The Orange Turtle Photography Blog - San Diego Wedding and Engagement Photographer

After S & T’s wedding at Balboa Park (see the previous post), we headed over to Coronado beach for an aftershoot session.

It was a gorgeous day - the sky was picture perfect!

It was a fun day and a fun session. Shandana and Thorsten - congrats to you guys! I hope you guys can come back and visit San Diego ‘the paradise’ again soon!

After their reception was over, they decided to take advantage of the golden hour and go to the gliderport (next to UCSD campus) for some more pictures.

Her veil was so amazing…of course we have to take some shots with it!

Look at them! so happy together…congrats you guys! You guys made it!

What is a “Trash the Dress” or “Aftershoot?” A Trash The Dress session or Aftershoot is a photo session that takes place after the wedding. It’s like an engagement shoot in that you spend an hour or two with your photographer just concentrating on taking photos.

Why then do they call it Trash The Dress?

It’s called “Trash The Dress” because brides will be “less careful” with their wedding dress now that the wedding is over. Many will have no qualms in getting the dress dirty or jumping into a swimming pool with the dress on because the wedding is over! Photographers love this because it gives them the opportunity to take pictures of some really crazy stuff that you don’t see every day. How often do you see a bride in a beautiful white dress and a groom dressed up running into the ocean?

Do you do Trash The Dress?

Yes of course! We call our session an “Aftershoot” because we don’t want to put any pressure on anybody to trash their dress. Of course if you like those types of photos, we will be happy to take them for you. I still believe that the photos should be about the romance and fun that a couple has with each other. The focus of our photos in engagement shoots and aftershoots is always the couple’s interaction with each other. If the couple is having fun together by trashing their clothes, we definitely want to capture that… but if its not in their personality we can leave it alone.

Why are Aftershoots great?

Aftershoots are awesome because they give both the bride and groom and the photographers time to concentrate on each other. On a wedding day, we may get 30 minutes to photograph the couple by themselves if we’re lucky. But isn’t the wedding all about the relationship of the bride and groom? Often times the wedding is not just about the bride and groom, but it’s about the bride and groom celebrating with family and friends. So a lot of the day is focused on the bride and groom with family and friends rather than just the couple focusing on each other. That’s why we like to do aftershoots. It gives us 1 or 2 hours to focus just on the couple and capturing the fun, joy and sweet romance between them. We have time to go to different locations. The couple has time to relax and therefore we get more natural looking photos. And all this happens while they are clothed in their wedding day garb, so the photos are very unique– unlike any photos you’ll get the rest of your life.

Our friends Ben and Marina came all the way down to Palm Springs from San Jose to model for us. We were so glad that they came because 1. we love them. They are so fun to hang out with. 2. They are great models. 3. Marina has been wanting to take some TTD pictures since she got married! So it was a perfect opportunity for them to work with us and other photographers!

and dinner at the end of the day.

it was great fun.

Well, that concludes our Palm Springs Trash The Dress outing! Thanks again for everyone who came out and made it such a fun event!