totally unique and fun experience.

Go and see a whole bunch more divided into lots of categories. Like crowd surfing, color throwing, Jarvie Window and the Krishna Temple.

Tell us what you thought of this post! I look forward to your comments. Thank you!

This is a guest post by Canadian photographers, Lauren & Rob Lim, whose spirited wedding, portrait and travel photography is the talk of the town.

At the moment in the wedding photography industry there is a bit of a backlash against educators. Whether deserved or not is up for debate, but it certainly has resulted in a lot of discussion about those who make money from teaching.

As we can be considered educators ourselves (have been quite happily teaching other photographers for over 2 years), and are now moving towards doing it more, we thought we’d give a bit of insight into why we teach.

To understand where we’re coming from, I’ll give you a bit of background on us. We weren’t the photographers who grew up with a camera in hand. Our interest in photography didn’t come until we were 19 and 21, during a requisite backpacking trip through Europe. As I’m sure has happened with all photographers out there, we instantly developed a very strong passion for creating photos. But, we knew absolutely nothing about the art. Nothing at all. Being rather young, we didn’t see that as any sort of hindrance, and began the process of teaching ourselves this craft so that we could become professional photographers.

That naivety allowed us to pursue our goals without any thought to whether it was even possible. And, thankfully, we simply made it possible. But it didn’t happen without an immense amount of time spent learning, reading, sifting through dozens of articles, and making a ton of mistakes along the way.

What we found, after years of self-teaching, was that the number of high quality and affordable resources out there for photographers was a lot smaller than we would have imagined. Sure, there are countless forums, blogs, and articles that you can find for free. But many of them offer differing opinions and ideas (though all too often they don’t see them as opinions, but rather as fact! That makes it even more difficult for a new photographer to understand what to do!). They also take a lot of time to go through, compile information, and try to process it in a way that works for the individual. It’s not easy or fun, and often it’s just downright overwhelming! I fear that a lot of people likely give up, simply because the task of finding and digesting high quality information is just too difficult.

Furthermore, many resources are currently being offered for very high price tags. Often upwards of hundreds of dollars (thousands if we’re talking about workshops). While there’s no way for us to decide whether those are worth it, we do know that they are far outside the reach of many photographers. Photographers on average aren’t rich people. They often have budgets just like anyone else, and many are left unable to purchase the tutorial they’d like, or going into credit card debt to attend the workshop they think will solve their problems. We were deeply unhappy with that approach. We strongly believe that teaching should be to help others, not yourself. With that in mind, we made a commitment to offer our education at prices that anyone could afford, including students.

Back to how we became educators! The more we learned, the more we found ourselves trying to help other photographers. We’d have colleagues over to our home to spend some time teaching them a new program or technique. And, time and time again, we’d find ourselves teaching the same material to each person. We were happy to be helping out that individual, but knew that there had to be a more efficient method.

The next logical step was, of course, to figure out how to get that information into the hands of the most people possible! So we created Photography Concentrate, a website dedicated to high quality, affordable information. We initially thought about writing e-books, but as soon as we began to plan for our first tutorial, all about RAW processing, we realized that books aren’t always the best way to learn for most photographers. We’re visual people by nature, so learning likely happens best in a visual manner! Thus began our foray into video tutorials. We’ve just completed our first one, and are hard at work at the next. We’re so excited about the possibility of helping photographers all around the world to learn to take control over the programs we rely so heavily on.

Which brings me to the final thought: Why We Teach

It’s pretty simple, and we can boil it down to one idea: we teach to help photographers acquire the skills needed to fully realize their artistic potential.

All the people we teach have their own incredible creative talent. We don’t need to teach them that. We simply want to help them unlock it. We believe that having a strong foundation of technical knowledge is the first step on that path, so that’s what we intend to share!

With RAW Processing Concentrate, our tutorial on editing in Lightroom, we’re hoping to help photographers improve the final look of their images. Very often we see an incredible shot, with great composition and vision behind it, but the processing falls short, and the image fails to reach it’s full potential. Processing is just one step in the creation of a great photograph, but it’s a hugely important one. Many photographers currently rely on pre-made actions and presets to process their images. These will certainly make you faster, but we don’t believe they will make you better.

