Wow, have we been keeping busy! This NEXT week is going to be awesome… taking a little trip to Virginia Beach for one wedding and then to the mountains for another!

Recently someone asked us, “So what is a RAW file anyway and what makes it so much better than JPEGs? Do you give RAW files to your clients?”

When you first turn on your camera, it’s almost always set to automatically take pictures in .jpeg format.

Lower end, consumer cameras only shoot photos in .jpeg and only give you the option to choose the quality of the .jpeg you want to produce.

DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, and some higher end point-and-shoots have an option to shoot RAW rather than JPEG.

When we are shooting with our digital cameras on jobs though, we shoot RAW. No exceptions. 

The image on the right was initially overexposed… from one moment to the next, the sun came out from behind a cloud so the light coming from the window became much brighter. Shooting RAW allowed us to save the exposure and the highlights when Allie gave us this gorgeous smile, so that it looks no different from the image on the left which was exposed correctly. 

What is a RAW file? 

For a lot of people, it doesn’t matter what it is. Not everyone “needs” to shoot RAW. It’s basically a little folder of uncompressed, or “RAW,” data. It’s information that hasn’t yet been turned into an image (or image file). That’s why when, if you ever try to shoot in “RAW” mode on your DSLR and then transfer your images to your computer, you cannot open them to view unless you have a special editing software such as Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.

Because it’s “raw” and uncompressed, it retains all of the information that reached your camera’s sensor, making it very easy to save highlights (or the bright areas) in post processing. That’s our favorite part about shooting RAW – being able to maintain greater “dynamic range,” which is basically the scale of different shades of light from white to black. Finally, RAW files maintain their quality and can be edited and re-edited without a loss of quality. JPEGs lose information each time you edit them – even if you rotate them, I’ve heard. RAW files are through and through just far more flexible.

So while not everyone “needs” to shoot RAW, if you’re a professional or even a serious amateur, you can see why it’s the better option.

Shooting RAW DOESN’T mean:

Shooting RAW does NOT mean not paying attention to your exposure settings. Do not, do not, do not go on a serious shoot and say, “Well, I’ll fix that later.” You should try and do everything to get your exposure right in camera. As flexible as RAW files are, it’s still possible to lose your highlights or underexpose, making either a harsh, white image with tons of lost information or a dark image which can be corrected but get’s extremely “noisy” (noise = ugly digital grain) in the process. Also, trying to get your settings right “in camera” eliminates tons of time in post which could be spent doing better things! Like watching soccer, eating sushi or getting out in the real world (what we like to do in our free time).

Look at it this way: 

A raw file is bigger, clumsier, takes more time to transfer, cannot be printed directly, usually looks slightly flat and needs a bit of sharpening. But that’s because it is what it is – it’s an unfinished product, and a far superior file than a .jpeg. It gives you more creative control with which to produce the final result.

That’s also exactly why, although we offer “digital negatives,” we don’t offer our RAW files. If someone sees our photos and loves our style, but wants to have RAW files to edit themselves, then they’re not really getting our style are they? You wouldn’t go to a restaurant, order the house special, but ask that it be brought out for you to prepare yourself, right? What was the purpose of going to the restaurant then? 

We hope this helps!

<3 xoxo, Michael and Carina

PS: If you have a question about photography, please leave a comment, send us an email at info@www.michaelandcarina.com or drop us a line at our Facebook page.

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]]> http://www.michaelandcarina.com/q-a-thursday-raw-vs_jpeg_virginia_wedding_photographers/feed/ 0 http://www.michaelandcarina.com/hampton-roads-wedding-photographers-allie-and-aaron-michael-and-carina-photography/ http://www.michaelandcarina.com/hampton-roads-wedding-photographers-allie-and-aaron-michael-and-carina-photography/#comments Thu, 10 Oct 2013 18:47:21 +0000 michaelandcarina http://www.michaelandcarina.com/?p=7217 Aaron and Allie approached us roughly a month before their wedding…

And luckily, that Sunday was still open!

Lucky for us anyway…

Because this couple was SO much fun getting to know!

Aaron is so much more than the tallest guy in the room… he loves dancing. I mean, loves it. Hardly a moment of the reception went by where he wasn’t out on the dance floor.

Allie was so calm on her wedding day… and when she looked up at new husband, and stood up on her tip toes to kiss him, their eyes sparkled.

The reception went late into the night… and we loved every second of it.

