I was pretty pumped for this wedding initially. I haven’t seen Forrest since he graduated Winona, and I LOVE second shooting for him, so obviously even when he offered this to me last minute, I literally died for the chance. It was pretty wild actually, and I am SO lucky. I didn’t have flash and because I’m not a Canon user, like Forrest, I couldn’t use his. Either way, it’s not his job to provide me any flash. However, I knew my uncle had an extra one at the time, and so the challenge was “Is there any way you can get that flash in the next 24 hours?”

      I’m going to admit this right now on the blog: This was my first wedding shoot with flash. Even though I felt like I was just testing, I am really happy with the results. The pictures turned out way better than I could’ve hoped for with the circumstances I faced.

       This is a huge deal, especially as a wedding photographer, but my lenses weren’t autofocusing correctly. With that said, I struggled internally this entire wedding. 

       Forrest had told me after that I still brought so much energy to the day, and I appreciated that so much. Having camera troubles made me feel very anxious and I thought it came out as negative throughout the day. I am glad it didn’t really show. I was so angry at myself, but looking back I kind of laugh now. The pictures I took with Forrest at this wedding I gave myself no credit for. After editing, I realized how good of a turn out it was. I’m impressed I worked with a broken lens.

      I bought a new 50 mm lens the next week. It’s even better: aperture goes down to 1.4 instead of 1.8. But enough of that, here are pictures I took with broken lenses 😉 (Subtle flex).

      There were more first looks though! I was given a special job this wedding to lead Forrest’s first look with Naita! Then with her Grandpa Bernie and her brother Rudy.

      And the EMOTIONS! Wow! I think this has been the most emotional wedding I’ve shot yet. I felt like there was always someone tearing up and it was just so real and raw. The vows too… I couldn’t even hold myself together, it was like the Notebook. I even looked at Forrest across the room and we started laughing because we were both bawling.

       Hopefully you “do-nut” cry too hard hehe

I personally regret not eating enough donuts.

 

Here are my favorite images to close off the rest of this fun day.

The last honorary section this wedding=  S N O W B A L L   F I G H T   featuring Forrest Seuser. Thank you so much for letting me second shoot for you again.