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Vancouver Wedding Photographer | Gastown Engagement Photography

Cole & Jakob — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:00:51 +0000

Holly and Phillip are an engaged couple from Abbottsford who will be getting married in the first week of April. We had the opportunity to do their engagement shoot over the weekend, and finally meeting them was awesome.

As we mentioned in an earlier teaser post, Holly and Phillip won a contest that we had put on in December. Basically, the contest was for a free wedding photography package and to win, all a couple or their friends had to do was Tweet a message on Twitter and boom, you were entered to win our services.

Low and behold, Holly and Phillip won. And as part of their winnings was an engagement shoot. So, we met up on a drizzly morning in Gastown, took some pictures, and here’s the result.

See you two in a few weeks!

Oh yeah – and you know that Free Engagement Shoot we’re offering to couples who book with us before April 15th? Well, this is a taste of what the results of those free shoots would be! So, if you need a photographer still, fire us over an email!

Vancouver Wedding Photographer | A Stanley Park Wedding

Cole & Jakob — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:00:54 +0000

So wedding season in Vancouver officially kicked off for us, and it was an unexpected wedding at that. Long story short (very short), this couple had a very short time frame to work with and needed a last minute photographer (or two). So, while we normally aren’t huge fans of super short weddings (this was about 2 hours) we couldn’t resist the opportunity to fire up some wedding pictures.

The wedding was pretty wicked in the end though. There were about 25 or so people and it was a real intimate affair at the Fish House in Stanley Park. Another cool thing about the wedding (for us) was we had free range to do as we please to get the best pictures. The couple was comfortable with us doing that, which was great considering we had just met them that morning!

Anyways, here you go. Wedding photography Nordica-style on a cloudy day in Stanley Park!

Engagement Shoot | Free Wedding Photography Winners

Cole & Jakob — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:45:29 +0000

If you haven’t followed Nordica Photography, then there’s a good chance you missed our free wedding photography contest that we had back in December. Basically, we had a contest where you Tweeted something and boom – you were entered to win our services at your wedding!

Well included with the winning package was an engagement shoot, which we did yesterday with the winning couple, Holly and Phillip. Their wedding is coming up in a few weeks, so we’re really looking forward to it!

For today though, here’s a single frame from our time together in and around Gastown yesterday. The pictures turned out great and you two were fantastic, Holly and Phillip! See you in a couple weeks!

Stanley Park Wedding | Teaser

Cole & Jakob — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:56:58 +0000

On Wednesday we had no weddings planned for Friday. On Friday we had a wedding. It was a nice surprise!

So the location was just beside the Fish House in Stanley Park, and it was a beautiful, beautiful affair. The couple was gorgeous and everything fell into place – even the weather!

To be honest though, it wasn’t really a typical wedding day for us. The reason why is it was super short (like 2 hours) and we were in and our like a fiddler’s elbow.

Anyways, we have an ocean of pictures to wade through, so for now we’ll just pop up these two as teasers. We will put up the full meal-deal another day…

Vancouver Wedding Photography | Lauri & Mikaela

Cole & Jakob — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:20:13 +0000

Vancouver weddings are sort of popping up here and there for us, but that doesn’t change the fact that we have had quite a few international inquiries as well! This is great, and we can’t emphasize enough that we have no problems traveling for weddings. Destination wedding photographers? Sure!

This has been a week of archiving as you can see, and we pulled another cool wedding out from last season. And sticking with the destination theme, we’ll show you one that was done in Finland.

The couples names were Lauri and Mikaela. Enjoy.

Garden Wedding | Vancouver Wedding Photography

Cole & Jakob — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:16:46 +0000

We decided to dig into the archives today and pull up a wedding from last year. We’ve been getting more and more interest lately for weddings, so heck why not show off some stuff!

This wedding wasn’t done in Vancouver, rather in Sweden last year in the fall. The name of the city was a lil’ol place called Stockholm and the couples name was Kajsa and Martin, and we really like the results!

So here you go! Some more Nordica Wedding Photography to feast your eyeballs ons!

