By Michael Watkins

Imagine a photographer with a fisheye lens capturing a special moment reflected in the hubcap of a 1950 Buick. Or your first kiss as husband and wife recorded on infrared film in the image of a pencil sketch or a charcoal drawing. And while the photographer is at it, how about turning one of your bridal portraits or a candid shot into a watercolor painting?

You can have it all, thanks to digital photography and some incredibly sophisticated computer programs used by more and more wedding photographers.

“Requests these days are definitely more involved and specific than they were even five years ago,” said photographer Kurt Brink of A Moment in Time. “Brides and grooms aren’t asking for as many posed photos. They want more photojournalistic images.”

Magazine-style photography that appears spontane-ous despite being posed, coupled with high-fashion photo spreads and celebrity wedding coverage continue to influence requests.

“They (bridal couples) are trying to capture a look, often something they’ve seen in a bridal or fashion magazine,’’ said Jennifer Storey of A Thousand Words photography. “They want something they will be able to look back on with pride and satisfaction” because it was unusual.

In a new digital method that manipulates speed and light, color photographs are converted to black and white and then recalibrated to colorize specific elements — bouquets, dress bows and stained-glass windows, for example.

Tom Sterba of Tom Sterba Photography has been in the wedding business for more than 25 years. “In the past, we had to do almost all the lighting and color effects while taking the photos,” he said. “Now, we can do it all in post-production, adding in pretty much whatever we need for a great photo. I don’t have to make nearly as many final decisions on site.’’

That enables Sterba “to focus more on the wedding itself and catch more unique, interesting pictures.”

Computer software, Storey said, has largely revolutionized wedding photography.

While couples still want traditional wedding albums, interest is high in flush-mount albums which look and feel like coffee table books, Storey said.

The custom books are assembled digitally using special software and printed on archival paper by an outside source.

Storey, who is in business with her father, Frank Remar, draws on her art background for the studio’s books and other post-production work.

Digital cameras eliminate a lot of guesswork — and anxiety ­— in wedding photography.

“Because we can immediately see the pictures, we can be a lot more creative and varied in the types of photos we take,” Sterba said.

He and his wife, Marsha, and son, Jason “J.T.,” photograph more than 30 weddings a year. Digital, Sterba said, allows his studio to take upward of 500 photos without the expense of developing and printing film. “We can take better photos and give the bride and groom more options and choices for individual and album photos.”
While Sterba and Storey have gone completely digital with their photography, Brink holds firm to tradition and relies on his steady 35 mm camera and an array of lenses for 50 percent of his work with A Moment in Time.

For him, there is no match ­— yet — for film and traditional photography.

“I like film better because it offers a certain richness and depth that digital still isn’t completely able to match,” said Brink, who has been shooting weddings for almost 17 years.

“I still work on the photos in (Adobe) Photoshop to get just the right lighting or color filtration, but being able to capture a moment as it is at the exact time with film is still the best result in my opinion,” Brink said.