Saying "I Do" to wedding photography

Two former students consulted with me recently on how to cover a wedding. One was going to Santa Barbara and was recruited to photograph her father's wedding, the other was hired by a couple who wanted to give a budding photog a chance while saving thousands of dollars.
Mendocino County is famous for it's wedding sites both inland and on the coast. There are actually too many weddings and not enough willing photographers to go around. I warn my students that if they show off their portfolios too much, chances are someone is going to beg them to do a wedding. That's why we spent the last week of school running through mock wedding ceremonies, photo strategies, production of wedding slideshows, etc.
My advice for anyone thinking of saying "I Do" to wedding photography is to plan ahead, follow through and start small. Here's a guide to get you started:

Check your ego at the door

Never forget that the wedding day is about the bride, groom, their families and friends--not you. Wedding photogs are given a lot of privilege and power and some take this too far. You will need patience when twenty cameras are parked behind you and folks are leaning over your shoulder during the portrait session. Think of these extra cameras as reinforcement, not competition.

Be seen and not heard

Your job is to capture the essence of the day, not become part of it or make changes. You should dress in neutral tones and wear comfortable shoes. Be prepared to climb up a ladder for elevated angles and, at times, crouch on your knees to make sure you don't block the view of the guests. Use telephoto lenses from a distance at times and use wide angles close up when it is appropriate.

Practice makes perfect

Attend the rehearsal if there is one or at least go to the wedding site with the bride or groom and have them run through the logistics. At this time you can establish where the portraits will be taken and figure out your light and angles. It's important to go at the time of day that the wedding will be held so you will be familiar with the light. Takes some test shots so you can analyze them later. Ask the bride or wedding planner for a list of specific photos they want. This list won't contain too many surprises, but it might remind you of some details you may not have thought of.

Get a rep

Make arrangements to have one person help you with the portrait sessions. This person should help manage the flow of the portraits as they know names and faces of the wedding party and they shoud be keen to any styling issues. You can direct them to adjust a veil or straighten a tie, etc.

Four wedding stages

Arrivals and getting ready is the first part of your wedding coverage. You'll want to photograph guests as they approach the wedding site. People arriving for the happy occasion will be carrying gifts, wearing smiles and donning wedding garb. Look for decor or details that represent the theme or tone of the wedding. Red heart rose petals strewn around centerpieces or the mini bride and groom perched atop the three tiered cake make for great reminders of the event. Jump between the bride and groom as they get ready. Straightening of the ties, pinning on corsages make for great candids. Remember to knock and ask "Everybody descent?" before you enter any of the changing rooms.
Next comes the ceremony. Since you went to the rehearsal, you should have plans on where to get the best view of the entrance of the wedding party and the ceremony itself. Photograph candids of guests during the ceremony with your telephoto but don't miss the key moments of ring exchange, vows, the kiss, father handing off the bride, the great look on the couple's faces when they are introduced as Mr. and Mrs.
Usually there is a rush of portraits right after the ceremony. Portraits are the third stage of the shoot. You must take charge along with your helper. If folks are trying to shoot over your shoulder, ask them all to lower their cameras while you shoot so the subjects look at your camera only. You might consider letting them take their photos first and then you'll have the subjects to yourself.
You might consider the post ceremony portrait session a primer and later on pull the bride and groom aside for a second set when guests are occupied with food and dancing. The second shoot will be more informal and often makes for more natural, relaxed photos.
Finally, the reception. Again, the key moments are important, toasts, dancing, cutting the cake, garter belt and bouquet toss will wrap things up. Be on your toes and try to photograph each guest at least once at tables or on the dance floor.

Get permission to go

Check in with the boss to make sure you have covered the list. Only leave if you have been released and hopefully, thanked for your hard work.

