I’ve been doing a lot of model shoots recently, which means a lot of skin retouching, so I thought I’d share some of the basics of how I approach retouching a face. Well, actually, all the techniques would be the same if I were retouching arms, legs, or other skin, but I figured that I’d start with the face as that’s the most important part of person.

The example I’m going to be using for this article is a photo I took of my favorite model, Rachel. Looking at her, you might wonder why in the world you’d need to retouch her at all. In all honesty, if all you were going to do were post a small image on the web, you might not have to do anything at all. But if you plan on printing the image large, you’ll start to find things that just jump out at you. They are often things that you wouldn’t even notice in real life. You only notice them when you have time the study the image.

In general I try to keep my retouching natural-looking. I try to avoid anything that screams “Hey, look at the photoshopped face!” Because of this, I can’t rely solely on any of the actions and filters or plugins for Photoshop that intend to make skin look softer.

I’ve found that for the most part they are too noticeable for my taste. They cause the image to lose detail and make face look plasticky. For my work there’s no substitute a bunch of detail oriented editing. That doesn’t mean these tools don’t have their place, in fact there are a couple I use all the time for part of my retouching process.

So let’s get into it. If you want to follow along, I’ve posted a high resolution version of the image I’m working on here:
http://shootstyle.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/skindeep/skin_deep_example_original.jpg

Another way to follow along is to watch the following QuickTime slideshow, which has a closeup from every major step along the way:
http://shootstyle.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/skindeep/retouchslideshow.mov

After I open an image in Photoshop, the first thing I do before working on it is to duplicate the background layer and duplicate the background layer by typing Command + J. I rename the resulting layer ‘retouch’.

Working on this retouch layer allows me to revert back to my original image if I make a mistake at any point.

The first thing I attack when retouching a face is small blemishes, pimples, flakes of makeup, or any tiny dark spot or bump on the subjects skin. To get these little buggers, I select the Spot Healing Brush Tool. by typing the letter ‘j’.

One of the best ways to speed up your retouching, or any Photoshop activity, really, is to learn to use the shortcut keys associated with the tools you use most frequently. Click and hold on the Spot Healing Brush Tool and a menu will pop up allowing you to choose any of the related tools in this group including the Spot Healing Brush Tool, the regular Healing Brush Tool, the Patch Tool and the Red Eye Tool.

Notice that next to each tool is the letter J. This is to let you know that you can select the currently visible tool in this group at any time by clicking j on your keyboard. Even better, if you hold down the Shift key and press J repeatedly, you can cycle through and select any of these tools without having to click on the icon in the toolbar. This is a HUGE time saver.

So if you’re following along, type shift-j-j-j until the Spot Healing Brush is selected.

Now go to the Options Bar above the tool bar and set the painting mode to Lighten. This will cause the brush to make darker area lighter while having little or no effect on lighter areas.

I like to work at 100% size so I can see actual pixels when retouching. To quickly zoom to 100%, type Command + Option + 0.

With the Spot Healing Brush, you just click on spots you want to fix. It works best if the brush size is about the same size as the spots you are clicking on.

Here I’m using a brush size of 20. You can change the brush size by clicking on the Brush menu in the Options Bar, or even easier by using the bracket keys [ and ] on you keyboard. then just go around and click on any dark spots or blemishes you see. Here is an example of all the spots I clicked on:

The white dots show both the location and the sizes I used for the brush.

Now let’s switch the Spot Healing Brush to Darken mode and click on any dark spots, like stray glitter or shiny bumps.

After getting rid of small spots on the skin, I work on wrinkles. When working on wrinkles, I duplicate the retouch layer by typing Command + J. This gives me the ability to quickly restore some of the lines I remove later.

Because these lines are bigger, I use the Patch Tool instead of a Healing Brush to remove them. So if you’re following along, type shift-j-j-j until the Patch Tool is selected.

You can also click on it in the tool bar. (But why would you when typing shift-j-j-j is so fast?)

Also, make sure the Patch Tool is set to Source in the Options Bar.

Let’s start by working around the eyes. Type Command and the + key to zoom in to 200%. Using the Patch Tool, draw a selection around a line near the eyes. Make the selection close to the line.

Now drag the selection to an area of smoother skin to patch it. You’ll see that the selected area now takes on the appearance of the area of skin that you dragged to.

The key to making the patch tool work well is always dragging to an area that has a similar skin texture to the region you are patching. Also, don’t always drag to the exact same area or you’ll end up with a skin texture that repeats and looks photoshopped.

