Wedding Album Review on an iPad

I had created a wedding album, and the parents of the bride had purchased their copy. The parents of the groom had some changes they wanted to make. There were a few pages, like the one above that they wanted as is, there were a couple of pages that they didn’t want, and several pages that they were hoping to swap a few images. They did live close by, so I headed over to their house with just my iPad. Yup, just my iPad. I wanted to be able to sit side by side with them and draw right on the pages of the electronic book. Best case would be to be able to drag the images around, but that wasn’t going to happen. I would settle to being able to pen in new numbers and draw arrows for moving images around. To accomplish this, I used two apps.

The first was Penultimate. I used this app with a digital pen to draw on.

I created a notebook for this project with the amazing title of Album Notes. I then, page by page inserted a page spread from my album (exported previously) into the notebook. I now had images that I could draw on.

I also used the Zenfolio app. I used it to move copies of all the wedding images I had online to my iPad. One thing that doing this did was keep the image numbers in sync with what the mother of the groom saw on the website, and meant that I didn’t need a wifi signal. One wish I had was that images that she had picked as favorites could have been synced to the app. She had selected and favorited the images she likely wanted to put in the album on the zenfolio website. If those could have been synced it would have made the process easier as well.

This was the process we went through. First I went through and marked with a big red X all the pages that we were going to get rid of, and ‘want’ on the pages we were keeping without changes. When we found a page that had images that we wanted to swap, we would put an X over the image, and come back to it later.

After this we had a count of the total pages we would have, and a count of the number of images we needed. Then, we would go over to the Zenfolio app, pick some appropriate pictures, come back to Penultimate, and pen them in. As pages were finished, I would mark them as done, so we could identify what pages we needed to work on still.

One of the things that worked well was having a special wacom bamboo pen to write the numbers with. Much better than writing with your finger. One thing that was frustrating was that you can’t swipe back and forth on Penultimate. I needed to go back to the TOC, and then pick the page I wanted. You can press the page number in the lower right, but that just goes in one direction, and I constantly needed to go back. Penultimate also doesn’t like to be sideways like this. I would sometimes get my images upside down, and have to turn and twist the iPad until the image was the right way.

It was also slow. I was doing this on the 1st generation iPad, and it quickly pushed my decision to buying a newer version. When I tried this with an iPad 3, it was like night and day. It went from frustratingly slow to just as responsive as you would expect.

I suppose that I could use a tool that exports my album as a PDF, then use a PDF tool that can annotate a PDF. My pages were exported as individual JPEG’s, so that wasn’t a great options when I was short on time, but might be something I try on a different occasion.

 

Nikki and Steve’s Engagement Pictures

I have a location in the Nicollet Island area that I like to take pictures at. I usually think of it as a place for Senior Photos, but Nikki and Steve wanted something a little different, and I think it worked out great for them. Their wedding is coming up soon in August too, which should be a fun time.

Nikki and Steve were a lot of fun to shoot. We walked around the area to a few different places to take pictures. Did I mention it was hot last weekend. We were out in the morning, so it wasn’t the hottest part of the day, but it got to 90 degrees mid afternoon. They were great sports about being out in the heat.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the day last weekend.

Looking forward to the wedding in August! See you then.

Ben and Alexa’s Wedding

This last weekend, I had some family getting married. Alexa, who I have known for a while and is great with our girls (She watched Hanna Montana with them) and Ben, my wife’s cousin had their big day this past Saturday. My girls were also the flower girls.

I was not the official photographer, and so I tried to stay out of their way, and not poach any of their shots, but I was there… and other family members were expecting me to take pictures. I suppose not that many guests at weddings have a 70-200mm lens on their camera, and were playing with a remote flash during the dance, but hey, it was a good opportunity to practice, and this photographer wasn’t doing candids anyway.

I have more pictures up in an album in facebook too if you are interested.

Kim and Josh Engagement Photos

We almost called this shoot off because it was raining and windy and cold. A couple of hours before we decided to go for it. A half hour before, the rain stopped, the clouds cleared, the sun came out at full force, and the wind picked up.

We took the pictures at the Millennium  Gardens in Plymouth. It is a nice setting. So nice in fact, that there was another wedding taking place there. A couple of the choice locations were not going to work.

We had full on sun, lots of wind, and no shade at 3:00. Not the best, but that is what worked with their schedules, so we made it work. I tried to find some shade, and use some fill flash, but there wasn’t much to be found at that time on that day. I tried to position them so the sun was like a hair light, then blast them with a SB900 to try to fill in the shadows as best I could. Only so much you can do with a little light in full sun.

Still, I think we got some good shots that I hope they will like.

Kate and Eric’s Wedding

This was a wedding that I didn’t go to as the official shooter. I was just a guest with an unusually large camera and flash combo. 😉

I have know Kate for quite awhile now. She doesn’t live in Minneapolis, so we don’t see each other a lot, but she is great friend/cousin, and I wish her all the best.

I bet you can’t tell that Alison is her sister. It was fun to be shooting at an event where you knew the people that you were taking pictures of. I think it helped to get some fun shots.

Sometimes you know that a picture of a brother and sister captures a moment that you might not realize is so appropriate unless you know the people.

I think by paying attention (and taking a lot of pictures) I got a few great looks.

And a picture of the dress detail can’t hurt.

Or the love(ly) cake.

A few opportune shots on the dance floor round out the package.

It was a fun wedding to be a part of. Everyone had a great time. It was an interesting experience to try to stay out of the way of the official photographer, and still get some good shots. I think I did a pretty good job. He didn’t shoot much of the reception or the dance floor, so it wasn’t too difficult.

Congratulations Kate and Eric.

Jen and Cody’s Wedding

I had the great pleasure to be the photographer at Jen and Cody’s wedding last weekend. They had their wedding at a pretty great outdoor location, the Riedel Mansion in Fridley. There was a gazebo outside where the ceremony was held, and the Mansion could have been used if the weather was poor, but fortunately it was wonderful, and everything took place outdoors.

Here are just a few of the pictures from the event. There will be more later, and families will have a gallery in the Clients section next week where they can see many more.

Riedel Mansion

The Entrance

Gazebo

Thanks again Jen and Cody for letting me share your day, and thanks Barb for thinking of me. It was a lot of fun. More pictures soon!