7.24.2008
A picture is worth a thousand words.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, I would hope that any picture taken of my wedding would be breathtaking, elegant, beautiful, and every synonym of the aforementioned words *checking thesaurus*. Anyhow, in my search of the perfect photographer for our Nikkah, I have looked through volumes of photographer portfolios hoping to find the perfect match for our East meets West fusion wedding. And in doing so, I found quite a number of talented photographers in the Los Angeles area. We ended up choosing a relatively new wedding photography firm by the name of AAcreation, based out of Corona, CA.
I was actually at the wedding of the lovely couple pictured above by AAcreation, a couple of months ago. My kid sister brought me their card and recommended them to me based on how the photographers were interacting with the crowd. At this point, I was already narrowing down my photographer choices and was even about to close the deal with one team. However, I was in no mood to pass up a chance to possibly get a better photographer. I had a list of questions/concerns that I had previously drawn up, so I emailed Ahmed @ AAcreation to ask a few questions pertaining to his services. A couple of key issues that I covered were the following:
Budget: Both the future misses and I are young new professionals and feel slightly pressured to make the best of plethora of events we are planning like the Dholki, Mayoun, Shaadi, Walima, etc.... Hence, we had a strict budget to work with for what seems like a lot of photography hours
Style: Because we are having a Pakistani/Indian wedding, we wanted to have a photography team who was familiar with East Asian wedding ceremonies. It just so turns out that the bulk of East Asian photographers are pretty 'old school', and all seem to have really cliched styles (glamour shots meets the Eastern hemisphere of the world). So, our hope was that we would find photographers neat fish eye, wide-angle, HDR, holga, and creative shots.
Editing: Unlike my 'cute-as-a-button' fiance, who does not need any editing, I am no George Clooney. Hence, it's going to take a bit of editing work to get me looking decent. So, I had to find a photographer up for a challenge.
That's where editing comes in. Editing in wedding photography either makes or breaks your album. Looking back on your pictures, you want to see glam, and beauty, not pimples and red-eye. Not only that, this where all the editing effects like sepia, black and white and various other photographic enhancements come in.
Capturing the 'Right' Moment: I think this is one thing that future misses and I agree on completely. Photography shouldn't just be about documenting an event, but rather telling a story. Sometimes I've seen that a wedding might not have been so great because of random things going wrong, but when you look back to the album, you can often see a story you wanted created, perhaps your own little fantasy. That could mean capturing a facial expression, a glance at the bride during the ceremony, subtle flirting between the newlywed couple, or even a piece of the decor worth capturing.
Digital Negatives: Another requirement I had was being able to get all the digital negatives of our pictures. I'm nerdy enough to know that what looks good on a 800x600 monitor doesn't look good on a 1080i HDTV. Showing our pictures on a HDTV is just one reason among many to have digital negatives. Another reason is that I'm a bit of an 'artsy fartsy' and love to experiment with new forms of art. One thing I've been really interested in is mosaic prints, like those found on designamosaic.com....
...or Andy Warhol-esque prints....
Given this criteria, I went ahead and contacted Ahmed @ AAcreation via email. I was immediately impressed by his prompt email response. He was really helpful right from the start, wanting to know what I needed and assuring me that he could work things out to meet my budget. After a few email back-and-forths, we opted to have a phone conversation to discuss our Nikkah in further detail. It turned out that Ahmed is a younger guy who recognizes some of the downsides to using the traditional Indo/Paki wedding photographers. Ahmed relayed his attention to detail and the fact that he is familiar with all the intricacies of weddings in our culture. I looked at more of the pictures that Ahmed and his team took of recent weddings and found that he fit the bill quite nicely. And best of all, his prices were reasonable.
Unfortunately, work and other things tied me up quite a bit and so it took several weeks before I contacted Ahmed again. When I did though, he completely remembered us and our event, which showed to me that he was quite attentive to detail and that he took a special interest in his clients. From there we talked about specifics (ie. how many locations, how much time, budgeting, etc.). We set up a meeting that week to go over the contract and seal the deal. Ms. GZ, Momma GZ, and Lil Sis GZ went over to Ahmed's studio in Corona. We were shown a few samples of his recent work along with different coffee table photo books, which Ms. GZ instantly fell in love with (<--means we'll probably have to get one). Ahmed's openness to meet our needs and his professional work solidified our choice in photographers. What made everything better was that there was a hiccup in the understanding of digital negatives, but was remedied after more discussion. He said since he 'liked us' that we would receive all digital negatives, and he put it in writing. I appreciated that a whole lot and the family had nothing but rave reviews for his work on our return from his studio. By the time I reached home, I already had an email requesting specifics for the event. What I also liked was that his email requested information about the bride and groom's hobbies and interests. 
All in all, I would say that I am very happy with who we picked for our Nikkah photography. Time will tell, but early in the game, I would definitely recommend the AAcreation team to any groom and bride, regardless of whether they're Indian/Pakistani or not. His work speaks for itself and his demeanor and approach will take him far. I can't wait to show the pics from our Nikkah and will be sure to post them here when we get them.
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3 Growls:
Your fiancée *is* cute as a button, I agree!
I loved that B&W shot with half of each of their faces... nice :)
Mr. Zilla, thanks for taking the time and saying such beautiful things about our Photography.
www.aacreation.com (our website)
www.blog.aacreation.com (our blog)
Ahmed
wow! those pictures are amazing! found you on weddingbee...love hearing the guy's POV. keep it up! i'm soo gonna check them out!
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