Thank you, Aaron and Allie, for inviting us to photograph your special day!

Thanks to our trusty assistant Seth for helping us!

film: fuji400h / developed by Richard Photo Lab

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Cherie, a fellow photographer, a mother, a fashion-lover, a soldier, and a New Yorker, had fallen in love with our work.

Together with her partner David, they have a little boy.

David’s a sailor too. But unlike Cherie, he’s stationed in Florida. They don’t see each other that often… something we are all too familiar with.

How could we say no?

This couple: beautiful.

This family: gorgeous.

We could tell that they knew how to treasure the moments they had together.

These were taken in Newport News, Virginia, not far from Cherie’s Hampton home. It was an honor to be able to preserve some of those precious moments on film, which Richard Photo Lab turned over in record time.

David and Cherie…… we fell in love with your family.

film: fuji400h / developed by Richard Photo Lab

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]]> http://www.michaelandcarina.com/hampton-roads-photographers-michael-and-carina-photography-cheries-family-on-film/feed/ 0 http://www.michaelandcarina.com/virginia-wedding-photographers-q-a-thursday-what-lens-do-you-recommend-for-portraits/ http://www.michaelandcarina.com/virginia-wedding-photographers-q-a-thursday-what-lens-do-you-recommend-for-portraits/#comments Thu, 03 Oct 2013 18:44:48 +0000 michaelandcarina http://www.michaelandcarina.com/?p=7121 Q & A Tuesday Thursday
Garrison: What lenses do you normally use and or recommend for people/portrait shooting?

We are in LOVE with primes.

All of our lenses are prime lenses. A prime lens means that it is a fixed focal length, or “not a zoom.” You can still zoom with them, you just have to use your feet.

Zoom lenses aren’t bad. They can be extremely useful, especially for their versatility, and Canon for example makes some tack sharp zoom lenses such as the 70-200mm 2.8 L IS II lens, a “a must have lens” of most wedding photographers.

What’s so great about primes then?

Primes can have huge apertures, meaning they can basically suck in light in situations where zoom lenses would struggle.

This also means you can achieve a super-dreamy depth-of-field effect by shooting “wide open,” with an aperture of f1.2-f2. You just have to really know what you’re doing to make sure that your images are in focus – with some lenses, such as the Canon 85mm 1.2, shooting wide open leaves you with a field of focus as shallow as the length of an eyelash!

Also, even cheap primes can be tack sharp if you find the right f-stop or “spot” with a bit of practice.

Finally, prime lenses are lightweight and comfortable… which can make a difference when you’re shooting a 10-12 hour wedding. That Canon 70-200 I mentioned earlier… it can quickly give you a backache!

To get back to your question, what lenses do we recommend for portraits?

There are a lot of nice portrait lenses that are out there; choosing one should be based on how it flows with your shooting style.

The 85mm 1.2 is an all-around epic lens but carries an epic price tag. Still, we’ve used it before and it was made for portrait photographers. It is, however, a little slow to focus. But for portrait photography, you can take more time with shooting than you might need, say, in the spur of a moment at a wedding.

The 135mm L f2 lens is one of our favorites and it’s a great portrait lens. Sharp, great in low light, and great for candids because you can stand off in a corner, using it’s extended, zoom-like focal length to get up close to subjects.

The 35mm L f1.4 lens is great for environmental portraiture, that is, portraits where you want to include some of the environment. It is a bit contrasty though and because it’s a wider focal length, it tends to distort if you get too close.

Our favorites though… hmmm…

Probably a toss-up between Canon’s 50mm f1.2 L lens for Canon dSLRs and the Zeiss 80mm f2 (I’m not linking to it because it’s hard to find by itself) lens for the Contax 645.

Both have a similar focal length, as the 80mm on a medium, 645 format camera equals roughly 50mm on a standard 35mm-format dSLR.

The 50mm 1.2 is just so versatile. It’s definitely our everyday lens. With an aperture of f1.2 we can shoot in just about any kind of light. We can also achieve that dreamy depth of field that we love so much in all of our photographs. It is also extremely sharp. I mean, make-sure-you-keep-your-Band-Aids-handy sharp. It’s what stays on our digital cameras most of the time. It gets a great, shallow depth of field but you can also back away a bit and get a nice, environmental portrait using elements of your surroundings.