Continue the process by selecting each line around the eyes and patching it.

Go ahead. I’ll wait. :)

Done? Great! Now that we’ve removed all those lines and wrinkles, it’s time to bring them back… somewhat. Having some wrinkles and lines is a part of the personality of the face, and to eliminate them totally can look a little too botox-y. We did all of this patching on a copy of the retouch layer so that we could easily turn the opacity of the entire layer up and down until we find the perfect amount amount of smoothness.

For me that turned out to be about 50% opacity.

Now that we’re satisfied with the skin around the eyes, type Command + E to merge the top layer back down into the retouch layer.

The other area of the face that has lines I often want to reduce is the forehead, so let’s work on that next. This will be very similar to the process we used for the eyes.

Start by duplicating the retouch layer by typing Command + J.

Draw a selection around lines on the forehead and drag to areas of the forehead that have a similar texture. Don’t try to select long lines all at once – break them up into multiple smaller selections. Also, some wrinkles and lines you may not want to touch at all.

For example, the wrinkles above Rachel’s raised eyebrow really need to stay there for her expression to look natural.

Just like with the eyes, once you’ve removed all the lines and wrinkles from the forehead, it’s time to lower the opacity of this layer to bring them back a little. I’ll bet an opacity of around 65% works great. If you agree, type Command + E to merge the top layer down into the retouch layer.

While I have the patch tool selected, I’ll go around and patch other things that draw my attention, like the bright spot to the right of the nose, the dark spot on tip of her nose, the dark spots on chin, and some faint lines and spots on her neck. This is also a great time to patch all the things you missed way back at the beginning when you were working with the spot healing brush.

This brings us to the eyes themselves. Rachel’s eyes present a number of challenges. They are slightly bloodshot and a little red and in shadow.

Type l to select the lasso tool.

Or click on the Lasso tool in the Toolbar.

Now click and drag a circle loosely around one eye to select it. Hold down the shift key to add to the selection and drag a circle loosely around the other eye to select it as well. Your selection should look something like this:

It’s fine if you’ve selected a little extra, but make sure you have all of both eyes selected.

So far, every other time we created a layer using Command + J, we got an exact duplicate of the layer we were working on. But now we have something selected. Type Command + J and notice that instead of getting a duplicate layer, we get a new layer that’s blank except for the eyes.

We’re going to be doing some detail work here, so if you’re not still zoomed in, zoom way in to 200% or 400%.

The first thing to retouch about the eyes are the red veins. To remove these let’s type S to select the Clone Stamp Tool. In the Options Bar, set the painting mode to Lighten, and set the opacity to 50%. With the Clone Stamp Tool, you Option + Click on an area first to tell the tool what part of the image you want to sample. then you click and paint somewhere else on the image. Whatever you option-clicked gets painted into the area you are working on. Here’s how we’re going to tackle cloning out the veins in the eye:

Using the bracket keys [ and ] on you keyboard, set the size of your brush to be about the same thickness as a vein. In the diagram above, the green circles are areas you are going to sample by Option-Clicking. After you Option-Click, start painting at the point where the yellow circle is located and move in the direction of the arrow. Your opacity is 50% so it may well take more than one stroke to cover a line.

You’ll notice that you are sampling areas very close to where you are painting, and when you are painting near the eyelid, you are sampling a similar edge of the eyelid and then painting out into the eye.

Use the Clone Stamp tool to remove the veins from both eyes.

You may have some weird transitions left over which you can clean up with patch tool.

With the veins removed, we can now remove the overall red cast from the eyes by desaturating them a bit. Command-Click on the eye layer’s thumbnail in the Layers Palette. This selects everything that is not transparent in the layer.

Now from the Layer Menu, choose New Adjustment Layer–>Hue/Saturation. In the new Hue/Saturation layer, turn the saturation all the way down to 0. This will look weird as the eyes will go black and white.

That’s OK for now as we are going to paint out the areas of skin that we don’t want affected on the layer mask. To get ready to paint on the layer mask, type the following:
B – to select the Brush Tool
D – to default the colors to black and white
X – to switch the black and white swatches in palette so you’ll be painting with black

With the Brush Tool selected, paint on the areas of skin around the eyeballs as well as the irises and pupils. As you paint in black on the layer mask, the area you paint will return to full color. Once you’re done, lower the opacity of the Hue/Saturation layer to whatever feels right. You want enough color so that it seems real, but not so much that it looks too red. For me 30% seemed to work well.