The Free Photography Phenomena | Vancouver Wedding Photographers

Cole & Jakob — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:26:21 +0000

So a revelation has happened since we started Nordica: The number of times we are asked to do stuff for free! That’s all well and good, and if it is for something like a charity, then game on.

But it’s an interesting phenomena how every once in a while, people think that photographers should give away their services at no charge. We’re not complaining here, but it’s an interesting observation that we thought we would share. Especially considering the hours and hours photographers (at least us) spend on pictures after a shoot.

Craigslist is a great example of this. People actually have posted “Wanted: Free Wedding Photographers“. Isn’t that mind boggling? Imagine asking to get your car repaired for free. Or something like that. People would laugh at you.

Anyways, we saw this little cartoon and the timing was sort of ironic because we found this at the same time as we were talking about this topic.

Wedding Coffee Table Books | Vancouver Wedding Photographers

Cole & Jakob — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:54:03 +0000

Wedding photography is a funny thing because there are two different sides of the same coin involved with job: The wedding day photography itself, and then the hours of work in front of a computer after the wedding day.

Luckily for us, we love both sides of the coin.

So, one part of the ‘staring at the computer’ process that we especially enjoy after weddings is the design part, and more specifically designing wedding books.

This is something we offer all couples we shoot for, and we strongly encourage them to get these customize made little suckers. Looking at pictures of yourself in an awesome coffee table book is something special!

Wedding books are also great for showing your family and friends afterwards, and they’re just a nice and tangible way to hold your memories. After all, you’re not always going to have a laptop kicking around to show off your sexy wedding photos!

So here’s an example. This is Sanna and Jan, a Finnish couple, and a few snapshots of their wedding coffee table book.

Questions and Answers | Nordica Photography Weddings

Cole & Jakob — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:34:19 +0000

Alrighty folks, we’ve been getting asked a lot of wedding photography questions lately and a little light bulb went off in our head: This is beautiful material for a blog post about our wedding photography.

We have availability for this spring, summer and fall (not too much, but some – forward us your date and we’ll let you know what’s shakin’) so we figure why not get some of those questions answered just in case anyone out there was considering us already. And if we are in your list of potential photographers, for the love of Peter, Paul, and Mary email us. We love emails. And meeting people.

Anyways, as this is a self explanatory kinda’ thing, we’ll just put up a bunch of questions with the answers we have given.

Oh yeah – another reason why we’re doing this: We have a Formspring account now for Nordica. Both Cole and Jakob have these accounts already, but now Nordica has one too. This site is all about asking questions and getting answers, so giver. Hit us with the hard stuff.

For now though, here are your questions!

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Q | Are you always two people for all shoots?

A | Yes – We (as in Cole and Jakob) are both take pictures during weddings, engagement shoots, headshots – everything!

Q | What digital files do you provide your clients? Digitally processed files, raw files, or both?

A | The digital files (all high-resolution) we provide have all gone through our thorough editing process. Actually, we never deliver any unedited pictures, since we shoot in RAW and spend quite a lot time on the photos afterwards. So you (the client) receive the digitally processed files.

Q | Do you usually meet in person before booking weddings?

A | We prefer to meet in person before, but we have booked couples without meeting in person. We recommend couples to meet us though, mainly because it’s easier both for us and for the couple to work together if we’ve built a relationship prior to the wedding (which is also why we encourage engagement shoots).

We are also heavy users of Skype, so virtual meetings are a great substitute (if necessary).

Q | Why should we hire you?

A | Check out our pictures, meet with us and then it’s up to you to decide!

Q | What make your photography style better and (or) different than anyone elses?

A | Three reasons jump out:

1) We primarily use only natural light, that is we won’t bring huge flashes to shoots

2) We are two shooters so you get way more angles and ideas for shots

3) We are very experienced with digital enhancement of images, so your photos will always be re-touched and delivered looking their best

Q | How many pictures do you take at a wedding?

A | Hard to say. About 2000 per shooter is a fair guess though for a one day wedding. That leaves us with the tedious task of selecting the best ones :)

Q | Do you have any issues with guests taking photos during the wedding?

