Apr 022012
 
Night time outdoor wedding in Yosemite

Kate got married outside at night in the middle of winter (barefoot too, and sh was really hoping for snow!) at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park.

I had two cameras. One of them on me with a flash to capture the wedding as it happened with good lighting. But I knew that this alone would not convey the full impact of being outside at night, so I had a second camera on a tripod. I used 15 second exposures to capture both the light and the feeling of the wedding. In some of the images, you can see me and the flash my camera produced more than once in the same frame.

I’ve included not only 15 second exposure images, but also a few of the “regular” shots from the wedding, for context, and because I like them.

15 second exposures of a night wedding at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park

Night time outdoor wedding in Yosemite

long exposure of a wedding photo at the Ahwahnee

artistic wedding photography

bride in a winter gown at the Ahwanee in Yosemite

shower of rose petals, bride

dad dips bride, dancing at a wedding reception in the Ahwahnee

All photos © Alex Schoenfeldt 2006. All rights reserved.
Yosemite National Park Wedding Photography

Aug 122011
 
Artist modeling her hat outside night shot port of Oakland

Wednesday night 11:30 PM I got an emergency text from a client, Jeanne Henzel Swartz, proprietor of Joona She was having a photographic emergency. She had just finished a hat for a competition, and photos were due at 10:00 AM tomorrow. She had been planning to shoot it herself, but her model flaked. She needed me to come over and get some shots of this hat.

I said “what the heck.”

I roll into her studio in an industrial part of town just before midnight. We scope around for a while, and decide to try a few things. We have one well lit room with blank walls, a funky handmade shelter by the waterfront (we are basically in the port of Oakland) and a congregated metal building that looks interesting. We shot for about an hour, came back to my studio, picked our favorite made some quick adjustments in Photoshop, popped it on a thumb drive, done. I was in bed by 2:00 AM.

I say we nailed it.

Here is the one in front of the blank wall. This is the one that got submitted to the contest (which is why the aspect ratio is weird) . We felt like it showed off the hat the best.

Artist modeling her hat

Here is the one in front of the funky handmade structure on the edge of the San Francisco Bay in the port of Oakland. This one is my favorite. It is a little busy, but man there is a lot going on here.

Artist modeling her hat outside night shot port of Oakland

And lastly, the one in front of the metal building. The photo we went with was the first shot we took, and this was the last. Funny how that worked.

Artist modeling her hat outside night shot port of Oakland metal building

All photos © Alex Schoenfeldt 2011
San Francisco Photographer