When A Wedding Gives You Lemons...

Wedding photography is not always as easy as it looks.... I know it might seem like I always have beautiful locations to shoot, but what happens when that just isn't the case? Rukshana and Osman's wedding at the Hyatt in Crystal City is a good example.

It's not that the hotel wasn't nice, it was just that we couldn't use any of it! Rukshana and Osman had a large Afghan wedding (my first!) and part of the Afghan wedding tradition is to enter the site an hour or two after all your guests have arrived. So this hour or two was pretty much the only opportunity we had for photos, and we couldn't use any part of the hotel that guests might be in. Which eliminated the whole lobby and ballroom, and anything outside the hotel. We had only had the upper hotel floors (and did I mention the hallways and elevators were NOT air conditioned?) and the bridal suite to work with.

It was a tricky situation, but I tried to be thankful for the opportunity to think creatively and out-of-the-box.


Hotel hallway - backlit with my flash:

Yep, that's the hotel pool in the background:

The exercise room and gym area had a nice large mirror:

Back in the hotel room, I shot through the ceiling chandelier:

Used some existing window light:

And made use of the bedroom:

I'm not saying these are the best photos ever, or even really portfolio worthy, but sometimes it's an important exercise in photographic creativity to not have events unfold the way you want them to so you actually get something that's better than you originally planned.