I meant to introduce the photographer that we booked long time ago since both of us were very excited about it. But call me superstitious, after the original makeup artist canceled on me I wasn't feeling losing our photographer by jinxing it. Everything went well after all and we're about to get our album pretty soon. We're very excited about it!
Photographer is one of the most important elements of our wedding day since pictures are probably the only souvenior from the big day(alright, besides the happily ever after part). We spent quite some time doing research, comparing various of photographers' portfolio, ranking them individually and contacting them one by one.
How did I find Apertura? Surprisingly not from the normal wedding websites like ProjectWedding or WeddingWire. I actually read about them on one of the Taiwanese wedding forum - VeryWed where some people mentioned that they are very good and worth to check them out. It's rare to see recommendation of LA vendors on the Taiwanese wedding website, with that bit of the curiosity I looked them up,
When looking through their portfolio, one thing that was the major deciding factor was that I could feel the moment of those weddings. I felt the love and was moved by them. One really impressive one was he shot a wedding that was just the couple themselves. No guests, no fancy party, no all those typical glamorous decoration. Probably two witnesses at the court? But that was it. The story was beautifully told through his lenses. Ray said when he was showing me his work: "I don't discriminate the size of the wedding. Big or small." Why does this quality stand out? Because what truly matters is if the photographer was really thinking about the customers and understand what really matters to the couple.
Call it fate if you believe me. We've had hundreds of emails exchanging between all our photography candidates, in July I had an opportunity to go to LA, and I tried to contact as many vendors as I could. Ray was the first photographer to meet. I have to drive 1+ hour east from Pasadena in the horrifying LA traffic. After the first meeting, he went over the day with me and explained his working style. Besides loving his work, Ray's warm personality and professionalism gained a lot of trust from me. However, the price point was way beyond our budget so we decided to keep looking.
Another 3 months flew by, after looking through another 50+ other photographer's portfolio, contacting them, Ray was still top of the list. It was not because they were expensive so we got lured into the pitfall of the pricier the better. In fact, there were a lot more photographers who were way more expensive, and yet we didn't like their work as much. Some of them were probably famed with celebrities but it was hard to tell(from our non-professional eye) if those pretty pictures were consist of fancy flowers and colorful lighting or if the photographers know what they were doing. One major decision was about to make, Chris said he need to talk to Ray himself. We had a 3 way conference call and asked a whole lot of questions, raised our concerns, understand how everything worked. Allow me to use some Intel jargon. "Customer orientation" ended up to be our biggest compliment to Ray. Afterwards, Chris and I had some serious financial budget discussion since it was still in early stage of the planning. We'll have to rethink the rest of the elements around a tight budget. It was a big stretch, but we decided to give ourselves a lifetime wedding gift.
Advice for future newly wed? Put together a simple spreadsheet, list a good 20~30 final candidates. Rank them base on your very SUBJECTIVE preference without knowing the cost. After all you're the one who's going to own these sweet memories. The rest of the decision process would fall into places naturally. Also my friend has recommended a good website http://www.wpja.com/ to check out some really talented photographers work. There you could see a wide spectrum of different wedding photography and gain some sense of what you might be looking for.
Here's our online gallery and slideshow and we very much want to share with everyone!
http://www.aperturaphoto.com/janet_chris/
Oh please comment on this blog entry if you like the photos!
http://www.aperturaphoto.com/blog/2011/08/wayfarers-chapel-disney-concert-hall-wedding/
Finally here's our review on Project Wedding for Ray:
We had our wedding in LA on June 18th 2011 and Ray from Apertura was our photographer. Ray is an absolutely talented photographer and you could tell from his work without us further stressing the point. The very first time we found Apertura was from the recommendation of a wedding website. The first impression of seeing their portfolio was simply "wow". Looking into their work, we love not just their amazing skills of interesting composition, lighting and unique point of view, but most importantly, the quality that really stood out for us was how they beautifully told the story with their unique ways of capturing moment and documenting the big day. It was an amazing art work that carefully crafted upon your most important day. They are extremely creative. For example, we had macaron as one of our wedding favor, Ray improvised on the day by placing our rings on three different color macarons and created really fun memories. We were really pleased when we saw pictures like that afterwards and glad that we had him as our photographer. Of course you could tell how amazing their work is already by seeing their portfolio, but another very important factor is how Ray was very customer oriented. The very first impression of meeting Ray was that Ray was extremely friendly. He was very responsive the entire time. Since we were out of town, my husband and I had a phone conference with him to sort out details and met with him in LA before the wedding. His understanding and professionalism made us very comfortable and confident that we could let him document our big day. On the day of, Ray text'd me that he was very excited shooting our wedding before he arrived, that certainly made me feel very good. Following us running around for the 12-hour day, Ray was all very professional, cheerful and he directed you very well during wedding portrait and you won't feel uneasy at all. Another important thing is, Ray delivered our online gallery within 2 months of our wedding which reminded us of all those sweet memories just in time. At the end, we feel like we made a really good friend on top of having a great memory of our big day. Thank you Ray! We're looking forward to our album.
