goto itsgoodtorelate.com

Well after many months nay years of internal building, hard design work and content generation we’ve finally launched www.itsgoodtorelate.com.

So many things to say…but we’ll  just start but outlining some of the new blog features:

• New branding and design – we’ll talk about this more in the weeks to come
• The INSTA-BLOG window, which is basically a small taste of our unblogged weddings and other relationship stuff
• You can now pick “BESS” photos by clicking “This Photo Bess” at the bottom of each pic.
• You can now “like” and/or tweet each post
• Ayinde and Juma headers for easy identification of who shot the wedding.
• Seamless Video integration
• Targeted Advertising

We still have a flash portfolio site here: www.itsgoodtorelate.com/gallery that we are still fine tuning but as you may have noticed we are focusing on the blog as our primary online interface. – will talk more about that in the weeks to come.

Plus we have some things we weren’t able to complete before launch but we are going to work on to add as soon as possible and believe me when I say, some of it has never been done before on a photoblog (as far as we know) , looking forward to that!

So enjoy, like it, tweet about it, find it “BESS” but what we would love the most is if you just share it with friends.

We’d like to thank the hard working crew at VIRB (chooseavirb.com) for bringing our design to life and to our wives for supporting us enduring the late nights while we worked on this. (as I’m writing this I’m being handed soup by Brenda, noice). We’d also like to thanks the fans for being so patient and not burning down our facebook page and to all the photogs who had input into this whether directly or indirectly.

Don’t worry this blog is going to stick around for a while so you can be properly weaned

THANKS EVERYONE!

Ayinde & Juma

The world is small and photography makes it smaller. I knew Marcus from school, Queens Royal College and that was my first connection to this wedding. Kemba independently found our site and contacted us, so then I saw on our form, “Bride: Kemba, Groom: Marcus” and I realised, aye I know this guy. Needless to say things went well, we did the Wednesday ceremony, (seen below) and then I did the ceremony on Saturday and lo and behold, Kemba’s brother looks familiar, and all day its racking me, who is this guy?? It was not until the night that it hit me “Yohance” – I went to school with him too, El Dorado Senior Secondary (El Do Blue), small world, real connections.

Kemba and Marcus are one of the most naturally stylish couples we have shot ever, which made my work easy but made selecting photos for this post difficult. Congratulations again to Kemcus, yeah I just made that up, like Beniffer. Or is Memba better?

I also want to thank Christopher Teelucksingh for the assist, good guy, good work.

We’ve decided to give some of these weddings web retribution is the form of facebook posts and in some cases, single image blog higlights.

I’ve just posted a few images of this wedding on our new facebook pages http://www.facebook.com/relatestudios but this is one of my favorite images from Ayinde in 2010.

The bride is Marie who married Timothy on May 8th 2010.

Kemba & Marcus are a excellent people with great personalities. In my mind they stand out as one of the people we most enjoyed talking with last year. I had a great time meeting with them, so you could imagine my dismay when they had to move their date and I realized I had a destination wedding the same weekend.

Of course the extent my sadness was personal because Ayinde would be there for the wedding and they would still be getting flowfoto-grade wedding photography. So despite my melancholy-ness we all met again to talk about the wedding details so we talked about wedding…and laughed…and talked about other things…and laughed, drank juice…and laughed and so on. Then, suddenly, in between a laugh and some juice, Marcus…or was it Kemba? Someone mentioned that they were having the actual the legal ceremony during the week and then having the full wedding on the weekend…well, I’m not sure if any other reschedule of a wedding ceremony in the history of wedding reschedules has ever made one photographer happier

I volunteered to shoot the weekday wedding and Ayinde shot the weekend wedding (To be shown in part two of this post) so I was happy, Ayinde was happy and most of all, they were happy.

Every smile, every tear, every piece of emotion was genuine because you will see, as we learned, Marcus and Kemba are beautiful, genuine people.

Hopefully the photos capture that.

Part 2 coming soon.

Did I mention Ayinde was there too? Yup he took this kewl photo.

You know, its good to listen to your beloved fans/past brides. It was Terri Ann who in this last post http://flowfotoblog.com/jonathan-ambika-wedding-lake-placid-lodge-new-york/ that said and I quote:

“Aye-ah-yie,,,, the one with the feet and the umbrellas. I feeling awards coming on lol do you get tired of hearing great job flowfoto? ”

Now Terri, as I was submitting this to the Wedding Photojournalist Association 2010 Quarter 3 contest, I remembered your comment and I thought, you know…Terri is right, its just for the judges to have some sense and agree with her (no offense judges).

Lo and behold when the results come out the image places. NOICE. Thanks Terri and everyone else who love the images from the wedding.

It was the first wedding that required just as much time driving as it did flight time and I had a stupid random back pain at the time which I had to thermal pack all the way upstate . nonetheless the hard work is slowly paying off

Always love the judges comments. “Yes judges, I agree”

I’ve known Khyron for a while, we used to work together designing websites back in the day and it was around that time that the whole photography thing started to pick up.

What’s more, when my Canon S1IS died the night before my honeymoon, KD stepped in and saved us by loaning me his Fuji camera. I’ve said it before, but I have to say it again, THANKS MAN.

SO when KD told me he was planning his wedding and he asked me to be there I emphatically said…”Yeah man! Just say the word and I’m clearing my calendar”. Easy choice made easier by the fact that his wife Stephanie is such a sweetheart. Plus, who wouldn’t like a couple that dig Chuck Taylors so much.
After a scare at the airport delaying me a whole day (AA sucks) I made it across with time to spare and enjoyed (a chilly but) Excellent wedding. Congrats KD.

Again, I love chuck taylors.

On a day this cold (and it was quite cold) a bit of sun on the face was very welcome.

Well Ayinde and I were off to Tobago again. Noice. This was the first time we shot at wedding at Palms Villa. Double nice. Plus David and Dara’s wedding was the perfect initiation. The day was smooth the shooting was kewl and the images are great.

Hope you *heart* them too

This post is more to send a public (belated) congratulations that anything else.

Its not everyday you get to shoot another professional wedding photographer’s wedding and its definitely not everyday you get to shoot Richard Cook’s wedding.

Richard is a well known Wedding and Food photographer and he is the founder and principal photographer of RYSE photography. If you know Richard you know He’s a guy with a BIG personality…fortunately his beautiful wife Meera manages to keep him in check .

Since the wedding was in two locations, Graeme Ottley (of Fotograe Photography) and I decided to divide and conquer.

Graeme took the first leg of the wedding at Triveni Mandir . Some of his photos are in the kewl montage below.

I took the second leg at Movie Towne.

Funny thing is I never even saw Graeme that day, we just coordinated by phone. I wonder if that qualifies as shooting together?

Flowfoto Photos below.

Tough guy Richard..is that a tear I see?

After our first set of plans for the shoot were inadvertently thwarted by the powers that be, we had get an alternative location for the session. Needless to say, sometimes (and this time) the alternative route can be just as scenic as the original one. Despite grumpy grounds keepers and howler monkeys, things still went swimmingly.

Again, big, big UP to Graeme or Fotograe for the assist.

Well we all know Darren and Juanne from the best ever ambulance graveyard shoot. These are highlights of the highlights of their wedding.

I have to make honourable mention of Juanne’s dad who was a photog (of sorts) back in the day and when we did our site visit he told us that he still had some classic photo gear. I was like “bring it on Mr. Cragwell!” and so he did. He actually brought us his TLR and 35mm SLR on the wedding day. Ayinde went into sparkly eyed camera stasis for a minute.

Then we proceeded to make some kewl images.

Ayinde – TLR stasis mode