Life as an artist is about growth and exploration, and one needs knowledge to achieve that.

If you’d like more information about our tutorial and teaching adventures check out Photography Concentrate.

This is Part 2 of 2 of a guest blog post by Phil Mackenzie, a photographer based in Pennsylvania. You can find Part 1 here.

Lessons learned. (Stuff you should remember from the first part)

We examined the two of the most obvious features of music and images last time. There’s one more feature that sometimes even eclipses the first two. And we’ll also look at two more subtle, yet decidedly distinctive, elements of music that also have counterparts in photography. Let the beat go on!

Rhythm. (The Stuff That Drives the Universe)

Rhythm defines life. Your heart, your breath, the engine of a car, the turn of the earth, the orbit of the planets; they all exist and perpetuate their own rhythms. The world is a colossal mess of rhythm. As I write this, you can watch the legendary aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s film Home on YouTube. It’s also airing on the National Geographic Channel in all of its HD glory. Try watching it without the sound. You’ll see rhythm with your eyes. Almost two hours of it. It’s amazing just how much rhythm life on its own. If you want an even more in-your-face film, there’s also the incredibly provocative collaboration called Koyaanisqatsi between filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and composer Philip Glass. Regardless of any artistic judgment of the music (Glass, like bagpipes, doesn’t have many indifferent listeners), the combination of the constant pulsing music against the rhythm of the visual imagery that merely depicts everyday events such as traffic patterns in a city or highway is enough to entrance you for quite some time.

Those examples, of course, are motion pictures. Their inherent rhythm comes from the differences between still each of the 24 still images that fly past you every second. By contrast, a photograph’s rhythm can only be based on one image and the patterns and light within the frame. So how can it possibly achieve the same effect?

In a song, if you took away the rhythm, the melody becomes merely an organized pattern of pitches. If you have any doubt about the power of a rhythm, just tell someone to tap out just the rhythm to the melody of a song without telling you what it is, and try to guess what it is, just from the rhythm. It’s easier than you might think. Try it a few times and you’ll see that rhythm is almost, if not equally, as distinctive and as identifiable as melody.

In a photograph, the visual rhythm is what makes your eye move around the image. Your composition, framing, whatever you want to call it. It’s all about controlling the path the eyes take around the photograph. This is easy to see in images of either abstract subject or repeating subjects, such as these:

Notice how your eye follows a fairly predictable pattern around the images. For instance, in this more abstract image, the human eye is generally drawn to the lighter areas of an image first. Your eye probably starts in the top third of the image, and then it’s easy to follow the line of the main object down to the bottom, then come back up around in a big circle, exploring the blurry background along the way.

The same patterns can be true of images involving people as well. As humans, we’re generally drawn to another face initially, then your eye moves around the image. For instance:

Your exact eye pattern might vary, but it probably started on her face, continued down her nicely lit hands and her right arm, back up to her shoulder, and back to her face. Instinctively darker areas tend to be given less visual priority. Certainly you might continue to examine those, but not until after your eyes have made the “light loop” from her face, down in a clockwise motion, and back up to her face again.

You have have also noticed that some images seem to make your eyes feel like they’re stuck in molasses, whereas others make your eyes dart around as if there’s no tomorrow. Both elements that we’ve discussed before (i.e. melody and harmony) have a great deal to do with the speed at which your eyes move through an image. A black-and-white, grainy image with a solitary gaze might make your eyes more considerate and willing to spend the extra time to examine every detail. This image by Seshu is a wonderful example of an image that will slow down your eyes:

Notice how he has evened up the contrast as well. Both areas of highly saturated color or sharp contrast can increase the visual rhythm. Scarlett Lillian’s work is highly color-rhythmic, as is a great deal of fashion photography. Just pick up an issue of Vogue or Marie Claire, or even Brides magazine. Those images are designed to excite you, and what better way than to make your eyes dart around areas of super-saturated color, bright highlight and dark shadows? More contrast, faster rhythm. Less contrast, slower rhythm. Neither one is better than the other, they all depend upon the mood you wish to convey in the image. Wedding photographers might not be able to consciously compose each image due to the mere volume of shots taken (I know I average well over 2500 images for a wedding), but you can begin to see what your natural visual rhythm is by examining your portfolio. Find the images you love and feel their rhythm with your eyes. Make sure they complement each other. Variety is the spice of life, but it’s important that your portfolio’s visual rhythm not contradict itself; a bright, snappy color-saturated image might seem out of place in the middle of an ocean of brooding black-and-white images.

