Mahlette & Michael | Wedding | The Icehouse, Phoenix Arizona

Mahlette and Michael wanted their wedding to have a candle lit dinner feel. Most of this gallery, as per usual, is made up mostly of candids. I really love when a group can be present with the day. I click really well with couples that don’t want to spend all day posing for photos. It’s not that I don’t want to shoot portraits, it’s more so that it really doesn’t take up that much time. I think these two had the perfect balance. When it was time to shoot anything posed, we all steered our full attention to getting great shots and when we approach portraits with intention, we can go straight to the good stuff. Whenever I have had a ton of time built into a timeline for portraits, we end up shooting mostly boring photos with a few great ones peppered in. If you are planning a wedding, I encourage you to make as much time as you can for just being around your friends and family.

In case you didn’t know, I love shooting portraits on painted canvas. I often will paint my own and I am enthralled with the classical look that these portraits have. If I ever see a wedding timeline that might give me the flexibility to set this up I always offer it. This wedding certainly had that flexibility. Mahlette is Ethiopian and they made plans to change into traditional Ethiopian wedding attire after dinner and this was a great opportunity to shoot some really beautiful and unique portraits. One of the things I love about shooting weddings is the exposure I get to the wonderful diversity of our world. It’s so enriching crossing paths with so many different people. Ethiopian culture in particular is really fascinating to me as it was really introduced to me by one of my favorite photographers, Joey Lawrence’s book about Ethiopia.

Lastly, I want to rant a bit about the challenges faced in shooting this wedding. I felt really creatively charged at this wedding for many reasons, one of those reasons being that this was an incredibly challenging day to shoot from a technical standpoint. The locations, while beautiful, were comically hard to shoot in. The hotel offered gorgeous window lighting but that was only an hour of the day and things never got that easy again. We went from the hotel to Valley Bar, an underground speakeasy style bar. Even for a speakeasy, this place is especially dimly lit, with exposed wood rafters (blocking any bounce of light and applying an odd color shift). The venue was The Icehouse in Phoenix. I do love shooting here. It is one of the few venues in the city that has a ton of character. That being said, (and I am kind of talking to you folks at The Icehouse directly here) the reflective insulation in the ceilings are like 4 different colors. Depending on where I would be standing, the reflected light would carry a huge range of color casts. I was seeing a fluctuation of color temperatures from 2800K to 7000k and I had to spend a little bit of time recalibrating the colors to make up for the color casts. The reason I bring this up is because some venues are easy to shoot and some are really difficult. I loved the challenges that came with shooting a hard venue. I am at my best when I am challenged. When you are shopping venues, make it a point to see a lot of photos from throughout wedding days. Then make sure you find a photographer that is up for the task. The Icehouse has been no stranger to styled shoots and the venue is genuinely fantastic. All I am saying is, we don’t seem to see a ton of reception photos circulating around..

Anyways, thanks for reading. Enjoy the photos!