Final presentation

Try submitting your images in a slideshow format on CD. If you're shooting digital just burn CD's of all of the images with a set of edited images. If you photograph by the hour consider releasing all negatives and digital images taken during those paid hours. Try to deliver the images within a week or e-mail small versions of your top ten to the bride and groom the next day as a primer. Refer the bride and groom to www.shutterfly.com where they can create a hardcover wedding book after uploading the top 40 to 50 images. Then set up a starter portfolio for yourself in case you're thinking of saying "I Do," again.

Suzette Cook-Mankins is a 20-year veteran of photojournalism. Send questions or comments to suzettecook@onebox.com

Former photo company engineer recalls his many KODAK moments

Ukiah resident Marty Husmann will tell you that he really "was never much into photography." That doesn't explain the 6,000 slides he took on weekends between 1942 and 1983. Or how he has spent many recent months digitizing 2,000 of those slides with a homemade slide copying device.

The 83-year-old physicist /engineer and Eastman Kodak Company retiree has had more influence over camera design, film processing, and even spy satellite photos of Russia than he's willing to admit or take credit for. If you listen to his stories about career advancement and his fast forward military experience you believe him when he says, " The truth is, as far as events go, it's been miracles and humor since the time I got of of high school."

Martin Husmann was born in Brazil, Indiana in 1924. At age 17, he met a classmate whose dad was a Major at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. With a shortage of engineering minds, the government paid him to go to Purdue University for six months to earn his engineering degree.
He was put on assignment to develop anti-radar programming. His job was to develop a program that would show a picture of enemy radar pulses. Another engineer then built a device to send back radar pulses that would throw off the enemy. "I loved designing electronic circuits," Husman remembered.

When the project ended after three months, Husmann turned 18 and had earned an engineering rating comparable to a four year degree. "I went home to tell my parents and they listened in silence," says Husmann. When he was done informing them, they handed him a government letter notifiying him of the draft. "I was marched right to Columbus for the induction process," Husmann added.

Husmann says he would have been at the Battle of the Bulge and was headed to an Army Camp in Georgia when when the train he and his fellow soldiers were on stopped mysteriously in the middle of the night. "A sergeant came through the train and said, 'Get your stuff together, you're getting off the train.'

"He handed me an envelope and I got off and stood next to the tracks and realized I was back at Wright Patterson. The next morning they hauled me to Wright Patterson Field and gave me the same job as a Private." According to Husmann, his orders had been intercepted and some strings had been pulled to get back to the same position with only one week of military training. In six months he earned Sergeant rank and within a year he was at Staff Sergeant.

When the war was over, Husmann was assigned to a packing and crating team. He and his unit were trained to pack airplanes, parts, cameras, binoculars, etc. He got his orders to go to Calcutta. He was the youngest of the 30 soldiers but had the highest ranking so he found himself in charge. Upon takeoff to Calcutta, the Air Force command plane had to turn around for a technical problem and upon landing, Husmann says his unit accidentally received a hero's welcome at the airport in New York by a crowd who mistook them as returning soldiers.
After nine months in Calcutta, the troops were sent home. "Three thousand soldiers were sent back to Seattle," Husmann recalled. "It took 31 days and we saw the Southern Cross and flying fish."

In 1946, Husmann took a 30 day leave to visit family. He was contacted by a civilian head and offered a job running the physicts research department at the University of Illinois. After four years, he graduated, had gotten married to his wife Betty and had a baby on the way.

Just by chance he had cut through the electrical engineering building and came across recruiters working for Eastman Kodak. He was intervied as an engineering graduate student and hired on the spot. Off he went to Rochester, N.Y. to the electronics development lab where he worked for five years. He had a project to design a large contact screen for enlargements. It required a 1000 watt mercury lamp source to expose negatives. The project lasted 2 years and when it was over, Husmann said the lab through a celebration party. " Someone rigged up a hose and blew smoke into the hose while he was showing it off," Husmann chuckled. Apparently, engineers were known for their practical jokes.

After miserable winters in New York, Husmann asked for a transfer and joined a start up team for a film processing plant in Palo Alto until where he stayed until 1956. He helped set up the new facilty which was set to become one of many on the West Coast.

