Moving to a Brand Spanking New Blog!

I’m moving to my new blog location – it’s on my own website,
and there’s a more I can do with it there then here, and so that’s where I’ve gone.

Come on along!

New blog is at: www.gemasana.com/blog

Looking to see you there!

Regards,
G.E. Masana
PHOTOGRAPHER
www.gemasana.com

Celebrities @weddings

It’s always a unexpected surprise when I’m photographing candidly at the reception and looking for people interacting and reacting, and as I’m zeroing in my camera on someone, I realize I’m looking at someone famous or notable in my viewfinder, and I’m like, “wow, look who’s here!”

Over the years at weddings, I’ve come across, among others:

• Deborah Gibson (what a sweetheart!),

• Michael Stipe (from R.E.M.),

• John Leguizamo (this guy can cut up a dance floor let me tell ya),

• Mario Batali (and yes, he was wearing his customary shorts at the affair),

• and Peter Duchin (the society band leader, and he has this wild story about John and Robert Kennedy chasing a naked Marilyn Monroe around a piano while he’s playing that piano with just his tuxedo pants and bowtie on).

If you’re going to discuss politicians over a meal, this is an interesting way to do that…

• Daniel Day Kim (what a gent!)
  
• William F. Buckley (party animal)
• They get upset if I mention Willow Bay, because, you know, I have such clout… so I won’t mention her.

and someone who really, really looked like Diana Ross, though I can’t say it was her.

A Couple of Cool Things I’ve Seen at Weddings

If you photograph weddings long enough, you will see and experience just about everything in the gamut of human possibility.

Take, for example, a wedding I photographed in January, on Superbowl Sunday.

Now, I’ve photographed a couple of weddings in years past that have occurred on Superbowl Sunday, and typically what happens is that the men make their way periodically to hang out in the men’s bathroom to watch portions of the game on a small screen TV that the washroom attendant brought to entertain himself.

But this last one was different.

In this case, it was the bride who was the die hard football fan and the groom was so not into it that he didn’t know what teams were playing.

It’s usually the other way around.

So, instead of sequestering into bathrooms, she had the DJ set up plasma monitors in the cocktail hour and reception rooms so that she and whoever else could watch the game. Which is what she and they did.

(Imagine what bridezilla-like fury would be unleashed if a groom ever did that! Oh my.)

Now, Peggy & Harry’s wedding (a great couple with amazing photos I’ll post soon), had an interesting twist too. Peggy was looking to do something to spice up their first dance and it was Harry who came up with this idea:

Start the first dance, bungle it, and then, acting as if to try again, launch into a series of dances from classic movies, while those same movie scenes are playing at the same time on monitors behind them – and keep this all a secret from the guests so they have no idea what’s about to happen:

So cool. You have to see it to believe it. I think it beats out all the other “fake-em-out-first-dances” I’ve seen posted.

Here’s their video of it: