A comprehensive text that covers photography essentials, information specific to weddings and images and strategies of leading wedding photographers worldwide.

A companion to the popular website APracticalWedding.com and A Practical Wedding Planner, A Practical Wedding helps you sort through the basics to create the wedding you want -- without going broke or crazy in the process. After all, what really matters on your wedding day is not so much how it looked as how it felt. In this refreshing guide, expert Meg Keene shares her secrets to planning a beautiful celebration that reflects your taste and your relationship. You'll discover: The real purpose of engagement (hint: it's not just about the planning) How to pinpoint what matters most to you and your partner DIY-ing your wedding: brilliant or crazy? How to communicate decisions to your family Why that color-coded spreadsheet is actually worth it Wedding Zen can be yours. Meg walks you through everything from choosing a venue to writing vows, complete with stories and advice from women who have been in the trenches: the Team Practical brides. So here's to the joyful wedding, the sensible wedding, the unbelievably fun wedding! A Practical Wedding is your complete guide to getting married with grace.

Outlining a theory that combines the refinement of traditional posing techniques with the more organic, spontaneous techniques of photojournalism, this creative and informative resource offers poses that rely on personality and interaction. These instructions from a veteran wedding photographer provide the skills needed to recognize what makes a great pose and how to subtly direct your clients to achieve the needed balance between looking great and looking comfortable. Ultimately, this grouping of modern and traditional shots offers answers to the complications faced when attempting to pose wedding parties quickly while keeping the natural look that all wedding couples desire.

Many semi-pro and professional wedding photographers are looking to "wake up" their style, stay current, and stimulate business. And today, that means lifestyle photography, also referred to as "fine art wedding photography." Fine art wedding photography isn't just a catchy phrase; it's a modern approach in which design is paramount. Fine art wedding images are more graphic and stylized than traditional wedding photojournalism, as if they were pulled from the pages of a glossy wedding or lifestyle magazine. Acclaimed wedding photographer Jose Villa was a pioneer in fine art wedding photography before it became a trendy buzzword. Here, he shares his secrets for bringing a stylized sense of composition, lighting, posing, and most important, design, to your images, while still keeping them organic and narrative. You’ll learn Jose’s trademark technique of capturing the more natural moment after a pose, and tips for getting images right in-camera to avoid the need for heavy postproduction. Final chapters show you how to integrate design through the delivered product, whether an album or slideshow, and continue nurturing clients after the wedding by expanding to baby and family portraiture. Packed with real-life examples, solid techniques, and stunning images from one of the wedding industry's brightest stars, this book will both educate and inspire photographers seeking to update their work and satisfy a new generation of brides.

IMAGINE THE ADVANTAGE YOU’D HAVE IF ONE OF THE WORLD’S TOP WEDDING SHOOTERS SHARED HIS SECRETS WITH YOU World-renowned wedding photographer, and one of the most widely acclaimed instructors in the industry today, David Ziser brings his no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point teaching style to a book that totally rewrites the rules for how wedding photography is taught. This groundbreaking new book is the first of its kind to focus on the exact areas that wedding photographers have been begging a top pro like David to cover, including how to create professional quality light and beautiful images in every situation, how to compose wedding images that sell, and how to create amazing images in the limited time and at the fast pace of a wedding. But David doesn’t just stop there. He covers every aspect of what today’s brides and wedding couples want from a wedding photographer, including poses that work every time and can’t-miss lighting setups you can use again and again, and everything is laid out in a brilliant step-by-step method that makes learning these techniques so easy, you’ll be able to pull off these same looks yourself (without spending thousands on expensive equipment). Plus, the book is packed with David’s tricks of the trade that he’s picked up in a career shooting all over the world. LEARN HOW THE PROS REALLY DO IT Each year David trains thousands of photographers on how to shoot weddings like a pro. He knows the problems and challenges today’s wedding photographers face, and that’s exactly what he covers in this book. You’ll learn everything on the list here and much more: Professional posing and composition tips Simple on-location lighting setups that are specially designed for the wedding photographer How to get gorgeous images using a minimal amount of time and equipment Creative lighting techniques that anyone can use to create dramatic wedding portraits that will set you apart David’s own camera settings and lens selections (which lenses to use when, and why), and how to get the best results with your existing gear How pros use on- and off-camera f lash, and a host of tricks of the trade that will make you more profitable and have you delivering the type of wedding shots you’ve always dreamed of! Plus, the book includes the complete cover-to-cover layout from one of David’s wedding album designs to help spark your creative juices and give you ideas to take your own layouts to the next level. The wedding photography industry has been waiting for a landmark book that would become “the book” that finally changes everything, and that’s exactly what you’ll be getting with the purchase of this book.

Review The images - rich in color and visual rhythm - span 30 years and several continents. Of course, Haiti and the Mexican border are well represented, locales that opened up a new way to see. He has been able to render Haiti - a place often depicted for its chaos - with a precise eye, finding personal moments that are as still as they are complex. He can use shadows as skillfully as a be-bop musician to set the tempo. The people in his frames can look like dwarfs being stomped on by giant, disembodied feet. He can make an American street seem far more foreboding than any Third World slum. (David Gonzalez The New York Times 2011-12-18) A 30-year retrospective of a great, and often overlooked, American pioneer of colour photography who pays scant regard to genre boundaries, merging art photography, photojournalism and often complex street photographs. (Sean O'Hagan The Guardian 2011-12-13) In far-flung corners of the globe, Webb captures glimpses of beauty in impoverished lives and stoicism in the face of strife. (Jack Crager American Photo 2011-12-01).