Dynamics. (More Stuff That Sizzles)

Comparing aural dynamics to visual dynamics is an obvious one. In music, dynamics are simply the “loud” factor. A song can be either loud, soft, or optimally a mix of the two. If a piece of music doesn’t have much dynamic range, it’s usually because it’s serving a specific purpose. A trumpet fanfare, for instance, is loud and stately. And usually short, because it serves only to introduce royalty or some other dignitary. Whereas a softer more introspective dynamic is wonderful for a few minutes to lull our ears in, but after a while of static dynamics, it’s just too much of one thing.

High-key and low-key images are probably already leaping to mind in comparison to musical dynamics. Both high-key and low-key images are ones that are thus named precisely because of their distinct lack of visual dynamic. A high-key image only has one “visual volume”: loud. The opposite for a low-key image. The two below are typical, though not over-the-top, versions of high-key and low-key images.

Generally speaking, the most visually appealing photographs have as wide a dynamic range as possible. Though simplified, this is the basic premise of the zone system that was propagated by Ansel Adams. Almost every one of his images was exposed and developed in order to use the fullest possible dynamic range. None of these exposure methods is better than the other; it’s simply a matter of the photographer’s intent in making the image. Be warned, though, that whether you tend to shoot high-key, low-key, or for the fullest dynamic possible, that the eye has a saturation point with the same style of image. Imagine only listening to one singer for the rest of your life. Variety is the spice of life, and of photos, my friends.

Timbre’s Signature. (Photography DNA)

The traditional symphony orchestra has four different “families” of instruments: strings, winds, brass, and percussion. Those, in turn, are each divided into more instruments that vary in their range, from low bass up to very high treble. Each instrument has its own unique sound; this is how your ears differentiate an oboe from a violin or a flute from a trumpet. It’s the timbre (if you’re reading along out loud, you say it tam•ber or tim•ber), the quality of a sound as distinct from its pitch or intensity. So all other things being equal, how can you tell it’s a woman’s voice as opposed to a man’s voice? The timbre.

In a larger sense, when you are able to identify a composer or songwriter by their work, it’s a form of timbre. Usually it’s called their “style.” A Mozart symphony sounds much different than Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker”; a John Williams film score (Harry Potter) is different than a Hans Zimmer score (Pirates of the Caribbean); Carrie Underwood’s songs are different than those by Sara Bareilles. You get the idea.

Close your eyes and think of a black-and-white image of Yosemite. Who’s the photographer? An Ansel Adams print might be one of the easiest photographs in the world to identify. It’s also relatively easy to distinguish a Richard Avedon photograph from an Annie Leibovitz image. Their own style, their “photographic timbre” is present in every one of their photos. Just as the masters of musical composition and songwriting use characteristic aural nuances in their work, photographers also have formulas they have developed over years or decades, and they tend to follow them religiously. It is not only advisable to develop your own style of shooting and working with light, it’s a necessity.

What’s interesting about the current state of the wedding photography industry is that a photographer’s “timbre” or “style” seems to come equally as much from his or her personality and business skills than his or her portfolio. As better camera technology continues to obliterate the line between professional and amateur, and the same sets of Photoshop actions are used across the entire globe, it’s becoming harder and harder to visually distinguish yourself.

It is now, quite possibly more than ever, crucial for both you and your photos to have a distinctive personality. Strive to cultivate and develop your own style (see David duChemin’s insightful new book “Within the Frame”) so that your clients can tell your work from someone else’s. Don’t lose the personality. But combine a sparkling personality and a killer photographic style? You could rule the world. Or at least your own corner of it.

