I arrived at Aaron’s studio and was welcomed by his assistant Tiger. Once inside I immediately started setting up for individual shots of his vintage guitars. I was instructed the night before to take a picture of all of his Gibson guitars by themselves as well as shots of all the vintage ones for Aaron’s agent. Aaron only had a few guitar stands so he sent Tiger to Downtown Sounds in Northampton to buy all of theirs. Luckily I had the help of my assistant Chris to assemble all the guitar stands, which helped us get the shot below. The image above was set up by Aaron himself. I stood on the second floor of his studio and leaned over the balcony with my 70-200 lens to get the shot. He wanted to accent the Proudly Made in the U.S.A. tattoo on his bicep, because Gibson guitars are made in the United States. Unfortunately Gibson did not use this photo in their blog post.

There is about 75 guitars in this shot including a gasoline guitar on the end. Pretty cool. The guitar that Aaron is holding was used in a 4th of July concert in 2009. He still has it on loan from Gibson.

This was the very first shot I took of Aaron. I wanted it to look like he was coming out of the Gibson guitars. Gibson used this image in their post.

All of his acoustic Gibson guitars with the Southern Jumbo.

The photo shoot lasted about 6 hours. My thighs were sore the next few day from walking up and down Aaron’s stairs to the basement to return his guitars in their cases. Aaron bought the studio from the guy who created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He would keep his artwork in the temperature controlled basement. You can tell that Aaron Lewis loves his guitar collection just as much as I enjoyed photographing it.

Here is a picture of me and Aaron standing in front of his Staind platinum records.

This is the setup that I used for the photo shoot. This photo was taken from the stairs in the studio. You can see the setup I used for the individual guitars over on the left hand side of this image.

He turns to see her for the first time.

Their eyes meet each other with love.

They kiss.

They share an intimate moment. They are so in love.

Full of joy and love.

The Happy Couple looking amazing.

Here comes the beautiful bride. Father of the bride looking sharp.

Love these moments.

Check out this gorgeous church.

Robert making Jennifer laugh.

The ring exchange.

The Kiss.

Robert helping Jennifer over the bridge. So cute.

The cake was so delicious and beautiful at the same time. I love wedding cake.

Close up of the rings. Got to love the macro lens.

Their first dance together as husband and wife and they’ve got some moves.

They are so in love.

Check out more amazing moments from this outstanding wedding over at their wedding gallery here.

You never know who will show up to the wedding, so be prepared to take a lot of takes.

Steven Spielberg surprises the bride at her own wedding while filming Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull in New Haven CT. The expression on the brides and bridesmaids face makes this perfect wedding take priceless.

The bride and groom fight for a kiss as their wedding party tries desperately to pull them apart. The expressions on the bridesmaid’s and groomsmen’s faces make this wedding take perfect. This photo was taken in front of the beautiful Chez Josef in Agawam.

This photo was taken at the Amherst Women’s Club and is a classic example of a perfect wedding take, as you notice the joyous expressions on the guests and bride’s face.

The groom dips his bride under a beautiful oak tree as they share a romantic kiss. Showing how big, grand, and beautiful nature is in wedding images makes for some great wedding takes.

Sometimes the perfect wedding take happens in a split second, when the groom glances over at his beautiful bride.

How to capture the perfect wedding take.

1) Be equipped with a fast camera. Something in the range of a Canon or Nikon SLR.

2) Fast glass, meaning a lens that has an f-stop of 2.8 or higher. You’ll get a faster shutter speed at f2.8.

3) Bring plenty of compact flash cards with you so you can take lots of images and won’t run out when the perfect wedding take arises. Note: The higher the cameras megapixels, the more gigs you’ll need your compact flash cards to be. I recommend 2 to 8 gig cards.

4) External flash. Not the pop up flash that comes with the camera, but one that sits in the cameras hot shoe. This will allow you to use a faster shutter speed and produce more light in those dark reception halls.

5) When the bride smiles, you smile, by taking as many wedding takes that you can. You can never take too many wedding takes.

Check out some more examples of perfect wedding takes over at our website jaysonsphotography.com

Here’s how I pulled it off.

First – I hired the fabulous Massachusetts Portrait Photographer Lynn Quinlivan from Lynn Quinlivan Photography to take the portraits.

Second – I posed for the image wearing a red Batman t-shirt underneath my button up. I did this so the red would reflect a bit on my blue dress shirt.

Third – I took a picture of Spider-Man in the train scene of Spider-Man 2. Ironically the part where Peter Parker’s identity is revealed.

Fourth – I used photoshop to outline my shirt being revealed and replaced it with Spider-man’s suit on a separate layer. This took some stretching of the suit to match up with my body.

Fifth – I added shading around the outside of the suit to illustrate the shadows the dress shirt would of made, and to add realism to the image.

Lastly – I bumped the contrast of the suit to heighten the red color.

Before and After

Tell me what you think and let me know who your favorite super hero is and if you will be attending the Iron Man 2 premiere. I’ll chat with you all later, my spidey senses are tingling.

Cheers!