Husmann was suppose to go back to Rochester but decided the weather was too rough. He was set to leave Kodak but the company offered to find him a position on the West Coast that would keep him happy. Husmann found himself involved in contracts with Kodak and Lockheed Air Force Base. He was named a technical liasion between Rochester Engineers and Lockheed Engineers. He and his family moved to L.A. to accommodate the new job.

Husmann can't say much about the gig accept that "It was beyond classified and top secret. You never knew what was really going on because it was such a need to know set up," he said. "I knew more than most people. I knew they were building a camera for a satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc."

According to Husmann, who was one of a handful of people to actually see the first images captured by satellite cameras, the satellite would takes pictures, then land by parachute and be caught in mid air, then be snagged and brought back to the lab for development.
"Everybody that looked at it was shocked by what they saw the Russians were building during the Arms Race," said Husmann.

Husmann recalls looking at prints only once. Then classified, top secret status took over. During this time, Husmann contributed as a facilitator between the two engineering crews, sometimes handling paperwork and going over contracts and legalities. His next move was to Sunnyvale, then after a four-year project, took an opening at the Palo Alto Kodak processing lab.
Husmann said it crossed his mind many times that he should probably build a bomb shelter for his family at his new home. "Those images really did scare me," he said.

Husmann was named plant engineer in charge of maintenance and everything involved in the film processing. "I'm proud that during that time I took relatively inexperienced employees, sent them to school and by the time I left, I had trained myself out of a job.

It was during the his time at the processing plant that Husmann took home rolls of ektacolor or kodachrome slide film so the plant could use them to test the equipment each week. Kodak had intentions of building more process plants until the government issued a consent decree stating that Kodak had to separate the price of film cost from processing. Forcing consumers to process their film at Kodak created a monopoly situation.

Husmann eventually retired from Kodak in 1983 after 33 years and moved his family to Ukiah in 1995. Marty and his wife Betty celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last weekend surrounded by their six children, who all went to college and beyond with careers in teaching, nursing, physical therapy, NASA engineering and a professor of environmental geography.

Husmann anticipated that many photographs would be taken at his family get together as all of his kids and their kids have cameras of their own and know just how to use them.

Suzette Cook-Mankins is a 20 year veteran of photojournalism and ROP Photo Teacher. Send comments, questions, requests to suzettecook@onebox.com

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Once a photographer, always a photographer





Frame By Frame


By Suzette Cook-Mankins

It is not often that this photographer sets down the old camera gear and declares "I need a break from photography!" Once in a while, I'll attend a baseball game without my 30 pounds of Nikon stuff just to remember what it is like to be a spectator. You know, there for the game and community of the sport, not on my toes running around ready for every play and reaction from umps and parents.

This time it was an escape and an excuse to go thrift shopping in San Luis Obispo, then swing up scenic Coastal Highway One and make a stop at Hearst Castle for a tour, then pick up Buffalo style chicken wings at my favorite stop in San Francisco, then head home. All of this without thoughts of shutter speeds, apertures, lenses or angles.

Just before I took off, I had some repair work done on my car. I was in the waiting room with two other women and we started chatting about our careers and why we all ended up in Ken Fowler's service center. It seems we all had just finished huge projects and were in escape mode.

I went first and explained what my trip plans were. Then artist Genine Coleman of Potter Valley shared that she had just finished painting a 7 foot tall by 85 foot wide mural for Whole Foods Store in Sonoma. The mural depicts California grown wild foods. She said she spent many hours researching and finding photographs of the foods that were represented in her mural. She then referred to those images for details as she painted.

The last contributor was a therapist from Cobb Mountain who responded to my travel plans by revealing that her grandfather had lived on the grounds of Hearst Castle while it was being built in San Simeon in the 1940's. Recently, she had discovered a set of black and white photographs showing her grandfather at work as a marble installer. She took these photographs to a docent at the castle who studied them and thanked her for sharing such an important part of the castle's historical construction.
I hit the road shortly after we shared our tales and headed straight for San Luis.

