With a wedding impending, the Taiwanese bride-to-be turns to bridal photographers, makeup artists, and hair stylists to transform her image beyond recognition. They give her fairer skin, eyes like a Western baby doll, and gowns inspired by sources from Victorian England to MTV. An absorbing consideration of contemporary bridal practices in Taiwan, Framing the Bride shows how the lavish photographs represent more than mere conspicuous consumption. They are artifacts infused with cultural meaning and emotional significance, products of the gender- and generation-based conflicts in Taiwan’s hybrid system of modern matrimony. From the bridal photographs, the book opens out into broader issues such as courtship, marriage, kinship, globalization, and the meaning of the "West" and "Western" cultural images of beauty. Bonnie Adrian argues that in compiling enormous bridal albums full of photographs of brides and grooms in varieties of finery, posed in different places, and exuding romance, Taiwanese brides engage in a new rite of passage—one that challenges the terms of marriage set out in conventional wedding rites. In Framing the Bride, we see how this practice is also a creative response to U.S. domination of transnational visual imagery—how bridal photographers and their subjects take the project of globalization into their own hands, defining its terms for their lives even as they expose the emptiness of its images.
"Do not be misled by the title of this book. It is a study of Taiwan's bridal industry but it is also a fine ethnography of marriage in contemporary urban Taipei. With great subtlety, Bonnie Adrian shows us how much marriage in Taiwan has changed and how many of the old ways it has retained. She does so with wit and humor."—Margery Wolf, author of A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility "Faced with the puzzle of the ubiquitous bridal photography in Taipei, Bonnie Adrian has produced a model ethnography of media-saturated contemporary life. Ethnographically adventurous, analytically smart, and warmly human, this book cleverly unpacks the ways women’s canny choices in Taiwan are forged at the intersection of everyday worlds of inter-generational tension, fantasies fed by a keenly competitive local culture industry, and global imagery tied to the transnational beauty industry. Unlike many who work on globalization, Adrian has not lost sight of the ways that gender and family are still at the heart of people’s social worlds and women are not victims."—Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Veiled Sentiments and Writing Women’s Worlds
With a wedding impending, the Taiwanese bride-to-be turns to bridal photographers, makeup artists, and hair stylists to transform her image beyond recognition. They give her fairer skin, eyes like a Western baby doll, and gowns inspired by sources from Victorian England to MTV. An absorbing consideration of contemporary bridal practices in Taiwan, Framing the Bride shows how the lavish photographs represent more than mere conspicuous consumption. They are artifacts infused with cultural meaning and emotional significance, products of the gender- and generation-based conflicts in Taiwan’s hybrid system of modern matrimony. From the bridal photographs, the book opens out into broader issues such as courtship, marriage, kinship, globalization, and the meaning of the "West" and "Western" cultural images of beauty. Bonnie Adrian argues that in compiling enormous bridal albums full of photographs of brides and grooms in varieties of finery, posed in different places, and exuding romance, Taiwanese brides engage in a new rite of passage—one that challenges the terms of marriage set out in conventional wedding rites. In Framing the Bride, we see how this practice is also a creative response to U.S. domination of transnational visual imagery—how bridal photographers and their subjects take the project of globalization into their own hands, defining its terms for their lives even as they expose the emptiness of its images.
With the comprehensive, invaluable advice found in these illustrated pages, a bride can figure out what she wants from her wedding photography. Does she want a traditional style, or more of a journalistic feel? Will time be allotted for formal portraits of family and the bridal party? Which gowns, flowers, veils, makeup, and poses will look the best in photos'. Brides-to-be can examine every option, and learn just what they need to know about technical choices including the pros and cons of digital photography. From different packages to ordering enlargements and albums, they’ll get the scoop on how to use their time wisely, look their best, get the most for their money, deal with overtime, and even tip properly.
Anna is excited to be the flower girl at her aunt’s wedding, but that morning she wakes up and ... achoo! “Don’t sneeze at the wedding!” everyone warns her, but will their remedies work?
This useful guide helps couples make smart decisions every step of the way, from selecting a photographer to choosing dress styles and colors, bouquets, and shades of makeup that positively impact portraits. 50 color photos.
In Wedding Storyteller, Volume 1: Elevating the Approach to Photographing Wedding Stories, photographer and educator Roberto Valenzuela delivers what so many of his readers have been asking for: a book specifically dedicated to helping photographers improve their wedding photography. A wedding photographer himself, Roberto built his business from the ground up based on high-quality imagery that tells a compelling and beautiful story of his clients’ most important day.
This is not a standard wedding photography book. In Wedding Storyteller, you will not find a collection of “looks,” which neither inspire nor teach you anything. You will also not find a wedding shot list—at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, this first volume of the three-part Wedding Storyteller series goes beyond the superficial and dives deeply into the truly important topics, themes, and subject matter you need to learn about in order to drastically elevate your wedding photography. Most importantly, Roberto stresses the crucial role that storytelling plays in creating compelling, meaningful, and unique photographs for your clients.
In this book, Roberto has created a unique approach that anyone can learn to implement. Roberto’s “wedding storyteller skill components” system is divided into four sections:
• Foundation Components: Location Techniques. Learn how to conquer the locations you encounter as a wedding photographer. Roberto teaches you how to work with light, context, clutter, walls, depth, and other compositional elements such as frames and reflections.
• Foundation Components: People Techniques. Weddings are often high-energy, high-stress environments; your attitude and behavior have a huge impact on your ability to succeed as a photographer. Roberto discusses the crucial people skills you need to know and also teaches his unique approach to “situational posing” and group posing.
• Storyteller Approach Components. Roberto discusses the five approaches he uses to build a “wedding story” for his clients. These five approaches are: photojournalism, interactive photojournalism, stylized aware posing, stylized unaware posing, and story development.
• Expert Components. The final section builds and expands on everything covered in the previous components, as Roberto addresses such topics as Emotionally Valuable People (EVP), lens choices, helper light, posing patterns (and when to break them), capturing “peak action,” achieving a unique perspective, and creating multi-layered stories within a single photograph.
At a wedding, each photograph has the opportunity to convey a special moment and contribute to the rich, visual story of your clients’ most important day. As the photographer, you are both the director and the documentarian of that story. With Wedding Storyteller, Volume 1, by your side, you finally have a book that teaches you the skills you need to learn in order to create amazing images and craft masterful stories filled with beauty, emotion, and meaning.
Add a bit of "as you wish" to your home with an officially licensed, deluxe poster set featuring the iconic characters and quotable lines of The Princess Bride. This officially licensed, deluxe poster book features 12 unique 8 X 10" removable art prints celebrating the beloved film. Fans will find images of treasured characters paired with their favorite lines, including: Inigo Montoya and "You keep using that word." Westley and "As you wish." Vizzini and "Inconceivable!" And more! Ready for framing or washi-taping to your walls, these posters offer fans of the cult-classic the perfect way to show off their love of Princess Buttercup, the Dread Pirate Roberts, and the kingdom of Florin.
The Routledge Companion to Photography and Visual Culture is a seminal reference source for the ever-changing field of photography. Comprising an impressive range of essays and interviews by experts and scholars from across the globe, this book examines the medium’s history, its central issues and emerging trends, and its much-discussed future. The collected essays and interviews explore the current debates surrounding the photograph as object, art, document, propaganda, truth, selling tool, and universal language; the perception of photography archives as burdens, rather than treasures; the continual technological development reshaping the field; photography as a tool of representation and control, and more. One of the most comprehensive volumes of its kind, this companion is essential reading for photographers and historians alike.
