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Luminaire Images Blog • by Molly Ann bio picture

Sum-Sum-Summertime!

Luminaire Images are photography couple Molly and Matt, who have been creatively documenting love and life as fine art photojournalists since 2005.  Since its inception, Luminaire Images has been commissioned for its award-winning artistry throughout California, as well as Colorado, Greece, and the Dominican Republic.

Summer's here and so is wedding weather! We're still accepting wedding commissions for limited dates in late 2010 and all of 2011. For a free consultation or information regarding your wedding, portrait session, and more, drop us a line at info@luminaireimages.com, or call (714) 809-1626; and don't forget to visit our official website!

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Monthly Archives: August 2008

[19] Wedding images

A few weeks ago I was at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Upland photographing Chris & Kelsey’s wedding!


The lovely Miss Mrs. Kelsey.


Kelsey gets a hug from her very-proud grandfather.


St. Anthony’s has this enormous glass window with a view of the San Gabriel mountains outside.


W/ Chris at the altar


Apparently Kelsey and Chris met in Vegas–the preist retold their story written from both their points of view, much to the guests’ amusement!


The reception was held at Black Gold Golf Club in Yorba Linda, which is so brand spankin’ new that it didn’t even show up on my iPhone’s GPS!


Frilly!


Grandpa gets his dance on.


ANYTHING can happen during the Money Dance!!


Quite possibly my favorite…

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attack of the flying hair

An image I shot during a 2nd-shooting gig that I just thought was cool:

Kids are indisputably the best dancers at weddings…and I would say that slightly intoxicated groomsmen are often a close second.

I’m thinking of doing a series of flying hair.

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[18] wedding images

Last month I shot Alma & Jeremy’s wedding at St. Simon & Jude Church in Huntington Beach and the Westminster Rose Center with my friend Xuong of Happy Photos. It’s nice when the locations are so close to home!



…Featuring Spanish dance!


Father & daughter…


…rocking out!


The groom’s aunt wept when the best man led everyone in a rendition of “Happy Birthday” for her.


“Little Spanish dancer, do the splits,
Little Spanish dancer, kick, kick, kick!”
(random jumping-rope rhyme I kept thinking of while editing these)

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[28] wedding photos

A couple weeks ago I shot Erin and Jack’s wedding aboard the Adventures at Sea yacht Just Dreamin’. These two were MADE for each other. I’ve told Erin several times now that she and Jack should quit their jobs in education and take up television screenwriting…the hilarious banter just NEVER stops with them!


Erin, who is silly


Erin chose a dress with blue overtones, thus taking care of “something blue” without requiring her to actually carry anything or wear something that doesn’t match the dress.


I just realized that I must have a million shots of the backs of dresses being laced up, and I probably post one in every single blog entry. They always just turn out so nicely.


Jack, who is also silly. Do I detect the sweet scent of compatibility?


Shot by Matt


LOL


Jack’s son gave a pretty entertaining roast toast.


Jack truly set an admirable example regarding this cake. The ship was about to leave the dock and the cake had not yet arrived from the bakery—whereas most people would probably be in a state of panic, Jack was Cucumber Man (as in, “Cool As A”). Maybe he was panicking inwardly, but he sure seemed calm on the outside, and ready to let it slide and just enjoy his wedding. If any future newlyweds can learn a lesson, this just might be the most valuable one: If something goes wrong, DON’T PANIC. The only presence you really need for a wedding to truly run smoothly is the bride’s and groom’s. Fretting over the presence, or lack thereof, of anyone or anything else threatens to ruin the good time you may otherwise have! Roll with the punches…your blood pressure will thank you =)


This was one of the most unique and awesome wedding interruptions I’ve ever seen. Some of Erin and Jack’s students puttered out into the harbor to intercept the yacht, waving hand-colored signs reading “JACK+ERIN, OMG.”
…We sent them off with slices of cake.


The bridal party included Jack’s two kids.


Some nice f/2 sauce.


Taken by Matt


Taken by Matt. We could probably play a drinking game for how many times Erin rolls her eyes throughout the day.


Theirs will be a super fun household, let me tell you!


Practicing our “Graduate” angle.


I love this shot by Matt. So cinematic.