I counted, on my journey, at least five rented CruiseAmerica.com RVs. Sometimes I was behind them admiring the 8 foot by 10 foot photos of Yosemite that decorated the back panels of the vehicles and sometimes I saw them coming toward me showing off the photo of the "Open Road" stripped across a panel over the cab. I finally arrived at my destination at 11 p.m. and grabbed a cheap hotel room. The next morning, I toured the hotel lobby and found historic images of the coast and Hearst Castle displayed on most walls and saw postcards and photo books about driving the scenic coast highway.

I went for an early morning walk in downtown historic San Luis where I came across a store called Photography 101. It wasn't open yet, but I peaked in the window and saw enlargers and other darkroom equipment and used cameras and lenses. In the window was a curious camera display unlike anything I had ever seen. A 35mm film camera had been dismantled and dissected. Each spring, lever, nut and bolt was glued to the white background in an assemblage style presentation. I knelt down to meet it at eye level and studied it for almost 15 minutes. I was amazed at the variety of mechanisms and how many parts it took to create a photo.
I continued my walk and came across the old Mission building where two ladies were in a quandary about how to get a photo of them together. Guess who they recruited? Me, the timely passerby. I informed them that I usually charge $100 an hour when I take or make photographs and they assumed I was kidding and giggled. I took three frames in horizontal and vertical formats and a zoom, then went on my way.

After some thrifting, I headed to the castle. As a journalist I couldn't wait to see publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst's home. I headed to the landmark and parked near a set of sight seeing telescopes. I went out to see the view and noticed the plaques on each telescope noted that they were "camera friendly" meaning you could actually hold your camera up to the eyepiece and take a photo. The scope boasted a 1750 mm telephoto ability which is six times stronger than my largest telephoto lens.

At the visitor's center, I got my ticket, stood in line and then was sent to a young photog named Carlos who politely directed me to stand in front of a green screen backdrop. (green screens allow you to easily drop out the background, usually in Photoshop, then put a new background behind the subject. They are used in most Hollywood flicks for special effects. If you go seen Evan Almighty you'll see some green screen footage at the end of the movie.) He counted 3,2,1 and shot a frame with his Nikon digital setup. According to this photog, there was a trailer out back set up with digital imaging stations and two editors working to create a fabulous combination of visitors and a Hearst Castle backdrop.

I took the basic "Experience" tour upon which the tour guide asked random guests where they were from and what they did. I was one of those guests questioned. I revealed that I am a digital photographer and teacher from Mendocino County. From then on, I became the resident photo go to. They announced that no flash could be used because it might deteriorate the 3000 year old artwork and all of the guests complied. Cameras were everywhere. And so were the questions. I helped a few folks figure out how to turn off their flashes. But mostly it was the tour guide who had inquiries. We were in the main dining room and he had asked us sightseers which chair we thought Hearst himself sat in at the 60 foot long convent table. Then out of the corner of his mouth, while waiting for an answer from the crowd, the guide asked me if it was possible to get a digital back for a medium format camera. I asked if it was Hassleblad or Mamiya and he said Hasselblad. Yes, I answered, you can buy a digital back to match those lenses as I have the same set up with my Nikon gear.
Then a newly engaged couple from L.A. wanted to know if I shoot weddings, etc. and the questions just kept on coming. And that was fine. I hopped on the bus and road down the twisted road. Got back to the visitor's center where I viewed a National Geographic film called "Hearst Castle, Building the Dream." And of the course the photography was top-notch. This narrated flick was amazing and splashed with historical still images that made me wonder if someday, in the distant future, my photos of the Skunk Train coming around the bend or images I captured at the Fort Bragg Saw Mill before it closed down might end up on museum walls or on the big screen as documentation of history.

