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That's us. I'm the scruffy one on the right. ( I clean up pretty good). For formal weddings I come in a tux. The cute girl' that's my wife, Kay. She's my photography coordinator. You'll see her running around with a camera getting some of the shots I miss. We've been working together a long time. Her job description is "do everything that needs to be done." Given half a chance, she learns people's names. She works harder than I do. Ask anyone.
See, that's me, at work. Kay did that. She's pretty good. We work with 2 Fujifilm S3 Pros. Twelve Megapixel capture with a contrast very similar to print film. (Most digital cameras are still way too contrasty).
That's me after working all day on images on the computer. I did that.
We established the name Natural Light Photography 24 years ago when I was doing nature and fine art photography. I didn't use lights then. Gradually we shifted focus to portraiture and wedding photography, mainly because I started answering the phone and saying, "well, OK" to what ever they asked. That was before the telepushers found me.
Based on the North Olympic Peninsula in Washington, we photograph weddings all over Washington and Oregon. Although we are willing to travel, most of our weddings are on the peninsula, or at least within driving distance, but many are destination weddings with couples from all over the country. Besides the portrait work, we are photographing 30 to 40 weddings a year.
We work in a variety of photographic styles, photojournalistic, candid, or formal. We don't like to do stiff or phony poses. In fact, we manipulate people as little as possible. I think good wedding photographs should do more than just look like you, they should also represent you. You tell us what is right for you. We'd rather make you happy than make us happy. But when it's up to us we like to get your feelings for one another on film. We like warmth in our images. We like affection. We like laughter and we like tears. Real stuff.
I'd trade in technical quality for human quality any day, but I don't give up much technically. I love working with fine professional equipment and I've been doing this long enough to know the difference. In the last 2 years the whole industry has changed to digital. Although this saves us a lot in overhead (No film to buy.) we just spend that money on bigger computers etc. We're losing on the deal, big time. But the image work is better than ever before. We're doing things that film could never do. For instance, now you can have a selected image in natural color, reduced color, brown tones, sepia, black & white, or maybe just certain parts in color. That's a decision that's made during the editing process or maybe when you come back for reprints. And you can have it both ways.
When we get back from a wedding we load the images in to the computer system, make extra copies on the storage drives and CDs for the file. Once they are secure the images are edited, color managed and sent to the lab for printing. This does take longer than just sending off the film because we have to do all the work that the lab used to do for us except the printing. Once the image files are sent to the lab a second edit is done and sent to www.printroom.com so that your family & guests can see them too. Oh yeah, they can also buy copies at printroom without you being the go between. Think about how much time that will save you.
But the best thing about us is our people skills. We are real people. We get to know you and treat you as individuals, and as friends. We know how to move gracefully through a wedding as an integral part of it, while attracting as little attention to ourselves as possible. People say we are efficient, patient and relaxed in our approach. What we try to do is get good photographic memories without making your wedding day about photography. After all, it's your wedding. And if we get our way, we'll end up the kind of friends you send baby pictures to.
Jan & Kay Kepley
© Natural Light Photography
