Patrick Motola Photography Blog

This was my first opportunity to shoot and work with Marcella and the great staff at Angel Springs Event Center in Georgetown.  It is a beautiful venue, the staff was great and Marcella had things running smoothly the entire day.  I also had the pleasure of my friends Michael and Belinda from Angelic Strings performing at the wedding.

We couldn’t have had better weather for Krista and Matthew and their entire wedding was incredibly beautiful.  I particularly enjoyed the various niches and areas for photography around Angel Springs.  You can see that in many of the images below.

Krista and Matthew were a pleasure to work with and their families were wonderful too.  That made for a fun event and lots of great images of fun, love, and celebration.  They have a wonderful story of how they met and Matthew’s service in Afghanistan.   It was an honor to be a part of their special day and that is what I love about wedding photography!

Leigh and my daughter Ashlee are best friends.  I was honored when Leigh asked me if I would do the photography for her wedding.  Little did I know what a beautiful wedding it would be at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  I had been there before, but never to shoot.  Wow, can’t wait to shoot there again!

Raul was the lucky guy.  I had the pleasure of getting to know Raul during our engagement shoot back in August.  We had a great time and beat the heat that day as well.  One thing I really work hard to do is make it fun for both the bride and groom, but especially the groom.  Well, I can’t speak for Raul, but I know I had a good time shooting with Raul.

From a photography point of view, the Wildflower Center offers some challenges, particularly once nightfall occurs.  We try to avoid just blasting on camera flash at people.  This is unflattering light and also drops off rapidly leaving the deep black cavern in the background.  One technique is shooting without flash with very slow shutter speeds and high ISO.  Holding the camera steadily with image stabilization on the lenses allows some nice natural light captures.  Another approach is to use a tripod which I did for the captures of the scenes with the moon.  This lets us shoot with multi-second shutter speeds at ISO’s that will be less noisy.  The final technique you see around the dance area is to put up two or three off camera flashes to provide some reasonably balance light over a broader area.

April and Randy were married at the Golf Club Star Ranch  on September 29, 2012.  Addison shot this wedding and as always, she captured so many beautiful images I feel like I was there.  I was shooting another wedding that same rainy day and it is obvious that April, Randy and Addison beat the weather.  Check out the beautiful rainbow image and those incredible Star Ranch sunsets.  And my total favorite is April and her father under the umbrella waiting to come down the aisle.

One of the things I love about Star Ranch Golf Club, besides working with Samantha Fulford and the great staff there, is the flexibility their facility has.  Beautiful outdoor wedding on the green looking out over rolling hills for miles, the Pavillion you see here and the indoor facility where April’s reception was held.

Stephanie and Paul had an incredibly beautiful wedding at Vintage Villas.  This couple had a very international story having met in London, living in Dallas and Paul being from South Africa.  Both families were wonderful.  Paul’s family traveled from South Africa.  Paul is a rugby player.

We managed to work around the weather.  It rained hard on the 6pm ceremony taking place.  But by 6:15, the rain stopped and we have a beautiful ceremony.  We managed to get the group pictures done just before the rain started again and then with another break, snuck out with Stephanie and Paul for some shots before nightfall.  We had dramatic skies as you can see from the picture, but did not get the classic “sky on fire” sunset we usually get at Vintage Villas.  We are entertaining a “makeup” session where we can capture the incredible Vintage Villas sunset.