Tonight I was reviewing old weddings we have shot over the years. So, here's another beautiful #throwbackThursday wedding post!

This one is of Mikey and Sara. I've known Mikey for years, from back in my band shooting days. He was in a band my youngest sister, Kelsey, and I were super into called Nine Life Fire. I had shot them numerous times during the  lifetime of the band. When Mikey and Sara were looking to book wedding photography, he contacted me to see if I was interested. I was excited, because Mikey is an awesome guy. 

This was probably one of my favorite weddings to shoot. It was outside, but beautiful, and it was the first wedding that we provided a photo booth! We have made tons of photo booth upgrades since then, but it was definitely a learning experience.

Check out more pics from the day below!

Now that the holiday has passed, I can share this session. I got together with an old friend of mine, Nick, and his sister and two cousins. They wanted to re-create some old pictures they had taken together to use as a Christmas present. Needless to say, re-creating the photographs was hilarious. 

We used an empty living room as the shooting space. The lighting was simple, as the walls were white and allowed for a lot of bounce and fill. I set up 1 AB1600 shooting through a 5' umbrella that was high and camera right. There was also 1 SB-28, plugged into an external battery back (SD-8), that was slightly behind the subjects, and camera left. This allowed for a lot of big, soft, light and it translated to photographs wonderfully. 

This was my first time using the external battery pack on the SB-28, and I have to say I was majorly impressed. I did not have to replace batteries once, and the recycle time was around 3-5 seconds for full power. I can't wait to use this set up when I shoot my next wedding reception. The pack takes 6 AA batteries, but you still have to put the 4 AA batteries in the flash. That is a total of 10 AA batteries, total, to power the flash. I actually purchashed an off brand battery pack, that I will be testing, and posting a review of, as well.

For the shoot, we started off by re-creating the older pictures. This broke the ice, and got the easy stuff out of the way. From there, we shot a couple of the group just smiling. At this point, my wife and I, decided to try and have the group play a game. As a way to get more geninue smiles and interactions, we had them each try to hum a song, and have the others guess. They found this funny, and ended up with some great shots of them laughing and just hanging out. From there, we shot a few more regular group shots. I found that having them  play the game actually allowed them to relax and feel more confident in the shoot. This is when we got the most genuine smiles! Definitely is something we will play with more in the future.

If you want to see the re-creation shots, and some other select shots from the shoot, click "Read More" below!