Type Command + E to merge the Hue/Saturation layer down into eyes layer.

Now let’s brighten the eyes a little. Again we’ll Command-Click on the eye layer’s thumbnail in the Layers Palette to select everything that’s not transparent in the layer.

Now from the Layer Menu, choose New Adjustment Layer–>Levels. In the new Levels layer, move the middle gray arrow to the left to brighten the eyes to taste. It’s OK to make them a hair too bright as you can lower the opacity of the layer later.

That helps the eyes pop a lot without looking too fake. It’s affecting part of the skin too, so with the Brush Tool still selected, paint on the layer mask of the Levels layer to hide the areas of skin around the eyeballs.

When it looks good to you, type Command + E to merge the Levels layer down into eyes layer, then type Command + E one more time to merge the Eyes layer down into the retouch layer.

Remember way back at the beginning of this article, I said that there were some skin softening plugins and actions that I would use as part of my retouching workflow? Well this is were I use them. Now that I’ve done all of the intricate detail work on an image, a lightly applied filter that evens out the remaining skin tones a little can be useful. The plugin I find myself reaching for most often these days is the Portraiture Plug in from Imagenomic.

The reasons I like Portraiture are:

1) It targets skin tones and leaves objects with other colors in the photo alone.
2) It retains a lot of detail in the areas it targets for smoothing.
3) I can tell it what color the skin tones in my image are.
4) It creates a layer that is transparent except for the areas it is softening, making it easy for me to further tweak the softening by erasing it from areas of the image or changing the opacity of the entire layer.

The above image shows both the default (lowest) setting for Portraiture and the highest setting. As you can see, it retains a lot of detail and avoids looking too plasticky even at it’s highest setting.

Finally, I’ll do a little dodging and burning, selectively lightening and darkening areas of the image to finish it off. I could use some of the dodging and burning techniques I demonstrated in my earlier Blending Fun article, but instead I think I’ll plug another maker of cool Photoshop Tools. Yin/Yang is a dodging and burning action that is part of the Totally Rad Actions Set, Volume one. This set is chock full of insanely useful actions like Yin/Yang that I find myself using all the time.

Yin/Yang creates two layers called Yin and Yang. Paint on the layer mask of Yin to darken areas of your image, and on the layer mask of Yang to brighten parts of the image. You can see from the image above that I used Yin to darken the edges of the image and to darken the red wall a little. I used Yang to brighten up the black feathery area of the hat and to brighten some of the shadow areas of Rachel’s face.

And that’s about it. But before we go, here’s a before and after of the image.

And here’s a link to a high res version of the final image:
http://shootstyle.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/skindeep/skin_deep_example_final.jpg

I know there are a million ways to ’skin’ this particular cat :). I’d love to hear how you approach retouching faces in your workflow. Let me know in the comments. Also, if you have any questions, ask them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.

I know. I wish this article were about margarita recipes too – ohhh for the research I’d have been able to do. But the blenders I’m talking about today are Photoshop’s Blending Modes. Please folks, try to contain your excitement.

There are a lot of ‘ah-ha!’ moments that come with learning Photoshop. A couple of the big ah-ha’s for me were how working in layers allows you make changes to your image without committing to them permanently, and how working with layer masks lets you selectively hide or show just the parts of a layer that you are interested in. These two concepts really hit home with me because they appeal to both my inner laziness (I don’t like to have to do things twice) and inner control freak (I like to make my images as perfect as possible).

If you’ve experienced the thrill of the layer and layer mask ah-ha’s, it’s time to strap in and get ready for using blending modes to really do some useful wild things to your images.

But before we go there, you might be wondering what in the Sam Hill blending modes are. The simple answer is that when you have one layer on top of another, Photoshop uses blending modes to determine how a layer visually affects the layers underneath it. You can find list of blending modes on top of the Layer Palette:

The default blending mode is called Normal and it just shows you every pixel in the top layer, effectively hiding all the layers below it. Not very exciting.

But what about some of those others, like say Multiply? What do they do?

You probably know that digital images are made up of pixels and that each pixel is a color represented by three numbers, usually in RGB (red, green and blue) format, and that each of those numbers can be anything from 0 to 255. The purest red is represented as 255,0,0, the purest blue is 0,0,255, and so on. Everything that Photoshop does is basically just fancy math applied to those RGB numbers.

