Posts Tagged: creative mountain wedding photography

Summer Weddings – We’re Ready! Are you?

Summer is a busy season and we aren’t even there yet. When there is so much green out every window of our homes and cars, I think about the brides and grooms (and their parents) who are gearing up for what they plan to be a massive milestone and celebration: a summer wedding. Look at Whitney & Preston – above. They are downright charging toward the future. And for us – the near future is about the outdoors and watching others say, “I do.”

Outdoor summer weddings are a favorite because we live in a gorgeous state and green is indeed everywhere. There are trees, barns, lakes, casual settings, arboretums, and fresh flowers everywhere as backdrops and set dressing and couples always seem to become more fresh and lively themselves.

Each of these couples decided that being outside in warm climates was the right choice for them – even at the risk of weather. And these were some of our best days as wedding photographers. If you are just starting to plan your engagement, we hope that you’ll contact us about engagement photos, wedding plans and any places or themes that excite you. We would love to be a part of your day!


We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddingsbrides, and special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

All photos are ©2018 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

The Pinterest Factor – reality vs. pinned photos

A common challenge we wedding photographers have these days involves brides sending us a Pinterest board full of photos they want us to recreate on their wedding day. And believe me, we get it. Inspiration comes from so many different places and directions, people, memories……….. the origins of our muses can be anywhere these days and Pinterest boards are proof of that. They are a 21st century social media phenomenon, born of the old bulletin boards, college wall boards of your favorite actors or bands, and more recently the vision boards people made for aspirational purposes. They have enormous value for those who craft, knit, travel, have a yen for a certain type of fiction, color palette, movie genre, you name it.

from a board about movie stars of the 1940s

But Pinterest boards are just that: they are inspiration boards. And brides love them because they create a central and shareable place to collect ideas. It’s perfect for pulling together your ideas and favorite thoughts as you plan. With photography on your wedding day, it’s a moveable feast. It’s live and it’s subject to dozens of variables.

 

from a board about weddings

all images from Pinterest boards about weddings

When it comes to brides, we love seeing photos from Pinterest boards for this reason and pretty much this reason only: we get to know YOUR sense of your style, where YOUR inspirations are coming from and some of the types of imagery you want us to capture. You’re giving us a sense of who you are, but from someone else’s photos. These are someone else’s moments and that’s the distinction.

Why do you want someone else’s moment? Why not allow us to capture or create photos that are uniquely yours? We don’t mind looking at a pinterest board to get an idea of what you like at all, because we can then use it for inspiration. We want to capture what you want and we are seasoned wedding photographers and great listeners. But to wholesale recreate someone else’s moment is not only difficult and time consuming, that moment may be from a photographer with a different style from ours.

Schultz Crestwood Resort Blowing Rock NC High Country Wedding
Firethorne Country Club wedding charlotte NC. Whitford/Kessell wedding photography by Pixels On Paper Photographers photo
 Amanda Walling and Bonnie Hostetler On The Windfall outdoor Wedding West Jefferson NC photo

If you’ve fallen in love with a particular style of photography, you’ll need to find that photographer or a photographer who can mimic that style. Ryan and I feel strongly about copying other professional photographers images.

Thinking we can create images from Pinterest that only happen naturally where brides and photographers can find themselves in the weeds. Setting up an image based on a photo takes much longer due to set-up and lighting, posing people, etc. than those glorious shots that simply happen naturally.

A wedding is a moveable feast, as it were.

It’s live. It’s a living, breathing bit of joy, community, fun, calamity at its best and history in the making. Every moment cannot be a photo shoot and why would you want it to be? There are rain delays, wardrobe changes or makeup refreshes, lingering conversations, your cast of characters who may go missing, speeches that are lovely to hear but don’t convey on film. To capture every type of image based on other weddings on other days, in other locations and shot by other photographers is to set yourself up for disappointment. Have faith!
YOU need your own images that happen naturally for YOU on YOUR day. Remember that, as you sort through what you’d like to see on your day and trust that there will be magic moments we’ll capture that no one else on any Pinterest board will have.


We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddingsbrides, and special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

All photos are ©2018 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

themed weddings photographers? ABSOLUTELY.

We made our start photographing the traditional wedding. The gorgeous bride in a white gown, the handsome groom, the heart-felt vows and whether it was in a church or overlooking a mountain vista, the pictures really were worth a thousand words. What bigger day do you have than your wedding day? And capturing those memories is what we do.
But we have also had the pure, unadulterated joy of capturing weddings with a theme. Some are based on a throwback to another era. Some are based on the bride or groom’s family heritage with ancestral touches. We photographed the engagement, bridal and wedding portraits for a couple who LOVED Dr. Who. It was awesome. THEY were awesome. Others just want to give a nod to something they care about whether it’s a style or a place or a genre. Whatever your tastes, loves, origin story or favorite band, we will help capture it on film to share for lifetimes to come. Check out a few or our faves below! Above: A Pirate Wedding in the forest. What a fun group!
Below: A Rock-a-Billy Wedding done up right with every detail. 

Below: A Mexican Fiesta. …. Kidding. Scottish Highlands all the way. It was elegant and even the fog rolled in to go with bagpipes, kilts and heather.

The Scotch-Irish, and British Isles, often make an appearance. We are a country of immigrants afterall and seeing those traditions celebrated is transporting. It’s as if everyone at the wedding has gone back in time. The Fleur de Lis – so French, so New Orleans, so retro and cool. We LOVE those couples who just say, “This is WHO WE ARE. These are the things that we care about or that make us happy or brought us together and we want to celebrate and share it with everyone.” 

We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddingsbrides, and special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License

All photos are ©2018 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

October Anniversaries ~ all the best to these couples

Kristen and Jason Lavender, 6 years October 1st

“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” – St. Augustine

Augustine was a smart man. He was a saint, a Christian, a philosopher and a studier of men and their relationship to each other and to God. I like this quote, because while it can apply to every single person who loves well, in a marriage, it describes what bride and groom, husband and wife, father and mother will need to keep the family together: hands and feet ready to help and carry, eyes to see both pain and joy, ears to listen to stories that are exhilarating or boring (don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about) and a big heart that wants to jump in no matter what. And it’s just a start. Happy Anniversary to the couples who married in October – all of you – and most especially to the ones we’ve photographed over the years. We love you. Keep celebrating and showing each other what love looks like.

Donna & Andrew Gilleland 5 years October 4th

Mickey and Ben Strope, 4 years October 4th

LeighAnn and Jason Moffitt, 3 years October 4th

Amanda and Rich Terpstra, 8 years October 10th

Melissa and Bob Paradis, 7 years October 10th

Katie and Josh Minor, 2 years October 10th

Mary and Gilbert Joseph, 9 years October 11th

Megan and Jeff Barnhart, 4 years October 12th

Lucy and Glen Klamer, 5 years October 13th

Bonnie and Amanda Walling, 1 year October 14th

Addie & Matt 7 years October 16th

Amy & Bobby Pruitt 8 years October 17th

Goforth/Harrison Pixels On Paper nc mountain outdoor wedding photographers photo

Jamie and Daniel Harrison, 2 years October 17th

Annette & Omudhome 9 years October 18th

Laura and Michael Chumah, 6 years October 22nd

Firethorne Country Club wedding charlotte NC. Whitford/Kessell wedding photography by Pixels On Paper Photographers

Christine and Adam Kessell, 1 year October 22nd

We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddingsbrides, and special events and portraits  of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.

88x31 lucy & glens valle crucis wedding photography | pixels on paper boone wedding photographers

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License

All photos are ©2017 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.

Save

Save

Save