Wedding story video – watch it in HD!

*After you click play, click on the little arrow next to 360p at the bottom right of the Youtube player & choose one of the HD options. Looks waay better!

This little 3 minute and 20 second video was shot over the course of about 6 months with my good friend and fellow wedding shooter Jacob Gish.

As I began working on the new Freestyle photo site (thanks for checking it out by the way), I really wanted something grabby to help launch the new ‘face’ of the business. We don’t do much print advertising so the website is really the front end of our photo company. Plus, with all the great behind-the-scenes video out there, I figured it would be fun to turn the cameras on myself so clients could see what its like to work with me.

Now, I’ve been asked the question, why use a video to promote a photo service… and my answer at the time was, it just kinda makes sense! Doesn’t it? Now, I think especially as still and video technology meld into single camera bodies (like my trusty Nikon D90), clients are becoming more and more used to seeing a mix of both stills and video in slideshows and movies.

In comes Jake, a top-notch videographer and editor who cut his teeth in the biz shooting and editing breaking news for CTV television. He was really keen to try out his new dSLR/video camera in a professional capacity where the results really mattered so, needless to say we were pumped to have him on board.

We shot this video on location at the wedding of Brent and Fiona Shearer at Tigh Na Mara resort outside Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island on a beautiful (windy) September day. Brent is a fellow BCIT journalism grad and reporter for “A” channel news in Nanaimo. The man’s a pro in front of a camera and his lovely wife Fiona was just a dream to work with. We couldn’t hav asked for a more accommodating couple! They were even good enough to fly us over (on top of the commission for shooting their wedding)! Jake came along and we thought the footage of the intrepid photographers jet-setting out of Coal Harbour in downtown Vancouver would be a great way to start the video off… alas, we ended up leaving that bit on the cutting room floor. (Saving it for part deux!)

The Whistler bridal segment came together thanks to our uber-trooper model, Emily who braved a brisk minus 10 and alpine winds in nothing but a wedding dress. Emily got married in the summer, just a few months before the video was shot. I’ve always wanted to shoot an alpine wedding in the snow and initially the plan was to bring her husband along as well to more or less fake it to look like a couples-only shoot. He ended up having to bail at the last minute but rather than pulling out, Emily stuck with it and we forged ahead with a more rebellious bride-only look.

The engagment surf segment on Long Beach, just outside Tofino on Vancouver Island features our good friends Sterling and Caroline. We’ve been surfing there together for years and we knew the August light at sun-down would be magic. I love the casual feel of that segment, fits the couple’s personalities perfectly plus, we all went for a surf after the shoot!

The interview with me was shot last, in Jake’s living room at his home in Pemberton, B.C. We used a white bed sheet with a few thousand watts of cinema lighting blasting through it to get that whiteout look, plus a softbox-diffused key light on me.

I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed putting it together! Thanks for watching.