After posting a couple of shots from Sara’s bridal session yesterday, I realized I never shared any of my own bridal portraits. While my sister (who was also my maid of honor) was on her spring break from grad school, we met up in SC for a week to spend some time with family and take care of some wedding planning. Also while in town, I was hoping to have my dad take some bridal portraits of me. For those that don’t know, it was because of my dad that I fell in love with photography in the first place. He got into photography while in college and my mother (girlfriend at the time) became the subject of most of his portrait endeavors. He purchased his own darkroom equipment and, after my mom and dad were married, would use their tiny bathroom in their first home to develop his prints. As a kid, I can remember him always having his camera with him on family vacations, small outings, and just to document little moments of our childhood. Because of that, we have countless slides and negatives of our little family of five, that I will always love looking through.
I had always been interested in taking pictures, but it wasn’t until I went to art camp in middle school, where we learned to develop prints in a darkroom, that I really wanted to start pursuing it as an art form. When I was about 13 or 14 my dad had my grandfather’s ’73 Minolta fixed up and cleaned for me, and it became my first “real” camera. It was the only camera I used until I was a senior in college, and still holds a very special place in my heart. As I was first learning about f-stops and film speeds, my dad would drive me around town and we’d find things to take pictures of, just for the sake of taking pictures. That’s where I learned to be a photographer. Not in the college courses I took or the books I’ve read. Those just taught me how to fine tune things here and there, or how to retouch zits in photoshop. (I did a post not too long ago about my beginnings as a photographer, and why I still love film. You can see that post here.)
This past New Year’s Eve, Rob and I took that same Minolta around the art district of Charlotte and shot off a roll of black and white film, went back to my parent’s house and developed it, using my dad’s same darkroom equipment, set up in their bathroom. And there, as we looked over the negatives, I noticed a shot Rob had snuck in of my engagement ring. And now he is my husband. Funny how things come full circle in life sometimes.
Ok, back to the bridal portraits. When the planned day came, it brought threats of rain and thunderstorms, but we headed out anyway. We were lucky enough to get all the shots we wanted, just before the ominous clouds let loose. As we were heading back to the car, the winds picked up and the sky was crazy dark. And as a dedicated, serious photographer would do, my dad insisted that we take some shots with the dramatic clouds in the background, which resulted with the below image on the right. What you don’t see in the picture is the wind about to blow me over, debris flying everywhere, and the fear that I was about to be struck by lighting at any second. And, it turned out to be one of my very favorite images from the shoot.
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