The date this year is Sunday February 22nd.  The location is the Golden Gate Room at Fort Mason (building A, by Greens)  The cost is $0 (that’s right, zero dollars!!!)  Check out the Lovely Details Website  Come by to say hello if you have been curious about us and to meet some of the other awesome vendors who will be participating.  

Also, an amazing new thing is coming to the wedding planning landscape and it will be launched at Lovely Details!! Stay tuned for more information.

Lisa and I have long wanted to do more in the realm of social service than the occasional donation and volunteering that we do.  So, we are excited to announce that Lisa + James are going to fund loans through Kiva.  If you are unfamiliar with Kiva, they are a non-profit that funds micro loans to people around the world.  In many cases, these people need only a few hundred dollars to buy seed, dig a well, invest in cloth for a tailoring business…  and the traditional credit system does not want to make these small, unsecured loans.  That is where Kiva comes in.  They find lenders (such as ourselves) and connect us with people who need loans. When the loans are repaid, we reinvest the money into another micro loan.  

So far, we have only invested in one loan, but we plan to do more and more as the year progresses.  That’s where you come in.  Lisa and I will add one dollar to our loan fund for each comment we receive for any post on this blog, so start commenting!  (Haters need not apply ; )  Thanks to Ed Pingol and Monica for the idea to tie comments to good deeds

Be sure to check in periodically and take a look at our lender page to see what we are doing with the money.

1- Your subjects need to be used to you having a camera pointing at them. Keep shooting and the camera will not draw their attention as much

2- Try to use natural or available light if possible, those pesky flashes will capture your subjects attention everytime. And if you have one of those red eye reduction flashes going on, kill it. If you are shooting candids then your subjects eyes will probably not be directed at the camera and the chance of red eye is diminished

3- Learn to anticipate a genuine smile or laugh. Watching people in conversations will teach you how to predict when a pause with a smile or a good laugh is coming.

4- Buy a camera with as little lag time as possible. We’ve all tried to catch a shot of someone in action, but those point and shoot digital cameras never seem to snap fast enough. You know what I mean, the kid jumps off the diving board, you hit the button and by the time the camera actually takes the picture the kid is out of the pool drying off and eating a sandwich. The better the camera the faster it responds to you. You’ll always have a little lag though, so work that into your learning to anticipate (see tip 3 above : )

5- Expect to not succeed too often at first. Shooting candids will show you just how much your friends blink or leave their mouth hanging open. So keep trying.

6- Be a people person. You have to like people to be interested in them enough to capture candids. If you are not a people person, stick to landscapes, pets or inanimate objects.

7- Use your telephoto setting if you have one. Try to keep some distance between you and your subject, but don’t get so far back that you lose the sense of intimacy in your shot.

So there you go, my crash course in great candids. Take a look at a few candid shots from recent weddings: