Most Wedding Wednesday posts are full of ideas & thoughts that will hopefully get you thinking about various details as you plan your wedding. It is always fun to show a variety of themes & color palettes, wedding fashion for both the guys & girls, hair, makeup, engagement sessions, etc. Pretty much anything to inspire you. Today’s post however, will be a bit about what inspires me as a photographer. During consultations or even while on an engagement or bridal shoot, I am often asked about my style and where I get my ideas on posing, lighting & locations. Ever since I can remember I have looked at fashion magazines. My mom would get frustrated with me because her magazines would end up with missing pages or parts of a page cut out so that I could make a big collage or a book of smaller collages. One day way back when, my dad walked in my room and saw me sitting on the floor with scissors, glue and magazines. He asked what I was doing and why I did it so often. All I could say was that I liked the clothes and that there was something about the eyes in some images. I didn’t understand what I was seeing then, but I now know that what I saw in the eyes was a connection between the photographer & model and when it was done very well, you could almost ‘feel’ that person. Now as for me, I personally was a fashion faux pas. I would mix and match clothes that really didn’t make sense, but to me they did. haha. Hopefully that has changed some as I have gotten older. The other thing about me is that I was never at ease in FRONT of the lens, but I sure took loads of pictures of other people. In college I was known as the girl with the yellow Canon Snappy every single place we went. What I found was that my friends liked seeing the pictures of everyone having fun and just being natural. The fact that I was never totally at ease with having my picture taken, has pushed me to make everyone I shoot feel completely at ease, have fun and most importantly…feel good about themselves at that moment. As we all know, you get amazing pictures if the subject trusts the photographer & has fun.
There are some vintage fashion photographers that I absolutely love even though they are before my time. A few of them are Norman Parkinson, Mark Shaw and Richard Avedon. A very well known Richard Avedon photo is actually the inspiration for my logo. My logo even has a name which is ‘the dancer girl’. This image has been a favorite of mine for years.

So, when I sent this to my logo & web designer in California she said she would use this and other things that describe my style to come up with a logo. After she created the proof, she called me up and said that maybe we better call the Richard Avedon foundation because she felt it resembled it a bit too much. I must say I pitched a fit when they told her we couldn’t use it. However Ellen of Identity Kitchen reassured me that whatever we came up with would be even better. She was right. I still love my logo and hope to for many years to come. The images below are what I consider vintage fashion…not vintage in the sense of country & antique. What I love about these is that they are simple, elegant & timeless.

In addition to looking at vintage fashion photography, I love looking at shoots by Burberry, Vogue, Bazaar & W magazine. I need my monthly glossy fix as I put it. Meaning, I am addicted to magazines. While I love infusing fashion into my shooting style, I also want the images to show real emotions & fun. I want to capture laughs and big beautiful smiles as well as the quiet, soft looks. Most importantly I want my clients to see themselves having fun & expressing real emotions all while looking their absolute very best.

Thank you for stopping by!

~lisa