Patrick Motola Photography Blog

Haley, Sam and their families were a pleasure to work with.  The wedding was at the beautiful First English Lutheran Church in Austin.  The reception was at Saengerrunde Hall (next to Scholz Beer Garten on San Jacinto).  I love beautiful churches as there are usually so many options for creative image making.  One of my favorites that you can see below is to move the bride and groom towards the back of the church, but shoot towards the front.  The effect is to capture the bride and groom surrounded by the entire majesty of the church.  We typically use an umbrella to light the bride and groom with soft, diffuse light.  I also love to put a flash behind the bride and groom for a strong backlit effect.  You can see that below as well.

The reception was exceptional primarily because of wonderful family and guests who clearly loved both Haley and Sam.  Everyone had a great time and it showed – it makes image capturing that much easier.  We also had fun capturing images of the children.  They ALWAYS have fun and are so excited to be at a wedding.  We love to show them images we have captured on the LCD on the back of the camera.  They get a huge kick out of seeing themselves and it adds even more to the fun for them on this special occasion.

You can also see below a number of our fine art creative effects.  We first process every image in color to make it the best we possibly can. Our clients receive everyone of these images in full resolution with a copyright release.  We then take about 40 to 50 of our favorite images and apply various effects including black and white, selective color, fine art, dual tone and more.  Our clients receive these images in full resolution as well with copyright release at no additional charge.   This is all part of our philosophy that every package and shoot we do must provide the best digital capture we can for our clients as part of our base package.  It just doesn’t make sense to me to charge for this level of service.  Charging for these items would imply it would be OK for them not to have them – to me, that would be a disservice to our clients who at a minimum, should receive the best digital capture of their wedding, engagement, bridal as possible even if they don’t elect to buy albums or fine art prints.

Wow!  Addison Myrick shot this wedding for Patrick Motola Photography with the assistance of Amanda Cook.  They did an incredible job.  I don’t know if I have ever seen a more beautiful church than St. Williams Catholic Church in Round Rock.  I wish I could have been there.  And of course, Star Ranch Golf Club was a beautiful venue for the reception.  Samantha and Kassy and the entire staff there are very professional and great to work with.  And of course, check out the beautiful sunset shots Addison captured.  Wow again!!

I have mentioned in a previous post how Patrick Motola Photography is able to perform two weddings on the same day, but I will mention it again here.  Addison and I have worked together over several years and I have 100% confidence in both her people skills and her photography skills.  In fact, in my opinion, her abilty to compose great shots is incredible.  Just see the images below.  So when I have a potential client who wants Patrick Motola Photography postprocessing, service, albums, fine art effects, etc and I am already booked, I can still offer to cover their wedding and provide them with all of those things by having Addison shoot the wedding.  This has been a great option for many clients and Kerrie Anne and Justin are no exception.

Initially, a potential client is disappointed that I am not available, but almost all have been willing to meet with me and Addison.  That is all it takes.  They absolutely fall in love with Addison and her images.  They also continue to work closely with me on planning their wedding, prints, albums, guest books, etc.  Typically, we want to have Addison do all the shoots including engagement and bridal so everyone can get to know each other and get familiar with shooting together.  With Kerrie Anne and Justin, they became good friend with Addison and her husband Elijah.  Addison and Elijah traveled to Tyler to do their engagement shoot.

Kerrie Anne and Justin – congratulations and I definitely wish I could have been there.  However, I feel like I was after viewing all the images Addison and Amanda captured of your beautiful Wedding Day.

This incredible wedding was at Villa Antonia in Jonestown.  Olivia, her parents and I had been planning this one for two years and finally the day had come.  It was a perfect evening in the high 60’s and no wind.  The wedding was even more perfect.  My thanks to Shelley at Villa Antonia who kept everything running smoothly.

We started the shoot at the Austin Renaissance Hotel where Olivia and her bridesmaids were preparing.  We then headed out to Villa Antonia for final prep shots, first glance session, bridal party shots and some family shots.  All of these were taken before the ceremony.   This is one of the big advantages of a first glance session.  It allows us to get all these images taken before the ceremony rather than at crunch time between ceremony and the reception.  For the bride and groom, it gives them a private, quiet time before the ceremony to be with one another before the big moment.

During the reception, the police officer on duty pulled me out.  I didn’t know what to think.  He said “I have done some photography myself.  You should know you are about to get an incredible moonrise over the eastern horizon.”  Wow!!  And he was right.  Olivia and Neil were game and we got some great shots of them with the moonrise (you can see one below) and some more fun shots with the bridal party.

You can see Olivia’s bridal session here and Olivia and Neil’s engagement session here.