Right around 2009 is also when I noticed what seemed to be a new trend in photography, (at least I think it was new)… a movement of young artists who solely for the sake of fun and expression were creating an entirely original look of what I would call surrealist photography. Much of it focused on self-portraiture.

Artists such as Brooke Shaden and Joel Robinson  weren’t just capturing the world around them, they were creating new worlds with their photography.

Even though my photography journey took me down another path, I still love admiring the worlds these artists create.

I was absolutely thrilled to learn that one of those artists lives right here in Yorktown, less than 5 minutes away!

Carol of Carol Persons Photography has  a passion for for what she does.

She creates art with photography.

Her photography is influenced by both surrealism and fashion photography, but she is always thinking up new and interesting ways to be original.

She arrived at a beach on the York River at 6:30 in the morning to meet me.

As a personal exercise on an overcast day, I decided to shoot mainly film.

Shooting slower with film allowed for her to practice her passion.

She set up her camera on a tripod and using a remote shutter release and a timer took self-portrait after self-portrait.

I couldn’t help but admire that…

There I sat, next to my Pelican case filled with gear, two cameras in hand…

And watched her with one camera, one lens, one tripod, and one remote trigger, creating art.

That was really inspirational.

She inspired me to get back even more to the basics of what it is I love about photography, which can even be translated into wedding photography…

And that’s not snapping away… but looking for that one special image…

One that really captures your imagination.

Here’s one of Carol’s self-portraits taken in Yorktown, mixed with a little bit of Photoshop wizardry..

Thanks for inviting me to capture these portraits of you, Carol!

film: fuji400h // contax 645 // developed by Richard Photo Lab

Are we ready for this?

Are we worth this?

We’d done a few smaller mentoring sessions, sure…

But Brittany was ready for a full-on, half-day, hands-on mentoring session.

And she didn’t want anyone else.

And after some nervous thinking, we thought…

Brittany believes in us.

She sees something in us that we don’t see ourselves.

And there – before her mentoring session had even taken place, Brittany had already taught US something.

Brittany has a dream… and a passion. Just like we did, and just like we still do.

All she needed from us was that same boost of self-confidence that she gave us, with a few tips here and there to send her in the right direction.

That’s why we’re excited to be offering mentoring sessions (2-on-1) in the future, answering any and all questions, giving advice, reviewing your portfolio, taking you out to lunch and/or dinner, working on your niche, and to help you find not just any clients, but YOUR clients, starting at $600.
We’ll include a portrait session for your website and a session with a model couple to boot!

Brittany, from start to finish, really amazed us.

Not only with her talent, but with her energy for what she does!

This is Part II of our mentoring session with Brittany.

Throughout the day, Carina shot mainly digital, I (Mike) shot mainly film.

These are all film, fuji400h, developed and scanned by Richard Photo LabRichard Photo Lab.

Thank you for working with us, Brittany, and teaching us something about ourselves in the process!

Check out Brittany’s fantastic shots as well as her review of her experience here!

Part I

Part II

xoxo, Carina (and Mike)

This is Part I of our mentoring session with Brittany. Part II (all film) will follow tomorrow!

Tucked away in Seaford, near Yorktown, Virginia, Bay Tree Manor was the perfect location for this couple who grew up on the waters of Virginia’s coastline.

Their dream wedding: simple, with lots of family, and with peacock feathers and a bagpiper.

She’s a firefighter and EMT. He helps to build ships in Hampton Roads.

Now they’ve purchased their first home together in lovely Gloucester County, Virginia and are looking forward to making it their own.

James and Mary Lynn, thanks so much for inviting us to document your big day!!

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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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But sometimes not everything goes as planned…

What they originally expected was perhaps more traditional…

But what they experienced was something small, beautifully intimate and perfect.

This Middle Peninsula couple met us the morning of their wedding at Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg. “I picked out this room just for the window light!” Alicia said. Too perfect, right? Alicia and her mother were up to their necks in flowers and flower stems… she had been up since 5am making bouquets with her mother.

Their ceremony was held at Lee Hall Plantation near Yorktown, Virginia. The ceremony was quiet. The breeze was the only thing you could hear, moving through the trees, other than the minister’s voice. We all heard them say “I do,” though.

Afterwards we met up in historic Yorktown on the riverfront, or “Riverwalk.” The clouds had moved off and we had some perfect late-evening sun for some glowing portraits on film.

Their intimate reception was held in the Riverwalk Restaurant.

Alicia and Josh, when you booked us last year it was the encouragement we needed to stay in the United States and stay the course, pursuing our photography dreams.

Thank you so much for inviting us to document your big day!!

Vendors:

Dress – Maggie Sottero “Jenna”

Venues – Lee Hall Mansion & Kingsmill Resort 

Reception – Riverwalk Restaurant 

Hair and Makeup – Robbie Miller Master Paul Mitchell Makeup and Hairstylist

Flowers – DIY purchased from Norfolk Wholesale Floral 

Officiant – Jim Gilley

Cake – Gourmet Bake Shoppe

Odds & Ends / Bridal Hanger – Wish Upon A Starfish  

Cake Topper – DIY

Invitations – DIY

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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