It has some distortion, (distortion disappears around the 85mm focal length), but not much. Since it mimics the viewpoint of the human eye, we find it also creates a feeling of intimacy whereas longer lenses tend to add a more formal atmosphere to photographs. Granted, it can get a little close-up sometimes in small rooms, but with a little creative composition, we feel getting close-up just creates more sense of connection in photographs. A photographer once said, “If you feel like you’re too close, get closer.”

For our film work, our ultimate favorite is the 80mm Zeiss Planar T* lens. It’s just… hard to describe. It’s sharp, but the depth of field on medium format is just something else.

I hope this helps! Please note I wrote this from the perspective of a Canon full-frame/Contax shooter. If you want to buy any of these lenses for a “cropped sensor” camera (Canon 7D, Canon Rebels, etc.), just remember the multiplication factor!

And while all of the lenses I’ve mentioned are somewhat pricey, there are plenty of cost-effective alternatives! The 50mm 1.4 for example is a fantastic lens for photography on a budget… just don’t bump into anything with it
Enjoy these samples! 

Zeiss 80mm f2


Zeiss 80mm f2


50mm f1.2


50mm f1.2


50mm f1.2, no editing (straight out of camera)


Zeiss 80mm f2, no edits, straight scans


Zeiss 80mm f2


Zeiss 80mm f2


Zeiss 80mm f2

film: fuji400h / developed by Richard Photo Lab

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Neither of us could imagine photographing a wedding without the other.

But not everyone knows exactly how WE met.. and why we do what we do.

It’s a fun story to tell.

And sometimes it’s tempting to say, “Oh, it’s a long story,” and leave it at that.

But we’re working on a project that will hopefully communicate our love story a little better, and why it is we love what we do and do what we do.

We want to get to know YOU for your wedding day… so we want you to know us, too.

Why do we love photographing couples so much anyway?

Why not also explain it a little more in a blog post…

We met as penpals in 2003. We were teenagers.. no exact numbers but we weren’t close to finishing high school, we’ll put it that way.

We wrote each other for 6 months and somehow became infatuated with one another…

And I mean write-a-letter-everyday-sometimes-twice-or-three-times-a-day infatuated!

To be fair, this infatuation was from the get-go… somewhat… impractical.

Carina was raised in a suburb of Munich, Germany, about 20 minutes from the center of the city but still “enough in the country” to be able to see the sun shining on the Alps from her house in the morning. She attended a prestigious German grammar school and was proficient in 4 languages by the time we started writing each other. I know, impressive, right? Throw in the fact that she traveled to a different country with her family what seemed like every other month…

Me on the other hand…

I was raised in a very tiny house in rural Virginia with my single mother who worked three jobs and my younger, disabled brother. My mom worked really hard to make ends meet but there were times… a lot of times… where we went without normal stuff other people take for granted. I was also “homeschooled” after the 7th grade but because my mom worked, I was kind of forced to teach myself.

Even if we lived a mere 4 miles apart, we’d probably not be voted the most likely of couples… now adjust the distance to roughly 4,000 miles and throw in a few different countries, continents and an ocean.

Maybe it’s obvious why I found her so interesting. She tells me she was always interested in America and wanted an American friend – still doesn’t explain how she ended up with me. Anywho..

Still, on December 16th 2003 I called up my penpal and with all the confidence of a teenager I asked her if she wanted to try a long distance relationship. She said yes.

I had not thought about how this would or could work out, I knew somehow it would if she just agreed to try it.

That night I asked my mother if I could go to Germany to visit my penpal…

Kudos to my mom. Really.

She could have laughed at me, or worse yet checked me into an institution.

She didn’t.

She said: “You can if you earn your own way.” As I remember it, she didn’t even pause before answering.

We wrote each other almost everyday the next year. And I mowed a lot of lawns and tilled a lot of gardens… did just about everything I could do…

And in December 2004, I boarded a flight in Philadelphia alone to fly to Munich.

Some photos from our first adventure

Looking back now, I did what a lot of teenagers do. A lot of teens get jobs, work hard, earn their right to a first car or something similar.

With me, instead of a first car it was just plane tickets to another country to see my crush.

But something about the experience did something for both of us, I think… it made us really aware, early on, that love isn’t just an emotion… it’s something active, a verb, and something that takes a lot of work.

I spent 12 days with her. They were the best, craziest, most wonderful days I’d ever lived in my life.