I left the movie theater and came across a rack of photos of tourists superimposed in front of the castle. I spotted mine and snatched it up. Good pose, I thought. I paid the lady twenty bucks for the 5x7 and four wallet sized photos of myself. When I got home, I put the photo on display on my camera shelf. Forget all the designer clothes, Nine West and Prada shoes and those Lucky Jeans I got for a dollar at the Achievement House Thrift Store. The photo of me at Hearst Castle is the souvenir I'll cherish most.

Suzette Cook-Mankins is a 20 year veteran of photojournalism. Send comments, questions, requests to mizdigital.com

Images from the past become

a father’s legacy to his son

Frame By Frame

By Suzette Cook-Mankins

A reader from Willits sent me this e-mail a few months ago regarding photo restoration and digitizing images:

Hi-
I read your interesting article concerning digitizing old photos to preserve them. I have several hundred old black and white negatives (2x3) that were taken by my father and grandfather. Some of these are over 100 years old, but most date from the early 1930's. Many appear to be quite striking shots, some are historical, though mostly of SoCal. There are written notations of the place and subject matter of each. Your article doesn't address how to deal with negatives. Other folks I've spoken with haven't been able to suggest a feasible method of being able to turn these into positive images for viewing; the right scanning equipment seems expensive and I guess the bright light alone is damaging. So far, these negatives don't appear to have degraded much, even though they are not "properly" stored in always cool conditions nor in acid-free envelopes. They are neatly stored in file cabinets. Any suggestions?

-Thanks, Gary Owen

I decided to meet with Mr. Owen and check out the negatives he inherited. In the Photo Lab at Ukiah High School we sat one morning, me rifling through his wooden box of filed negatives holding each one up to the light to assess their quality, and him thanking me for taking the time to help in the effort to see these images in positive form.

My theory was that we could scan the negatives on a flatbed scanner with white paper in the background. Next, we open the file in Adobe Photoshop, drop out the color and then invert the image from a negative which should create a positive form of the image. So that's what we did.
I scanned an image of what looked like a young man in a field, then applied the inverse and, sure enough, the image of a gentleman in his early twenties sitting in patch of cacti appeared. I asked Owen if he recognized the person in the photo and he said he did. "That's my father," he said as he leaned in closer to the screen to scrutinize the image.

This was Owen's first glimpse of particular frame of his dad. I felt like I also was meeting this young version of Winthrop Owen. He was dressed in a suit wearing wire rimmed glasses and a bow tie. He appeared to be too wise to be sitting in a patch of cacti. With a little more research I began to understand why he chose the setting.

Gary Owen, introduced me to his father, Winthrop Owen:

"Winthrop Owen was born in 1905 in Santa Barbara, passed away in 1999 in Willits. He spent all but the last 17 years of his life in SoCal, mostly in Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley. He met my mom while working as a conductor on the old Pasadena street cars and also on the old Mt. Lowe Railway which was a excursion tramway that ran up in the mountains above Pasadena. Though he had degrees from USC and Caltech in chemistry and geology, he'd graduated at the height of the Depression and so ended up parlaying that rail conductor job into eventually being a locomotive engineer for a SoCal freight railway (Pacific Electric) which got swallowed by Southern Pacific, from which he retired.

The old street car lines (The Big Red Cars), which were LA's very practical and popular mass transit system in the 30's and 40's, had, by then, been deliberately destroyed in order to sell more automobiles, in a well-known story. My dad always had a darkroom in the house, but it was little-used by the time I was growing up in the 50's. After my dad died in 1999, I hazmatted a five gallon bottle of bluish developing fluid, which he'd moved up to Willits, thinking that someday he'd get back into photography...I don't know what camera he was using.

I've only had a handful of these negatives turned into positives and printed: the one of Uncle Ben from 1902 and the ones from my grandparent's honeymoon at Avalon on Catalina in 1904 (the family story is that my grandmother caught all the albacore), and a few of the other family and friend group shots from the 30's. I'd never seen a positive image of the one of dad that you scanned and cleaned up before."After learning these facets of the man in the newly turned positive negative, I started to think of the story behind my own dad. This weekend, when Father's Day shows up on the calendar, I will spend some time reminiscing about who my dad was. I will take out my photo collection of him and remember that I have his blue eyes, his silly grin, his hard work ethic, and a collection of stories that define who he was - and why I am who I am.