Coda: Putting the pieces back together.

Music is constructed in a more-or-less consistent manner. Generally either a melody or a rhythm is composed first, followed by some basic harmony and then highlighting the climax or dramatic moments with some dynamic variation. Timbre is usually an ongoing consciousness, especially relating to the medium of composition. A composer always knows the instruments for which he or she is writing, and keeps their different timbres in mind while always staying true to his or her style, whether consciously or subconsciously.

As photographers, we work in much the same way whether we’re aware of it or not. We generally start with the subject, or at least the mood of the image we want to create. After considering the primary purpose of the image, we focus on the secondary elements to the subject; the visual harmony, rhythm, and dynamic. All the while, staying consistent to our own personal style, or timbre.

It has always been fascinating to me to read the thought processes of some of the great photographers while making an image. Annie Leibovitz has a new book called “At Work” that describes her experiences while capturing some of her most iconic images. Admittedly, not every photographer thinks about every element of an image while composing a frame. Sometimes it’s a oh-wow-grab-the-camera-and-hope-you-get-it shot, but more often than not we have more than a split second to think about how to compose the frame. The most important part of shooting might just be in the editing session. Look at the shots you’ve taken that catch your attention, that grab you, that sing to your eyes. Figure out what it is about them that grabs your eye. Is it the rhythm? Is it the visually interesting harmonic palette with which the image’s background is composed? Is it just that the subject (i.e. the melody) of the image is so powerful it trumps everything else and lets you get away with some technical imperfections?

Just as there are songs and concert music that have stood the test of time, and countless others that have had their time and faded into the background of culture, there are thousands of images taken for every one remembered and treasured. Your goal should be to tilt that balance in your own favor. See what your own magic formula is. How do you compose your visual melody? How do you capture the rhythm of the scene? If you don’t like the way you create harmony in an image, recognize that before the next time you press the shutter and change it. Try something new. Composers like Mozart, who could transcribe music already composed in his head, are rare. Most artists are much more like Beethoven: decided unsatisfiable, he would often scratch out entire pages of music that represented hours or days of work with berating notes to himself about how this page of music was garbage, and how he ever could have written such a horrid and elementary chunk of music.

As photographers we don’t deal in the same time frames as composers. Our decisions occur at a fraction of a second. Composers have as much time as they need to deliberately write every note, every rhythm, every harmony. We don’t have that luxury as the bride is walking back down the aisle toward us, or we see an incredible shot starting to materialize in front of our faces. More often than not, we grab the camera, raise it, and click the shutter in one swift motion without much thought. I would argue, however, that those photographers who take the extra second to think, to edit, and to be aware of their own visual composition abilities will only become the next generation of famous image-makers.

Know your images. Know your tendencies. Know what abilities you have to create an image that entrances and sings to your client’s eyes. If the elements all work in harmony, your song will be one from the heart. And your clients will love you for it.

As always, your comments below are welcome. Tell us how you inject elements of music into your photography.

This is a guest post by Hemant Naidu, an emerging photographer based in Saskatoon, Canada.

About six months ago I had a thought of entering the professional photography scene. Call me stupid, but that idea started to blossom into something more than just something in my head. The thought of shooting professionally has been a dream of mine for sometime, but I just never could get over that hump to make it a reality. Did I really want to run a business, something I didn't really know much about despite having a business degree? And being thirty-five with a wife, a mortgage, two dogs, and a baby on the way, did it really make sense to think about starting a business?

Diving In

After answering “yes” to those questions there was still a few other questions that kept running through my mind. The first was whether I was even good enough. I think this is a question that all photographers struggle with throughout their career and I'm pretty sure that it's an impossible questions to ask. It wasn't that I didn't have confidence in my work, but I would always find myself trying to compare my shots to other photographers in the area. I had to make a conscious effort to stop doing this and to just trust that I was in fact “good enough”.

Is It Just A Job?

The second question that worried me slightly was whether I would lose my passion for photography if it became a job. Just because you love something as a hobby doesn't necessarily mean that it is a going to be a good career fit for you. It took me a while to realize that if I let this fear stop me from giving it a try I may end up robbing myself of a career that I have dreamed about.

