Master Photographer of the AIPP Achieved

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I’m delighted to announce that as a result of this year’s Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) Photographer of the Year awards, otherwise known as APPA, I have come away with no less than 3 gold awards and a silver with distinction award along with the newly earned title of ‘Master Photographer’. The magnitude of this achievement is hard to articulate without sounding boastful, but what has happened here is a goal many professional photographers share. Simply achieving any award at the national awards, or even the state awards is no easy feat as winning an award shows the image presented shows that the photographer displays superior visual communication skills and ability beyond standard professional practice.

2017 AIPP APPA Awards

Master Photographer of the AIPP

These national awards I not only managed to win 3 GOLD awards, but I even came away with a national title of Australian Professional Photographer of the Year in the Science category. These awards, and all the previous awards I have achieved means that I have reached the prestigious level of Master Photographer with the AIPP, which is what the red ribbon in the image below represents.

Master Photographer of the AIPP

One may wonder why I’m not winning the Wedding Photographer of the year title, what with being a professional wedding photographer and all. But as I’ve explained before when I won the 2016 South Australian Landscape Photographer of the Year title, the ability to even have a chance of winning any of these tiles shows and incredible knack for visual communication and ability behind a camera. Much of the skills required to win both of these titles are the reasons why my wedding photography looks the way it does, it’s all part of my style and how I approach taking photographs.

Star Wars Wedding Photo trend

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Possibly due to the resurgence of the popularity of Star Wars, or just because Star Wars is awesome, it hasn’t been uncommon at recent weddings to request photoshopped a Star Wars Wedding Photo. It’s possibly the most common request these days, where as in the past it’s been dinosaurs or zombies. These types of photos are always a bit of fun to shoot, as it requires wedding guests to roleplay as characters in the Star Wars universe and pretend to be within a warzone. I always have a big smile on my face as I sit down and edit these scenes, as it’s such a different image to produce when considering wedding photos. Below is one such photo I put together for Rebecca and Simon.

Star wars wedding at Auchendarroch House

Star Wars Wedding Photo Process

The most recent wedding I put together a Star Wars Wedding Photo for was the Edwardstown Baptist Church wedding for Chloe and Alex. As we were walking around a forest-type location for their glamour photos, I suggested that a small-scale skirmish type scene would be best. So we got the bridal party to surround Chloe, Alex and their flower girl, then pretend they were attacking each other with light sabers. This sort of situation always gets a laugh 🙂

This is the behind-the-scenes process to create such an image from the original photo.

Original Photo

As you can see, if I included the original photo onto the finished album, people would look a little strangely towards the bride and groom thinking there was some sort of hidden martial arts love between them that they weren’t aware of. The idea here is to imagine that each of the members of the bridal party are in the act of attacking one another. The trick to making it look good is to have each of them try to do something slightly different to each other at differing heights.

Star Wars Wedding Photo original photo

Step 1

The first step is adding the usual colour and contrast corrections that one would usually perform.

Star Wars Wedding Photo step 1

Step 2

I then went ahead and crudely added some lightsaber beams into the hands of some of the bridal party. I also tried to give a little diversity to the ‘fighters’ by adding a blaster gun to the flower girl, and planned to add lightning coming from the groomsman on the right.

Adding lightsabers

Step 3

After adding the foreground lightsabers, I wanted to add an AT-ST walker in the background to replicate what happened at the battle for Endor. So I added one in, blurred it a bit so that it didn’t take too much of the focus away from the bridal party, but also added a bit of blaster fire with an explosion just to spice things up a bit.

Adding the ATST walker

Final step

Finally, some atmospheric effects are added to create a sense of scenic epicness. Cropped, and rotated a little too.

Star Wars Wedding Photography

This Star Wars Wedding Photo was one of the more simple to put together, but sometimes simple is better. The more time you put into images like this, the more epic and crazy the images can get 🙂 Let me know if you’d like a photo like this done for your own wedding!