I’m very excited to continue Ian and Jen’s wedding story! (want to start at the beginning? See the first day of their gorgeous Puerto Rico wedding!)

After spending a night drifting on the soft, warm Puerto Rico breeze, we woke up the next day ready to see more of Vieques! Ian and Jen welcomed the group to Sun Beach for the rehearsal and lunch. As we settled into the sand and waited for the rehearsal to start, some headed for the beach umbrellas and chairs, while others played in the water…

Soon, it was time for ‘official business’! Sandy of Weddings in Vieques herded the boys and girls into their places…

Jen made us all tear up by wiping tears from her own eyes… and immediately turned to the girls and exclaimed: “Don’t you cry during the wedding! You can cry now, but not during the wedding!”…which of course cracked us all up!

Finally, the plan was down pat, and it was time for fun in the sun!

The next photograph is very emotional for me. At a slow moment, I was chatting with Jen about her relationship with Ian and their soon-to-be marriage. I wanted to compliment them on their relationship and how they treated each other… I told her, honestly, that their love was so beautiful and special that they would always be among the most special people I have photographed, and I truely believed that they would have a happy and long marriage. Jen thanked me, and began to speak about how she and Ian tried very hard to always be kind and affectionate to each other… and as she started to talk about Ian- how sweet he is, how attentive he is, and how she felt about his love, she began to cry.

It was an odd moment for me, because as a person, I wanted to hug her at that beautiful moment moment- to laugh and to cry with her. But, as a photographer, I wanted so badly to take a photograph to preserve that moment- those ‘good tears’.

As you can see, my ‘photographer’ side won out over my ‘person’ side. I got to hug her after.

As the day got later, we left the beach behind.. but not before capturing a few photographs of the ‘locals’ first!

We were headed for the Bio Bay- by way of a street vendor selling, among other things, ‘coconut rings’. Since Ian and Jen were not able to have their wedding bands in time for the wedding, they took advantage of the opportunity to have a VERY special souvenir!

As night descended, and after a very bumpy ride through muddy, narrow roads, we arrived at the Bio Bay and began to ‘suit up’. As you can imagine, I was scared to take my camera along at first, and quickly asked each worker about the likelihood of tipping over. O.o But having been assured that the likelihood was minuscule (the kayaks we were going in were ‘ocean’ kayaks and very sturdy and reliable), and after plastic-ing all my gear (flash and camera with cards), I was ready to try!

It’s worth explaining here that dispite my flash in the photographs below, it was pitch black out- as it has to be in order to see the glow in the water the the Bio Bay is about. Once we got out in the water, (away from the headlights of the vans) it became impossible to auto focus the camera- and it was impossible to manually focus, as I couldn’t see any better than the camera’s AF engine could, haha! So, with Stephanie carefully wielding the flash, I set about *guessing* where each person might be and *guessing* the roundabout focus point I would need to get them in focus (it’s kind of like having 100 pairs of different strength glasses- one of which you need- in a room in which you can see almost nothing anyway!)… needless to say, it was a challenge- but one I loved!! Here’s my favorites from the bay:

Below on the right, you will see some examples of “lightpainting”- leaving the shutter open for so long (in a dark area) that moving people in the photograph are not captured, but bright light is captured as it moves. The heart in the second one was made by my assistant- the other lights were the Bio Bay workers, who were super excited to try lightpainting! Once I showed them the first photograph and the effect they had inadvertantly made by moving around the scene, they exclaimed “Can we do it again?!”- even wiggling and jumping aroud the scene to create the wild swirls below.

To end the night, some of us went to Duffy’s on the way back- a beach side restaurant we frequented there while in Esperanza, PR. It was a great end to a long, awesome day.

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04/10/11 UPDATE: You can now use the buttons below to navigate Ian and Jen’s PR wedding gallery and blog posts!