Weddings: Getting "The Shot"

Getting "The Shot"

To a bride and groom, what goes into a great wedding photo is pure magic—an inexplicable mix of mood, lighting, setting, and photographer mojo. Wedding photographers, on the other hand, know that it takes just a little bit more than hoping for something great to happen when you hit the shutter button. Here, our photographers share some of their favorite images from the past year and why they were so taken by them.

 

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Weddings: Best Bridal Blogs

Best Bridal Blogs

For some brides, the hunt for wedding inspiration takes place on a daily basis. There's no shortage of unique ideas, perfect details, and amazing wedding photos out in the world. Nor is there a shortage of wedding blogs devoted to sifting through all of them and bringing the best ones to light every day. Here are our favorites.

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Weddings Issue: Front-of-Book Items

Our annual, stand-alone weddings issue just arrived—one of my favorites of the year. (This year, I've been promoted to senior editor.) Here are some of the front-of-book items (in full) I wrote for this issue. You can see them online here and here.

 

Band of Bold

 

Simple, unadorned wedding band may work for some brides, but you might be on the hunt for something more unique. You wear your wedding ring every day, after all. Consider these two rings, which give you more than just a symbolic reminder of your spouse. The first, made by Fabuluster and available on Etsy, uses a patented process to reproduce an actual fingerprint on the inside or outside of a silver, gold, platinum, or palladium wedding band. (Talk about one-of-a-kind.) You might not be able to hold hands all day, but you can walk around with his fingerprint around your finger (prices start at $210; etsy.com/shop/fabuluster). Or, if you want to stealthily steal glances at your affianced's face, there's the Cameo by Rux. On first glance, it looks like a normal wedding band with a few stylish ridges. But, if you look at it straight on from the side, the ridges actually form the silhouette of you're beloved's face, with a cameo-style outline of the forehead, nose, lips, and chin. Yes, the rings are really made using a photograph of your side profile (prices start at $1,700; cameobyrux.com). Colorful resin bangle bracelets can be ordered to match ($350).

 

Just Your Cup of Cake

 

Sometimes, a cupcake just can't cut it. To achieve the single-size portion and portability of a cupcake, you have to sacrifice the crunchy, fruity, fluffy, and otherwise structurally unstable layers that traditional cakes can provide. Never fear: The Brooklyn-based Bee's Knees Baking Company, which delivers to Westchester, has developed a way for couples to have their moist and sticky cakes and eat them neatly, too. Their cake-cups take single-serve portions of delicious layer cakes and puts them in either Champagne flutes or heavy-bottomed whiskey glasses (which can be customized for favors). Made from locally sourced ingredients, flavors include gingerbread layered with eggnog frosting and roasted walnuts, yellow cake with strawberry cayenne jam and peanut butter mousse ("PB&J"), chocolate cake infused with salted caramel and topped with a English-pecan-toffee crumble, and southern pecan pie infused with bourbon and chocolate, among others. For more information, call (718) 316-3092 or visit beeskneesbakingco.com.

 

Takes the Cake (Topper)

 

When you imagine a wedding cake, you inevitably think of the cake topper—the shining couple smiling down from the uppermost tier. Who are those people? Chances are, the out-of-the-box cake-topping couple bears no resemblance to you or the kind of wedding you're trying to create. No longer. Milk Tea cake toppers, available on Etsy, are fully customizable, matching (if you choose) the bride's and groom's attire, hairstyle and accessories, wedding color scheme—you can even add additional family members and pets. (Yes, there are finally cake toppers for brides with glasses and grooms with beards!) "I literally fell into making cake toppers," says Milk Tea founder/creator Brandi Thanaritiroj. "I had made one for my friend's wedding back in May of last year and just liked creating them. I come from a heavy fashion background, and when the economy hit our original business started to slow down so I thought, why not give the wedding toppers a try on Etsy? It seemed to really take off." Cake toppers start at $170 and can be found at etsy.com/shop/bthanari.

 

Be Prepared

 

You practice your vows. You've tried and re-tried on the dress. How else can you make sure you're totally prepared for the wedding? By picking up one of Ms. and Mrs.'s Wedding Day Survival Kit. The metal suitcase comes with everything you might need but would overlook otherwise: clear nail polish, extra deodorant, a sewing kit, stain remover, super glue, double-sided hem tape, extra earring backs, corsage pins, and even backup wedding bands.  Or, be the best bride ever and get the chic mini versions as bridesmaids gifts, which come in cool metallic colors that'll probably match their dresses ($49 for full kit, $16 for minis, msandmrs.com).

 

New Show Review: Whitney

'Whitney' Feels Like a Step Backwards for Women in TV

"Cummings’ background notwithstanding, ideally, Whitney might be a step forward for women in television, both on-screen and behind the scenes. It would follow in the tradition of other NBC shows Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock, comedies that are produced by women and focused on fully realized female characters living life on their own terms in a world that resembles the real one. Instead, with its stilted scenes, canned laughter, and handwringing about marriage, Whitney feels more like a step backward."

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

PopMatters' 100 Essential Directors: Oliver Stone

As part of PopMatters' survey of 100 essential directors, I did a brief piece about Oliver Stone.

