Photographer- Check!

Posted Tuesday, September 18, 2007 7:36 PM

Oh I am so relieved.  Alfred and I have photographers!  He confirmed that they got the check yesterday and we should be receiving a contract in the mail to review and sign, I am so excited!

I am relieved not only because we can put a checkmark on this item, but that the photographer received the check at all!  You see, Alfred stuck the envelope containing the check into his work's outgoing mailbox with....a 2 cent stamp.

Whaaaaa!???!!?  (That's what I said when he told me about this last week.)  Can you imagine the stress that put me through, oi.

He was all proud of himself, being organized and remembering the 2 cent make-up stamp...all he had to do was stick on the other stamp (he keeps stamps in his wallet, as do I).  Alas, away went the envelope, and he only realized his booboo when he saw his booklet of stamps sitting at his desk.

But!  All ended well and say hello to our photographer(s):
John C Lewis (and his wife, Laura)

When we met with them during one of our trips down to SoCal, they were so open and friendly.  We had chocolate cake, they showed us John's darkroom, his 100 yr-old panoramic camera (it's amazing that something so old can take such lovely pictures-if you look at the "panorama" section of his site, you'll see), and they gave us plums from their fertile tree.

Laura asked us what we wanted out of a wedding photographer and at the time, I replied that I wanted to make sure the whole day was captured for us to remember.  I don't want to hire a videographer (too many people in the way, but that's my personal opinion now), so I guess a more succinct reply would be that I wanted our wedding day captured on film in such a way that would render a videographer redundant.  It's a tall order on my part, I'm sure.

Like I mentioned before, but maybe not explicitly, John and Laura shoot in film and not in digital.  This worked out great for us because we had fallen pretty hard for Isabel Lawrence photography.  We were unable to book them because the couple that met with Isabel and Lawrence immediately after us booked them on the spot!

Before I was completely sure about having a check sent to John and Laura, I wanted to check out more of their color photos, as there aren't that many on the website and I was fairly certain that our parents would want color images.  This took a little bit of time, but well worth the wait.  I was concerned that the color photos wouldn't look as good as the black and whites-this was one point where digital had an advantage...all those super color-saturated pictures!  Fortunately, we were able to see color pictures from a wedding that was shot over Labor Day weekend and they were beautiful.  Any fears or doubts I had were gone.

The best part about John and Laura is that they don't charge by the hour.  They provide you a quote based on your wedding day, and knowing that Asian weddings last the entire day, this was seriously fantastic.  I won't have to worry about sticking to a super strict schedule, squeezing everything and everyone into a certain timeframe to avoid paying OT charges.  In the end, we are getting 2 caring, professional, experienced photographers for our entire wedding day at an exceptional price.

I'm more than relieved, I'm ecstatic!