Maui Wedding Photographers

Our professional team of Maui photographers, second shooters and assistants are dedicated to capturing the beauty, romance and power of your special day here on Maui. We have decades of experience shooting at all of Maui’s most spectacular locations, from the Olowalu Plantation House to some of the most secluded and unknown beaches in Maui. We have the timing down and will guide you through the afternoon making the most out of that spectacular light Maui is famous for. Outdoor photo sessions on Maui are a challenge. The light is harsh during the day and always changing. A seasoned, Maui based pro is the best and most reliable way of making sure you get those images. You only get one chance, be sure to retain a Maui professional for that once in a lifetime event. When the cake is gone and the tan is faded, all you bring back with you are the pictures. Make sure they’re the best.

We always get asked about the right time of day to do a Maui wedding ceremony. Many of our clients want to do a luau as a reception, which usually start about an hour before sunset, pushing the wedding to the middle of the afternoon. While a luau seems like the Hawaiian way to end your wedding day, the timing makes photography  very difficult and limits your photographers ability to capture those portraits at the golden hour. We usually recommend that couples save the luau for the day before or after and schedule their Maui wedding for about an hour and a half before sunset. This gives us time to spend about 45 minutes exclusively with the couple to get those romantic, golden images and dramatic sunset backgrounds.

Sunsets in Maui are incredible. It was raining the day we shot this. Right after a beautiful ceremony, while rounding up the guests, the sky opened up and a light rain came down. Fortunately, the wedding planner had the foresight to have a large tent available, an item often overlooked, especially during the extended drought we’ve been having here in Maui. Even though Makena gets the rainfall typical in a desert, rain is always possible. The bride took it in stride. We did some work in the tent and as soon as it slowed we hit the beach and started shooting. The interesting thing about rainstorms is that it means there are clouds around which help bring out the best in a sunset. We kept telling her everything was going to be OK. I never show the client images on the camera monitor but I showed the bride this one and it calmed her down immediately.

Sunsets at a Maui beach can be spectacular. Golden clouds and rich reflections off the ocean create a magnificent backdrop for your most romantic and special day. Most Maui photographers will crank up that on camera flash and hit you full bore with it to light you against that backdrop, but is that really the way to light a couple on their wedding day? The reason most beach photographers hit their clients with on camera flash is simple: cost. It takes money to hire an assistant to hold a strobe and a reflector Buy Cialis Online and in a tight economy with cutthroat competition, it is difficult to justify the extra expense. But what about the destination wedding couple who has spent a sizable sum to get married thousands of miles from home? Is it our responsibility to inform them of the difference between a professional photo shoot and an amateur one? We believe it is. When we coordinate your Maui wedding an assistant travels with the photographer to assure images like these.

Maui Photographers come in all different shapes and sizes with different levels of skill and various pricing and service structures. There’s so many of us, there’s almost too many choices. My suggestion in picking a photographer is to find the ones who have an online photo gallery that you like. Images that you would like to have of your wedding day. Be mindful of style. Some Maui Photographers have very stylized approaches. Some shoot very posed “romantic” stuff, others use a more relaxed, photo-journalistic approach. Choosing a format that makes you feel comfortable is important. After that, establish your budget and choose the photographer that comes closest to it.

I was told by my esteemed friend, photographer and sometime employer, Tony Novak-Clifford, that my last post had so much whine, it needed a little cheese. He may be right. When it gets busy I get almost as crazy and when it gets slow. Which brings me to the subject of “The Edit”. A professional job requires not only excellent capture but a commitment to an extensive edit. Some of my clients will have 400 images in their package. This type of edit takes time. That’s why I try to buy myself at least 2 months on these types of jobs. If your photographer is promising that many images and will deliver the disk to your hotel room before you leave, it might be reasonable to re-think your choice.

Oh, the challenges of being a photographer in Maui! Aside from the big issues such as the high cost of living, cutthroat competition and idiotic government regulations, we have the merely irritating annoyances such as slim bikini clad babes cavorting in the surf right behind the wedding couple we’re about to photograph, snotty little kids who can figure out the perfect place to stand so that you’ll have to spend hours working the clone stamp in photoshop to remove them from your portraits and my personal pet peeve: “the entourage”, outfitted with a plethora of cheap digital cameras and cell phones that take pictures. I actually have to elbow some of these clowns out of the way at virtually every wedding I shoot. I even had someone complain, while I was photographing a group, that he didn’t get his shot because “this dude got in the way” (pointing disgustedly at me). The wedding couple is paying me a hefty fee specifically so that they don’t get shots that look like the ones brother Jeb takes so why does Jeb even bother?