The 100 Essential Directors Part 9: Victor Sjöström to Luchino Visconti

Oliver Stone

Underrated: Nixon (1995) and W. (2008). These two films, though controversial, are not as easy to argue about or as quick to ruffle feathers as JFK. And, though political, they don’t touch the same kind of raw, emotional nerve as a subject like the Vietnam War, like Stone did in Platoon and Born of the Fourth of July (1989). As a result, they’re both overlooked, a shame considering what Stone manages to accomplish in them: painting a human, even sympathetic, portrait of a figure that stands for everything he’s against personally. The two imperial presidents are cast in very different lights: Stone’s Nixon, in his quest for power, causes his own undoing, while his George W. Bush is almost totally powerless, haplessly flubbing his way through his own presidency. And yet Stone manages empathy for them both, and gets award-worthy performances out of Anthony Hopkins and Josh Brolin in the process.

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September Cover Story: Westchester vs. The City

Westchester vs. The City

For the September cover story, I wrote and edited a meaty package comparing Westchester County to New York City. The intro explains it this way:

"At some point, you made a choice between urban living and suburban living. For some of you, the debate between the two ended the second you put down roots in Westchester. Maybe you never had doubts to begin with. For others, the struggle continues within. Every time you pay your tax bill, you think that you may have been better off with a cute little condo in Brooklyn Heights. (But would you have had to give up your washer/dryer for the indignity of the coin-op machine in the basement?) Then again, when you notice that you inadvertently left the house unlocked—again—and return to find your possessions untouched, you might revel in suburbia’s relative safety, and congratulate yourself for making such a smart choice.

It’s time to put the debate to rest. We may wonder about it every day, but how does life in New York City really compare to our suburban Westchester existences? We pit urban and suburban living head-to-head, piling in as many of the pertinent stats and facts as we could, to put the arguing to rest once and for all. Here, our (completely unbiased) findings."


The rest of the package includes

...a comparison of housing costs in the two areas.
...a head-to-head match-up of amusement parks, public parks, music halls, historic houses, and art museums.
...a look at demographics and statistics.
...words from a chef about why he chose Westchester as the spot to open his restaurant (and a restaurant comparability chart).
...a comparison of crime statistics.
...a list of rejoinders to win Westchester vs. City cocktail-party spats.
...a side-by-side check of incidental costs, such as library fees or movie tickets.
...a Q&A with Westchester-to-City transplant Sloane Crosley.
...a look at the differences in commuting.
...a comparison of the retail landscape, with a list of which chain stores excel in each area.
...thoughts on how the NYC nightlife mostly trounces Westchester's, but how Westchester has more green space.
...three different first-person essays from writers who have lived in both areas.

Read the entire package by clicking through the links, or downlaod the PDF above.

Fall Arts Preview: Fall Movies

Fall Arts Preview: Fall Movies

"Anonymous

Everyone knows that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, Macbeth, and all those other great plays. But, to paraphrase the Royal Tenenbaums, what this movie presupposes is—maybe he didn’t? Director Roland Emmerich, best known for his disaster movies like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, offers a melodrama that asserts that Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford, is the true scribe whose work  launched a million high-school essays.

 

The Artist

In the era of 3D, IMAX, and surround sound, it seems almost woefully backwards to recommend a movie that’s silent. Yes, silent. And black-and-white. And not in widescreen. The Artist is a new French film that takes place in Hollywood during the silent-film era, and it attempts to recreate that experience for current audiences. It’s a perfect antidote for those suffering from loud, color-saturated, quick-cut comics-movies fatigue."


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Fall Arts Preview: Fall Books

 

Fall Arts Preview: Fall Books


"Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick

It’s an American classic and all, but, ugh, 700 pages about a whale? Really? Nathaniel Philbrick, author of the equally seafaring In the Heart of the Sea, makes a case for why you should sit down and finally read something that’s a thousand times longer than a Facebook status.

 

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos

This young-adult novel comes to us from Jack Gantos—author of the Joey Pigza and Rotten Ralph books—and happens to be about a nose-bleeding, grounded-for-life character…named Jack Gantos. Things get even stranger when he’s conscripted to type out obituaries for his town’s elders, an entryway into the strangest summer he’s ever had. It’s an unusual coming-of-age tale without a wizard wand in sight—imagine that."

 

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Fall Arts Preview: Fall TV

 

Fall Arts Preview: Fall TV


"Terra Nova

This series is executive produced by Steven Spielberg and bears more than a passing resemblance to one of his biggest hits: Jurassic Park. In it, a futuristic society, having depleted the Earth of all resources, decides to go back to a prehistoric era to try the whole civilization thing again. Except this time, there are dinosaurs.

 

2 Broke Girls

It’s like The Odd Couple, if the genders were flipped and the whole thing took place in a Hollywoodized version of the hipster-infested Williamsburg. Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs play the titular broke girls, one a streetwise chick and the other a deposed trust-funder, and they form an unlikely alliance with a goal of saving up enough tips to open up—what else?—a cupcake bakery."

 

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