saturday i shot katie and ryan's wedding with the fabulously talented michelle ross of under grace photography.

beautiful day.  beautiful location.  beautiful couple.

katie and ryan came down from chicago to tie the knot at pere marquette in grafton, illinois.  katie wore a gorgeous, classic dress from jcrew.

here is a looooooonnnnnnnnnnnggggggggg post of favorites because there were just so many.
scroll down for the slideshow.

my self-assigned creative challenge for the day was to shoot everything wide open, meaning at the largest aperture (same as f-stop) my lenses allowed.  this ranged from 1.4-2.8.

aperture is the size of the opening of the lens.  the smaller the number, the larger the opening, the more light allowed in and the shallower the depth of field.

katie's dad MADE the arbor under which they got married!

a hidden moment, not posed.

a few moments after we trespassed wandered onto the levee-under-construction in grafton, the police drove up.  we had already heard how much they can be sticklers, so we were amazed when they drove off.

we continued on to alton where we trespassed wandered onto a series of barges/boats tied together.  while michelle started shooting, i sweet talked the men on board.  after i witnessed a rather puzzled look from the main dude, i heard the two behind him speaking spanish.  under pressure, my spanish is no tan bueno (not so good).  i may have been better off speaking english, but i explained that we are photographers.  duh.  as if the large camera around my neck didn't give that away.  and la gente se casan.  the people are getting married.  well, they already did, but anyway.  esta bien sacar fotos?  is it ok to take photos.  he nodded.  SCORE.

below is my new favorite wedding photo of all time.

this one was shot through a rusty metal vice.

we hit a turquoise wall and a little spot across the street in alton and then headed back for the reception.  this was shot through a car window.

light falling on becca...
1. doh!
2. doh!
3. where is my mouth doh?
4. AHA!

we tried to take a ferry shortcut back to michelle's house, but we ended up stuck in that little strip of no man's land illinois between the rivers.  the second ferry across to st. charles was closed, so we had to turn around and take the belle of calhoun back.  it was actually a nice detour.

and the slideshow!