Suzette Cook-Mankins is a 20 year veteran of photojournalism. Send comments, questions, requests to mizdigital.com

Photo addition and subtraction

Frame By Frame

By Suzette Cook-Mankins

Let’s say, hypothetically of course, that now that Prom is almost three weeks behind us, many of you attendees are in a situation where the date you partnered up with for this traditional get together is no longer in the picture. On Monday, you picked up your Prom photo package at school. That’s when you started to wish that your prom date was…well…no longer in the picture, literally.

It’s okay. There is hope. With a little addition and subtraction you can extract or add information to any photo and design it around your needs. And if you spent hours shopping, tanning, manicuring and hair styling, you might as well have it your way and break your fabulous self out of that posed photo and be all the supermodel you can be.

Here’s how it works. Find someone who has access to Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Elements or any photo editing program and break out the cloning tool. In PhotoShop all you need to do is start stamping new information over the information you’d like to erase. Small brush strokes will help the removal and cloning appear more realistic. You can also try the path approach and just outline yourself (also known as the keeper) and place your self into another background sans your posing partner.

Hypothetical situation #2:
Let’s say you share a job with a doctor who lives half way around the world. You want to arrange an all-staff portrait, but the logistics are just not there. You see, when one doctor returns the other takes off right away. How do you solve this equation?

First you photograph the existing staff together and leave a space for the missing doctor in the back row. Then you photograph that returning doctor in the same setting standing approximately where he would have stood if he had been in the original group shoot. You may want to print out the first image and hold up at the scene of the second shoot to increase your odds of precision.

Then you cut a path around the full staff photo and you move them into the image in front of the solo doctor. And voila! A full staff portrait for your office wall or Christmas cards.

Suzette Cook-Mankins is a 20 year veteran of photojournalism. Send comments, questions, requests to mizdigital.com

Strike a pose…with your Mom

Frame by Frame

By Suzette Cook-Mankins

There is a folder on this photographer’s home computer desktop named BACKUP. Inside of that folder are a dozen folders named after various topics such as travel, action, Mendocino, school, etc. The one folder that gets opened the most lately is filed under PERSONAL and is titled: MOM PICS. In this MOM PICS folder are the results of a half hour shoot that took place in my studio two summers ago.
My mother was here visiting from Florida and we decided to have some fun in the studio. We matched outfits, fixed our hair and had a blast. We posed together, and we posed separately. My mom was such a sport. She wore boxing gloves, cowboy boots, sat in a movie star chair, and even decided to get out her favorite antique ring and show it off. Some of these photos are too serious, some are too silly and some are just right. We sat in front of a white background with two studio lights facing us at 45 degree angles.
We both looked at the camera, posed cheek to cheek, hugged and laughed. It is probably the only time we have actually sat still and focused on each other and us as mother and daughter.
My favorite image is of mom alone looking off camera with a soft side light. She had just declared, "I am the family matriarch." The look in her eye is one of pride and strength. As a widow who took care of my Dad through his battle with cancer, and now the single parent of three grown daughters she is the head and heart of our family. I will always be honored to pose in a photo with her.
On this Mother’s Day or any day real soon, I urge you to either schedule a formal sitting with your mom at a local studio, or at least get out your own camera gear and choose a location that has a simple but complementary background.
You can borrow a family member who has decent photography skills and ask them to try to capture a portrait of you and your mom. Make sure you shoot solo photos of mom to study later and please, let her be herself. You might capture some digital movie of her as well.
If your mom is the shy type and says she doesn’t want to be photographed, just remind her how beautiful she is and tell her what she means to you and how these photos are as much for you as they are for her. Then quick take the photo before she wells up with tears.

Suzette Cook-Mankins is a 20 year veteran of photojournalism. Send comments, questions, requests to mizdigital.com