Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What are your rates for wedding photography?

Image creation fee is $250/hr (minimum two hours). Products are selected a la carte.

The creative fee includes the following:
• consultation via phone, e-mail, and/or in-person
• creative capture of your event
• post-production transfer, editing, and processing
• collaboration with professional lab to create and deliver print orders
• option to purchase digital files and wedding album

The Luminary Collection

This all-inclusive option is $5,600 and provides everything in the image creation fee plus the following:
• unlimited hours of shooting on the day of your wedding
• online gallery for viewing and secure ordering of photographs
• 12x12 flushmount wedding book
• 24x36 wall print with museum mount
• digital files on master DVD

Digital files

Flushmount Wedding Book

The flushmount book is custom-made with true library binding, containing giant 12x24 photographic prints mounted flush to the pages edges. This wedding book is the ultimate fine art photographic record of your wedding. I offer only the highest quality wedding books available to ensure that your book lasts a lifetime of repeated viewing. Each photographic print is carefully finished and retouched, and I collaborate with my professional graphic designer for the creative layout of the page spreads.

The digital files on master DVD are high-resolution and include rights for personal use and printing. The online gallery enables remote viewing of images and secure online ordering of prints.

More options and services are available. Contact me for availability and custom quotes based on your unique needs.

Florida sales tax (6%) will apply.

Travel fees may apply.

Q: What are your rates for portraits?

Your session fee is $250 for location portraits.

(groups over 10 persons add $10 each).

Session fee includes session and online gallery from which to order prints.

Photographic prints start at $40 (includes mounting)
Digital files on master DVD: $400.
Coffee Table Album with 24 photos: $650

Check with me for availability. To book a date, pay the session fee with credit card or personal check mailed to the address on your portrait agreement.

Q: Do you have liability insurance?

Yes. I carry $1 million in liability insurance required by certain venues.

Q. How many images do you typically deliver for a wedding?

It is important to note that I emphasize quality over quantity in both my shooting and editing decisions in order provide strong, creative, and compelling coverage of your event. The number of images depends, of course, on the length and nature of the wedding. But the range is typically anywhere from 500-1500.

Q. Can I purchase prints or digital files?

Clients and their families may order high-quality photographic prints from the online gallery. Your credit card order is secure and encrypted with SSL technology.

Clients may also order their entire set of digital files on optical media (DVD) with rights to print and share for personal use.

Q. When I purchase digital files, what rights do I have?

The photographer (creator) automatically holds all copyrights to the work. However, if you purchase the digital files on master DVD (a la carte or package), I grant you unlimited personal use of your images. There is no additional fee for these rights. The only thing you can't do is sell them or allow them to be published or displayed in a commercial venue without my permission.

Q. What is a "finished" image?

All selections made for a flushmount book are finished. A finished image is completed to perfection using advanced darkroom techniques like dodging, burning, tinting, and so on, undergoing a full makeover to create a finished, unique work of art. Every image selected for your album undergoes this additional refinement.

Q: What is your style of wedding photography?

My style is, well, my style; that is, my photography reflects the way I see and how I interpret a scene at that particular moment. But if I had to place a label on my style, I'd call it fine art photojournalism.

My goal is to create photographs that tell a story in a visually interesting way. I’m an experienced and award-winning photographer, member of the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers, and alumnus of the Foundation Workshop, the premiere workshop for documentary wedding photographers. My personality is easy-going yet professional, and I love getting to know my clients and helping make their wedding a wonderful experience--one that they can relive through photographs.

My photography takes inspiration from many places: canonized twentieth-century photojournalists like Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Tomatsu Shomei, and Moriyama Daido; fashion and portrait photographers like Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Helmut Newton; film documentaries, Renaissance painting, and even humanistic ideals reflected in the works of existentialist writers like Albert Camus.

Q: For wedding events, do you take formal portraits as well as candids?

Yes. I do the traditional formals with bride, groom, and their wedding party. The scope and variety can always be adjusted to each client's wishes.

Q: What's the purpose of an engagement session (e-session) or bridal session?

Engagement portraits provide you with a recorded memory of this special time in your relationship, and, in contrast to the wedding formals, allows us more time and freedom to create images with a casual look and feel.

The shooting process itself helps to create a comfortable creative collaboration between client and photographer and therefore better photos on your wedding day.

From my perspective, it allows me to get to know you, discover your personality, and learn what lighting and poses work best for you.

From your perspective, it helps you become more familiar with and build trust in the photographer, learn more about the creative process, and feel comfortable in front of the camera.

The engagement prints can serve as a source for large wall hangings, reception display portraits, albums, invitations, and thank-you cards.

What about bridal sessions? Bridal sessions are shot with the couple in their wedding attire--typically on a day before or after the wedding--and offer more opportunity for creative portraits of the bride and groom.

Q: What should I wear to my portrait or engagement session?

Wear whatever you like as long as you're comfortable and and it complements what your loved ones are wearing. If you're a bit fashion-challenged (that's okay!), keep it simple with plain colors and clean design.

Q: Do you shoot anything other than weddings and portraits?

I like variety and many times offer my services for university programs and charities. I've also been known to shoot motorsport (especially motorcycle road-racing) and equine portraiture.

Q: What equipment do you use?

I use the Canon professional SLR system for digital capture (I love shooting with my Canon 1Ds Mark II cameras and myriad Canon lenses) and process using Apple Mac Pro workstation and 30" Cinema Display monitor in an office with medium gray walls lit with natural ambient and Solux lamp with industry standard bulb rated at 5000 Kelvin to avoid introducing any color bias to the images. From capture to processing to lab print, I work to maintain a completely color-managed workflow that ensures quality, accuracy, and fidelity.

Q: Do you have backup equipment?

Absolutely. In the case of equipment malfunction, I have backups for everything: cameras, lenses, flashes, batteries, image cards, hard drives, and so on.

Q: What is fine art?

The term fine art is a translation of the French term beaux-arts and commonly refers to "art created primary as an aesthetic expression, to be contemplated or enjoyed for its own sake" (HC 153) or "the arts which are concerned with the beautiful or which appeal to the faculty of taste" (OED). A "beautiful" art is one that "excel[s] in grace of form, charm of colouring, and other qualities which delight the eye, and call forth admiration (OED).

The adjective fine can mean "consumate in quality," "delicate, subtle," or simply indicate a "general expression of admiration"; fine is likely a variant of the Latin finire or finish, which refers to "that which finishes or serves to give completeness or perfection to anything." (OED)

The lone term art is defined as "[human] skill; its display or application" (OED).

So if we combine these, we can arrive at the following: a work of human skill that is admired for its consumate, finished quality and enjoyed for its beauty or visual pleasure. Or we can abbreviate this to "a work admired for its quality and beauty." So there you go.

"Art." Oxford English Dictionary. 1989.
"Fine Art." Oxford English Dictionary. 1989.
"Fine." Oxford English Dictionary. 1989.
"Fine Art." Harper Collins Dictionary Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques. 1991.
"Finished." Oxford English Dictionary. 1989.

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