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The Value of Photography, explained

Over the past couple weeks my family has been preparing for my grandmother’s passing. She was diagnosed with lung cancer two years ago (ironically, she’s never smoked) and six months ago she decided to stop chemotherapy, which didn’t seem to be working for her. Over the past two weeks she’s been growing progressively weaker.

We’ve had a lot of time to prepare for this, and my family is handling it very well.

One of the things my mother and I have been doing in preparation for my grandma’s memorial service is sifting through stacks and stacks of family photo albums, scanning pictures and putting them together into a slideshow. I can’t believe how well documented my grandma’s life is. We even have her footprints from the hospital in which she was born.


My grandma in 1936

We have looked at hundreds of old photos. Some are of my mom and her siblings long before I was born. Some are of my grandparents as children. There are even some of my great-grandparents when they were my age…or younger, even. There are entire lifetimes condensed into books with scribbled ink captions and disintegrating paper pages. In many cases, the photos are the only thing we have left of many of the people within them, who are now long gone.


My grandparents on their wedding day, 1951

I know a lot of professional photographers who like to call family and wedding photographs “investments,” but it’s shockingly difficult to convince other people that they really are investments. It’s easy for someone to comprehend “investment” when you talk about money because money doesn’t just have value, it is value. But is it as valuable as a picture that helps you remember something, or someone that you always want to remember?


Grandma with me, 1985

A 70-year-old photograph doesn’t have the same kind of numerical value that money has, and that’s why it’s so hard for some people to grasp why a photograph is just as valuable, if not more valuable, than money. Photographs are emotional investments. Money cannot buy how you feel when you review a photograph of a time you no longer remember, or of a face you no longer remember, or a face you never knew at all.

Money. Cannot. Buy that.

The mystery I encounter time and time again as a wedding photographer is why people don’t want to spend money on something that will eventually hold more value than money. Is it just too hard to imagine a time when your parents are gone? Or your spouse? Will you wish you had more photos of them? Better photos of them? Photos that captured their personality to better help you remember them?


My grandparents with their five children, respective spouses, and eleven grandchildren last Thanksgiving (2007)

Someday, somebody will be looking over photographs of me. They will say,
“Look how young she is in this picture. Look how skinny she was back then. She looks just like you in this photo. This picture captured her personality, she looks like she would have been a fun person to know.”

Now that’s value.

August 15 | 12:49AM
EDITED TO ADD:

I’d like to insert a comment I received on this subject from MySpacer Noelle

“This is something that I can relate to in so many ways. I grew up living with my great grandfather, and the day he died I scrambled through my heaps of photos wishing I had more of him (as I tear up just typing this). I would put a higher price on just one more photo of him then I would so many other things.

Also, my house burnt down back in 2003, the house I had lived in since i was in about 4th or 5th grade. And honestly the first thing I thought when they told me was, “Oh my God, all my photos of friends and family!” I was so devastated. It was the only thing I cared about—everything else could be replaced, it was just stuff, but those memories were something I was never going to get back, not in that form. So what if they were just crappy disposable camera photos, they were mine, my high school memories. I have a great family and a bunch of them actually ended up sifting through the rubble that was my bedroom and they took and cleaned and hang-dried hundreds of photos because they knew how important it was to me.

It was probably one of the best things anyone has ever done for me.”

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FREEEDOOOOOMMM (to Succeed)

On Wednesday night I headed up to Los Angeles to snag some Free to Succeed Tour tips-n-tricks. The seminar was as informative and inspirational as anyone could expect a David Jay/Jasmine Star collaboration to be. There were some familiar faces in attendance (I met the star of Jasmine’s blog, her husband JD), and some new friends too, which is good because I need more pals on Twitter. Lol…I’m such a geek.


My friend Kat met up with me =)


At one point I started doodling in my notebook and Kat found it so funny that I took a picture of it. Kat actually found a lot of my fidgeting pretty funny, so I suppose she can imagine the kind of weirdness Matt endures daily from me.

Here’s an example that I didn’t divulge to Kat during the seminar because she was too giggly already:


Seeing the word “FREEDOM” plastered all over DJ’s “Free to Succeed” promo material kept reminding me of William Wallace.

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