When you choose Multiply as a blend mode, Photoshop takes the numerical value of each pixel in the top layer, and multiplies it by the value of the pixel below it. It then divides the result by 255 so that the final value falls between 0 and 255.

I’m going to guess that you don’t read blogs to learn about math so let me just show you what it looks like. Here is an image in which the background has just been duplicated to a new layer. The blend mode is still at the default setting of Normal.

But when you switch the blend mode to Multiply, look what happens.

The image gets markedly darker since each pixel has been multiplied by the pixel directly underneath it. This technique might not seem incredibly useful at first, but what if we were starting with an over-exposed image? (Which I never take of course.) Below is an over-exposed image on the left and that same image copied to a new layer and set to Multiply on the right.

You can see that Multiply brought life back to the picture, recovering some of the lost detail in the trees, and making the gray dress black as it should be.

If you only need to darken your image a little, you can adjust the opacity of the top layer to dial in the amount of effect that suits your taste. If you need to darken it more, you can duplicate the layer again and have two or more layers set to multiply.

The opposite blending mode to Multiply is called Screen. The math is funkier, but the effect is that pixels in the top layer make pixels in the bottom layer lighter. Here’s that first photo again and then a version in which background has been duplicated to a new layer and set to Screen.

Again, maybe not super useful on a well-exposed image, but it can really help an image that was underexposed when it was shot.

In all honesty, I’d never use blending modes to adjust my exposures these days. There are much better tools like Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw for that part of my workflow. But I do use techniques like this all the time on almost every finished image I produce. What for? Nondestructive dodging and burning.

The real beauty of this technique comes by combining a Multiply layer and a Screen layer with a layer mask, so that you can selectively control which areas of the image to lighten or darken. Here’s how I set it up:

1) Duplicate the background (command-J on Mac/control-J on PC).

2) Name the new layer Darken or something similar.

3) Option-click the Add Layer Mask button on the bottom of the Layers palette (On the PC it’s Alt-click)

4) Set the blending mode of the layer to Multiply.

5) Duplicate the Darken layer (command-J on Mac/control-J on PC).

6) Name the new layer Lighten or something similar.

7) Set the blending mode of the layer to Screen.

At this point my layers palette will look something like this:

8) Choose the brush tool. (Set the brush color to white, the opacity to 20% and the brush size to whatever feels right).

9) In the Layers palette, click on the black layer mask’s thumbnail of the Darken layer to select it.

10) Now in the image, burn in areas by painting with the brush anywhere you want to darken the photo.

In my image, I want the model to stand out more, so I’m going to burn in the areas of the truck, the road, the sky, and the construction machinery in the background.

Looking at the white areas of the layer mask’s thumbnail, you can see the parts of the photo that I burned in.

11) In the Layers palette, click on the black layer mask’s thumbnail of the Lighten layer to select it.

12) Now in the image, dodge areas by painting with the brush anywhere you want to lighten the photo.

In my image, I just wanted to make the shadow side of the model’s face a touch lighter.

You can see the areas that I dodged as the white parts of the Screen (Lighten) layer mask’s thumbnail.

The best part of dodging and burning this way is that I can change my mind about what I did later. Let’s say I was up all night editing images. (Again, not something I ever do.) The next day I’m reviewing my files and I notice that I went waaay overboard on some of the dodging and burning. No problemo! I saved the images as Photoshop files thus preserving all the layers, so all I have to do is open the offending images and paint in black on the layer mask where I want less of a dodging or burning effect.

So, Normal, Multiply and Screen are only three of the twenty-five blend modes available in Photoshop, you’re probably wondering what all the others do.

Well, I’m not going to tell you.

Kidding. Well, I’m sort of kidding. This article would be crazy long and cause your eyes to bleed if I tried to discuss and give examples of every blend mode.

The best way to understand what all the different blend modes do is to play around with them. Experiment, have fun, and just explore the effects of each different mode. You’ll find that you have some favorite ones that you go to again and again. Here are some of the ones I use over and over.

Overlay is a cool blend mode because it takes the dark parts of your image and makes them darker while at the same time making the light parts of your image even lighter. The effect is that it adds contrast and increases saturation giving the image a definite pop. In fact, it’s usually too much pop, so I invariably have to reduce the opacity of the overlay layer to lessen the effect.

The Soft Light blend mode is Overlay’s suburban cousin. It also adds contrast and increases saturation, but not as dramatically as Overlay. Because it’s not as strong an effect Soft Light can be run at 100%. I’ll often jump back and forth between Soft Light and Overlay to see which works best with the image I’m editing.