A | We have absolutely no problems with guests taking photos: We actually encourage them to do so. You can never have too many photos of your wedding day and we are not territorial in the least.

Q | Are you full-time photographers?

A | Yes

Q | Do you provide a copy of all the original RAW files (or converted equivalents) in addition to the ones you post process?

A | We shoot in RAW format, take backups and then import all files to our computers. Then we edit them in a RAW-editor (we use Adobe Lightroom) before opening the files up in Photoshop. When the editing is done, we export them to high-resolution JPEG files. These are the ones the couples receive.

We keep all the original RAW files however, to make sure that we are able to make adjustments if the people have requests. This doesn’t happen very often though, but we feel that it’s important that the couple has a possibility to request changes. If they for example like a photo, but would want to have different cropping, have the picture brighter or any other change.

The main reason that we normally don’t hand out the RAW files is because we want to make sure that our pictures are the high quality we want them to be. And giving away the original RAW files makes us lose some of that control.

Q | Do you do black and white photography

A | Yes, we love timeless black and white photos and try to get a mix of colour and b/w.

Q | What does an engagement shoot cost? How does it work?

A | An engagement shoot is $500. It’s a single session and lasts for a couple of hours. We move around and do shoots at a few locations and you (the client) gets quite a few photos in the end. All edited of course! Couples can have as many looks as they like and the more locations the better.

Q | Do you two have formal classroom training?

A | Yes, but we primarily learn by doing. So, basically we have a balance between many classroom hours, many Youtube hours, and even more hours of getting out there and doing it.

Q | How would you describe your wedding photography style?

A | Probably journalistic. We are at your wedding in the morning and won’t leave until the very end. With two shooters, we hope that our pictures tell the story of your day, which in our interpretation would make the style a journalism style where the pictures speak for themselves.

As far as the actual style of the photos go, we love minimalistic, clean shots and we love to play around with colour, light and patterns.

Q | What are your criteria for choosing what you would photography at a wedding?

A | We don’t necessarily have a criteria, but we aren’t that much different from most other wedding photographers. We have a shot list, we have the key actors that we focus on and we miss as few of the details that make up the texture of your wedding as possible. Being two people, we can get more details of course and can be at two places at once – great for picking up all the and moments of the day!

Q | Why are you wedding photographers?

A | Short answer: we love shooting weddings.

Long answer: there are several reasons. Here are a few:

The creative part: Wedding photography allows us to work in a very creative way, trying to capture emotions, details, moments in our own way.

The challenge: It’s a challenging photography environment and you only get one chance to succeed. So, there’s the pressure to succeed which we think is awesome.

The positive vibe: It’s a great environment to be in with tons of positive energy.

The journalistic part: Since we’re there from early morning to late evening, we get to actually make the whole day a story with our pictures. That’s why we’re not big fans of 3 (or 5 or whatever) hour wedding photography packages.

Q | When do you arrive to setup your equipment?

A | As soon as you will let us. We don’t have much equipment so we really don’t need a whole lot of time (usually 20 – 30 minutes to evaluate the light inventory).

Q | Do you bring backup equipment?

A | We back up the back up equipment with more backup equipment. We have a lot of stuff because you can never be too sure!

Q | Do you have written contracts?

A | Yes, we draft up contracts to detail all of the deliverable and the payment terms.

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So there you go! A few questions that we’ve had lately that we thought you should know about! But we really encourage more questions and they can be about absolutely whatever you want. Our favourite beer. Favourite lenses. Whatever. Go nuts. Just click here to visit us on Formspring and we’ll answer everything.

Also, check out our FAQ section and, of course, some of our pictures. We like them.

Fall Wedding | Sanna & Jan | Vancouver Wedding Photographer

Cole & Jakob — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:00:54 +0000

Vancouver Wedding Photographer

Nordica Photography are Vancouver Wedding Photographers, but we work worldwide. Sanna and Jan’s wedding was held in Finland a few months back and you’ll probably recognize them if you’ve had a gander at our wedding portfolio.

We shot their wedding before the Nordica Photography blog was born, so we haven’t had all of their pictures on the site yet. So here goes, Sanna and Jan’s wedding day.