Feature On Southern Bride Magazine - Grove Park Inn - Ashville North Carolina

In the recent issue of Southern Bride, we traveled with our team to North Carolina on a week long photoshoot at the famous Grove Park Inn. We photographed some amazing wedding designs www.southernbride.com / Anne-Barge Designs from some of the top designers in the world. Read more about it on their blog feature and let us know what you think! We photographed about 50 dresses on the fashion shoot, and I'll have to say that this dress was one of my favs.

We've been shooting exclusively for Southern Bride for about 9 years, and it just keeps getting better with each location. When we travel with this large of a team, there is a lot going on behind the scenes. For this shoot we had about 20 people on the team. The first team sorts the dresses, steams them, and organizes all of the fashion accessories. My team goes in and picks our favs, and scouts the locations that we think will work for that dress. The hair and makeup team jumps in with the models the minute that they arrive on location and begin talking about the hair styles and looks that we want. About 6 am on the first day, the models and hairstylists get started while eating breakfast, and the fashion team then gets the first dresses ready to wear. This team will do wardrobe changes, hairstyle and makeup changes about 10 times in one day. About 7 am my photo assistants and I head out the the first location and begin lighting the sets that we are shooting for the first segment. (We go to extremes to light each shot, so if you look at these and wonder how we do it, well you may just have to sign up for one of our photography workshops to find out our secrets.) For this series of shots we found this great location, and we pushed in some extra light to give us a nice natural look. This segment was running right on schedule when we found out that the building  right behind us that was built in the 1900's as a caretakers cottage began swarming with bees - we ran as fast as we could to get out of harms way. See, there is always a fun backstory! After shooting a 10 hour day and about 25 dresses, the entire team took a quick break, then we all headed to the Grove Park Inns overlook restaurant to watch the final sunset, and enjoy fine dining at one of the best restaurants in the south, The Sunset Terrace. Then we get to sleep and do it all over again early the next morning. It's an amazing job, and after 3 longs days we are all pretty tired, but the results make all the pain go away! Check back on our blog soon for the next segment of our incredible shoot at The Grove Park Inn, or pick up your copy of Southern Bride Magazine on newsstands across the South! (Photos by : Michael Allen)

Key West Fashion Shoot - Southern Bride and Romantic Destinations Magazines

Key West Fashion Shoot - Southern Bride and Romantic Destinations Magazines! We kicked off the new year with one of our biggest photo shoots ever! The team at Southern Bride flew the entire crew down to Key West to shoot the next issue of the Romantic Destinations issue of Southern Bride Magazine. Since the magazine has exclusives on the shoot, we can't show you any of the images just yet, but here's where we shot for the first 3 days. And yes, it looked just like the photo - simply amazing!

When we travel to destination locations for weddings and our exclusive photo shoots, you never know what the weather will be like, Our first morning of the shoot was scheduled at 7 am, and it was pouring harder than I've seen it before. We actually began shooting in the rain, and by the time we got going the rain cleared and the day went on schedule.

We've shot in Key West before, about 5 years ago for a beautiful wedding, and we were not disappointed with this shoot either. We shot our models with Dolphins, on the beach, riding mopeds, bicycles, and on a 3 million dollar Yacht that happened to be in port. The magazine flew in two of our models from NewYork and Birmingham. We have just about 50 bridal gowns and dozens of bridal accessories flown in from all over the world. We had a team of 10 that flew into Miami, then we all drove on to key west where we teamed up with our hosts on Duck Key. They had spent about 6 weeks prepping for the shoot with over a dozen crew members, so our shoot ran like clockwork. I can't wait to show you what we shot, but it will have to wait until the issue hits the newsstands. Meanwhile, check back to see our next post sometime this spring. After the shoot we spent a few days of R&R in Key West dining in some of the Keys most exclusive restaurants. We are writing a travel story about our adventure that will come out in the next issue of the magazine, so be looking that that!