In all of the examples I’ve demonstrated so far, the top layer has been the same as the bottom layer. This doesn’t have to be the case. You can create interesting effects with blending modes when the top layer is different than the bottom layer. A common example of this is adding texture to an image.

Let’s use this texture to grunge up the image of the model in front of the truck.

When working with textures you will find that you have to tweak and experiment with every image. For this image I put the texture in a layer on top of the photo. I set the texture layer to the Hard Light blending mode. Hard Light is similar to Overlay, but it adds even more contrast.

I had to play with the opacity of the texture layer to get the amount of texture I wanted. In this case it turned out to work well at 50% opacity. I also had to add a layer mask and paint the effect off of the model. People just don’t look good with textured skin.

When working with textures, I will often use the Soft Light, Overlay, Hard Light or Multiply blending modes.

And finally, here’s an effect that reminds me of an image that’s been reproduced on a bad photocopier. (Don’t ask me why I’d want an image that looks like it was reproduced on a bad photocopier… this is art!) This technique uses the Hard Light blend mode as well, but in this case I’ve desaturated the top layer. This gives the image a lot of contrast, but plays with the colors in peculiar ways. Again the top layer needs to have it’s opacity reduced. I might finish an image like this by adding some noise for grain or even by adding a texture added on top.

Do you have unique effects that you’ve created using blend modes? Bust them out in the comments section.

As you can probably tell, us ShootStylers shoot a lot together–both on personal projects as well as our paying gigs. You might wonder if with two photographers at a wedding, do we ever get in each others shot? Well of course not!

Just kidding! If that were the truth, this would be a really short blog post. At a wedding, we try to be aware not only of the other photographer’s location but also of what they are shooting, the lens they are using, and what they are doing for lighting. This way we can take different shots, giving the client more variety in their final proof set. Of course, since we are all used to shooting weddings by ourselves, when we see a great shot we often jump in and grab it, even if it means getting in the other photographer’s way for a moment (well, unless it is at a critical point in the wedding.)

I’m currently editing a wedding that Andree helped me out with, and I’m seeing a number of times this happened. For instance, during the getting ready period, I noticed that the hair stylist wore his instruments like a gunslinger. Cool detail, so I ducked in and shot it.

I was a few frames into my shot before I realized that Andree was on the other side of the stylist’s table shooting shooting with an ultra wide lens. Whoops, no way I wasn’t going to be in her shot, so I backed off.

Well, I backed off after shooting a quick frame of Andree! :)

Always ready with a backup plan, Andree turned and shot an even better shot of the bride getting her hair done in the stylist’s mirror. I love this angle because it shows the bride and an attendant getting ready, and it also highlights the grandeur of the Boston Harbor Hotel’s Rotunda, where the preparations were taking place.

Not too much later, I did it to her again. Andree had climbed behind the table the makeup artist was using to shoot this cool reflection of the bride having her makeup done. Reflections were a theme that morning.

I saw a shot I couldn’t resist and climbed up on chair behind them.

What couldn’t I resist that required getting in Andree’s shot? Well, through the whole process of hair and makeup,  the bride was laughing and smiling, but her clenched hands told a deeper story about her emotional state..

And of course because I’m a stinker, I shot Andree climbing back under the table.

During the portraits, the reverse occurred. I was lining up a shot of the couple on the wharf, and Andree stepped into grab a detail of the couple’s hands and flowers.

No problemo, I just came in closer which was a better shot anyway.

Andree got her revenge when I was shooting the couple from a low angle in another location.

I guess there’s just something irresistible about shooting your partner photographer when they’re on the ground.

Finally there are times when we can’t help but appear in each other’s shots–because events are moving too fast, and we want to be sure to get excellent coverage. Here I was shooting on the dance floor and Andree was on a chair shooting over guest’s heads. You can see her right behind the bride’s arm. This sort of thing doesn’t bother me at all. I’m there documenting the story of their wedding, and at their wedding, there were photographers. If those photographers occasionally appear in the frame, well that’s just part of the story.

I especially don’t mind the other photographer being across from me because when people are dancing, they often turn their back to me. The bride did just that while singing along to a song, and Andree was able to get a great expression that I never even saw.

Andree also shot frames where you can see me from this angle. When I get to that point of the edit, if what’s happening on the dance floor is compelling, I’ll leave those shots in the proofs. I wonder if either of us will make the album?