As much as I wanted to pursue a career in photography I did want to minimize my risk as much as possible. I currently work as an Agile Team Lead for a software development company which involves me managing a group of programmers. I enjoy the job greatly and welcome its challenges so keeping my day job for now is not a problem. The thing is that if I start to see a significant increase in my photography contracts I am going to become incredibly busy very fast. I often think about the logistics of managing a full time job, a part-time photography gig, and a family life.

The “2 Year Plan”

Despite all of these fears I decided to take the plunge, and got the ball rolling on setting up a small business. Who would have thought that after all of the complicated paperwork that would be the easy part? With the business now set up I had to devise a way to get my name out there. Even though Saskatoon, Canada isn't a massive city it still has a fairly competitive photography industry with a huge range of talent. It was at this point that I really started to think about my “2 year plan” and how I was going to set myself apart from other photographers in the area.

It's All About WOM

It seemed to make most sense for me to rely on word of mouth marketing. If I could leverage the people I already knew to get the word out I was sure that opportunities would start to materialize. I found the book “Word of Mouth Marketing” by Andy Sernovitz to be an invaluable source in planning a word of mouth marketing campaign. If I wanted people to talk about me I would need to give them interesting things to talk about, meaning that I needed something unique to set me apart from the rest of the crowd.

Something I noticed in my market was the relatively low use of social media outside of Facebook. Twitter is very popular in Saskatoon, but seems to have been adopted by only a small amount of the photographers. I was already an avid Twitter user from a personal perspective, but I thought it was important to also manage an account for my business. I put a lot of importance in using Twitter as a marketing tool and have been slowly creating a group of followers, while also trying to connect with local photographers, and some heavy hitters in the industry. Because my network is still relatively small, Twitter gives me a unique opportunity to reach far more people, in a shorter amount of time, and with much less effort than traditional networking.

Going Fusion

I also see an opportunity to be one of the first photography studios in the area to take advantage of the convergence of photography and video with the new DSLRs. From what I can tell the fusion of these two formats is few and far between in my market. I understand that utilizing and producing quality video with these cameras is not trivial, but I am definitely up to the challenge. It is still breaking in here and I would love to be the one that leads the way.

Other Challenges

Despite moving past my three main fears I mentioned earlier (or at least learning to cope with them) there is another topic that I continue to struggle with. I understand that there is a lot of discussion about so-called “Uncle Henry's” and “weekend warriors” coming into the scene, undercutting professionals, and devaluing the profession. This is the last thing I want to do and I certainly do not want to be viewed this way by established pros in Saskatoon. My desire is to have them view me as a colleague as opposed to an enemy, and I am doing all that I can to ensure that I go about establishing my business in the proper manner.

Pricing Strategy

I think like many new photographers in the industry finding a reasonable pricing strategy is a source for many headaches. I know it has been difficult for me, and has caused me to constantly evaluate and compare it to others. It's hard to measure one's skills and put a price on it, but it still needs to be done. I have found resources online such as goingpro2010.com and photofocus.com to be invaluable in helping me in this area. For now I am comfortable with my pricing structure based on what I see other new “responsible” photographers in the area charging. Despite this I can't help but always have that idea in the back of my mind that someone out there is cursing me as that darned weekend warrior. All I can do ensure that I am putting out quality work and providing a pleasant experience for my clients. Hopefully that will speak for itself.

Chugging Along

It has been about five months since Naidu Photography was officially registered as a legal business and I've spent the majority of my time networking, building and tweaking a concrete business plan, trying to facilitate a word of mouth marketing campaign, and getting my head around the accounting nuances that come with the territory. Sure I've had shoots which have been fabulous, but now I am really starting to see what I've heard so much about running a photography business – it's twenty percent photography, and eighty percent business management. Fortunately this hasn't stopped me from driving forward, but has only made me hungrier to get this business off of the ground and flying.

I welcome your comments below! Tell us what challenges you have faced when starting your business. What would you like to learn from other emerging professional photographers?