I asked Carina’s father if she could visit me the next summer (summer 2005), and he said, “I’m afraid I don’t know you well enough after 12 days to send my daughter to America.” (Understandable!) “If you love her, you’ll come again.”

I knew when I left that I’d met the girl I would marry and was already working out ways in my mind to earn my way back to Germany.

This continued over the next several years… working for months to save up enough money to spend two weeks together…

And throughout the times we spent apart, we wrote to each other. Almost every. single. day.

Before everything else, she was my friend.

My best friend.

These are just a small selection from a small box from the corner of my mother’s attic, where several other boxes still sit (we plan to get them when we have a place with a bit more room).

I wrote her once that if I could have her and be hers, I’d be content. And even if we didn’t do what we do now, working together telling other people’s love stories in photographs, I’d be happy.

But our relationship has taught us, especially in a very cynical world, that finding your true love is still something special.

It’s taught us not to concentrate on things that divide us… politics… religion… language…

But to be thankful for each other, to love one another, and not only “say it,” but to work at it.

The couples we work with… they each have their own love story. The proposal in the best friend’s basement due to bad weather… the high school sweethearts… the fireman who fell in love with the nurse. We know each love story is special.

And that’s why, I guess you could say, we are who we are and we do what we do.

Watch out for more in the next month or so…

Photo by Annamarie Akins

film: fuji400h / developed by Richard Photo Lab

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Ebony and Jesse are finally tying the knot!

Their still looking for their wedding venue but they decided to have their engagement session before.

You could see the love in his eyes as he held her.

How she smiled when he told her about when he first fell in love with her.

These high school sweethearts from Hampton are going to have a beautiful wedding.

film: portra 400

developed by Richard Photo Lab

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As we walked around Ryan pointed out certain places.

“That’s where I asked her out for the first time…”

“That’s where I told her I loved her…”

This is an obviously gorgeous couple, but they’re so much more than that, too. They’re hard-working and they have set goals for themselves. Now, they have each other and make the perfect team, ready to take on the world.

They’re getting married next year at the Williamsburg Winery and although we won’t be there to document it as we will be away shooting a destination wedding, we wish them all the best and know that they are going to do great things together.

Ryan and Rosemary, it was an honor to get to know you and document one evening in your love story… we look forward to seeing you again!

film: fuji400h

developed by Richard Photo Lab

Virginia Wedding Photographers | Hampton Roads Wedding Photographers | Williamsburg Wedding Photographers

This time of year there is such beautiful light and such atmosphere in the Hampton Roads area, just perfect for photography.

In the middle of a lot of engagements, and weddings, it was a fun, creative experience to photograph two best friends in this mini portrait session. 

Fuji400h. Portra 160. Contax 645s and 80mm Zeiss lenses.

Two beautiful ladies.

Could it get any better?

Morgan is a Gloucester girl. Mark is a Gloucester guy.

They put so much time and thought into making their Gloucester Point Beach wedding spectacular…

But keeping it country, he wore sandals and she went barefoot.

Perfection.

When Morgan booked us, she said, “I knew when I saw your photos, you were my photographers.”

And we could not have been more blessed to meet such a wonderful couple.

When we photographed their engagement session, they danced with each other in front of the camera and kissed as if we weren’t there.

Morgan and Mark inspired us.

When we’ve needed inspiration, we’ve gone back and looked at their engagement photos.

Their love is what does it.

During their wedding, there were many moments which stood out. 

The dancing… the sparklers… the fireworks…

But none touched us more than when Morgan’s dad escorted his daughter down the aisle… and Mark took her hand..

And of course, the kiss.

Morgan and Mark, thank you so much for inviting us to take part in your special day. It was unforgettable.

Your love will continue to inspire us.

vendors listed at the end

a mix of fine art film and digital photography

Thanks to Anthony Le for assisting us.

Film developed by Richard Photo Lab 

Vendor Credits:

Dress: The Inspired Bride

Tuxes: The Bridal Boutique of Gloucester

Rental equipment: Grand Rentals of Gloucester

Makeup: Salon Vivace

Hair: Drew, Shear Envy

Band/DJ: Fine Swiss Cheese, Felicia Hayes

Venue: Private residence

Flowers: Lynn Thoreson

Planner: Joy Sampson, Friends and Family

Catering: Sally Mears, Friends and Family

Cake: Charlene West and Jean Sterling, Friends and Family

Officiant: Pastor Tom Cohick