Finally, the wedding had a photo booth set up, and on our way out the door we took our pictures. I promise that we looked a lot better twelve hours earlier when we arrived at the hotel to start shooting. :)

Shootstyle members Andree and Earl got to shoot another wedding together. Instead of the standard wedding coverage we see on blogs everyday, we are showing just details from this wedding. If you take a good look at these images, you can tell a lot about the couple and almost everything about the wedding. This was a super fun day. Let us know if you can guess anything about the day. :)

Last weekend Andree (Maine Wedding Photographer) invited me (Earl, Boston Wedding Photographer) to return to the shores of Sebago Lake in Maine. We had a developed a pretty good working rhythm during our last shoot together, and for most of the day, we each did our own thing and came away with two unique views of the same event.  During a quiet moment, we asked the couple to pose in front a classic New England setting–a shack which was covered with old buoys.

Andree moved in close enough to see the weathering of the old buoys and threw the couple out of focus in the background:

I shot the couple through a bush with a plastic lens, framing the them against the wall.

I think that having the same couple, the same setting, the same light, and two shots taken within seconds of each other, really illustrates how two photographers will visualize the same subject differently.

Vive la différence!

Earl Christie, Boston Wedding Photographer extraordinaire, and I (Andree- Maine Wedding Photographer) shot this wedding near my home in Maine. It is one of my favorite venues, Migis Lodge. It’s a small lodge on the banks of Sebago Lake in Casco that tends to have weddings in the Spring and Fall and reunions and get-togethers during the high season. This works out great for me, as most of my clientele gets married outside. In the Spring and Fall they need a venue that gives them an option to escape in side if the weather gets nasty or cold.

The weather was perfect for us however. Here is the album design I presented to the couple, that showcases both Earl’s and my talents equally!

Stacey and I recently photographed one of the most elegant weddings I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness. I was especially excited to photograph it because although I’ve worked on same-sex weddings, this was the first lesbian wedding I’ve shot. Sarah and Meghan made a wonderful couple together, and it was interesting to see how their personalities were expressed in their different approaches to the day. Below are just a few of my favorite moments from their day.

Sarah had her hair and makeup in the beautiful light of one of the elegant mezzanine rooms that the Boston Harbor Hotel has available.

Meanwhile, Meghan and her friends hung out in her hotel room and prepared for the wedding in their own way.

Having gotten ready with others, they then privately shared a first meeting. Meghan waited downstairs for Sarah to arrive. Sarah walked the length of the wharf, coming up behind Meghan. When Meghan turned they saw each other for the first time they fell into each other’s arms.

I love shooting with my good friends and working with the fabulous Rhode Island Wedding Photographer Stacey Doyle is a special treat. This amazing portrait of the couple is just one of the magnificent images Stacey captured.

Then it was off to the ceremony.

The ceremony was a touching and beautiful affair that took place in the round under a gorgeous cascade of flowers and crystals created by Winston Flowers. Sarah and Meghan read vows they had each written, exchanged rings, and were married.

While the guests left to enjoy cocktails, the room was transformed though the talent of the BHH staff, Suzanne B. Lowell Lighting Design, and Winston Flowers all coordinated through their amazing their event consultant, Michele Mottola.

From the first dance until the end of the evening, the reception was an energetic party.

And if folks wanted to relax they could go outside and enjoy s’mores by the fire pits.

Congratulations Sarah & Meghan!

This past Fourth of July Weekend, Earl had the pleasure of shooting the wedding of Cara and Matt, a truly fun, warm Boston couple. The shoot was going to be logistically a little complicated, as the guys were getting ready in the North End, the gals were getting ready at the Boston Harbor Hotel, the ceremony was going to be at the Glavin Chapel at Babson College in Wellesley, and the reception was back at the Boston Harbor again. Wow!

Photography was important to Cara and Matt, who wanted simultaneous coverage in multiple locations so Earl definitely needed a second photographer. As luck would have it, Jamie was available to help him out. Any day shooting with Jamie is guaranteed to be full of surprises, but this day held an extra special surprise. While Jamie was shooting the fellas getting ready, he thought that one of the guys in the wedding party looked familiar; it was Scott, whose Cape Cod wedding Jamie was about to shoot in a couple of weeks!

So Cara and Matt were lucky to have Jamie as a second photographer, and Jamie’s couple, Deanna and Scott, got a preview of the talented Mr. Wexler in action! Here are a few of our favorite photos from the day: