Rangefinder Magazine
February 2005

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Profile: Alisha & Brook Todd by Peter Kotsinadelis
Oprah's "Fantasy Wedding Dreams Come True"

Yes, giveaway. That was the name Oprah Winfrey gave to her fantasy wedding that spared no expense. Six couples had to compete to win this nationally televised dream wedding, which took place at the Hotel Bel-Air in Beverly Hills, CA, with only one couple selected as bride and groom. Kodak, a major sponsor of the event, was charged with hiring photographers for the event and offered the assignment to Alisha and Brook Todd of Aptos, CA.

Alisha and Brook Todd, a married couple for eight years, have been involved in photography for more than a decade. They are members of WPPI and have been honored with numerous awards. Brook was honored with the Grand Award for Photojournalism and First Place for Wedding Photojournalism, while Alisha has received the Accolade of Photographic Mastery. Alisha and Brook’s images have also been featured in WPPI Monthly and magazines including Grace Ormonde Wedding Style, Islands Weddings & Honeymoons and Elegant Bride. Their unique photojournalistic style has found many satisfied clients around the world.

Early in her photographic career, Alisha explains, she had a difficult time conforming to traditional wedding photography. This motivated her to develop her own documentary, photojournalistic style. As time went on Alisha found that this relaxed style better suited her and provided her clients with spontaneous images that conveyed the story of their wedding day. Her style and images quickly found favor among couples invoking memories of the event that at times were overlooked by traditional wedding photography.

Brook Todd had met Alisha early in her career, and the couple eventually fell in love and married. At first he assisted her on various assignments and at the same time began to develop a similar yet complementary photographic style. Eventually Brook moved from assistant to full-time photographer. The couple soon established a studio bearing both their names and specialized in what the couple refers to as “fine art weddings.”

Equipment of choice for Alisha and Brook are Canon 35mm EOS-3 SLRs loaded with Kodak film. They use a variety of Canon glass, ranging from a very wide 14mm f/2.8L to a fast 85mm f/1.2L. They also rely on Canon zoom lenses from the popular 17–35mm f/2.8L to a 70–200mm f/2.8L and 35–350mm zoom. For flash and bounce flash photography they use Canon’s 550EX. As for film selection, “Our images are about 70 percent black and white and 30 percent color right now. We use Kodak BW400CN and TMax 3200 for our black-and-white images, and Portra 800 and 400 VC or UC for color,” Alisha notes. “While we primarily shoot 35mm film, we do use medium format on occasion for family portraits.” Although Alisha and Brook have contemplated moving to digital photography, right now they view film as reliable and have little reason to change from something that works so well for their business.

So how did the couple get connected with Oprah’s “Fantasy Wedding Dreams Come True”? According to Alisha and Brook, their relationship with Kodak led to the company approaching them about photographing the wedding. Once they agreed, Harpo Inc., the production company for the Oprah Winfrey Show, reviewed their web site and gave Kodak the nod.

“A good web site is key to a really successful photography business. You need to change the images and keep it fresh since it advertises you and your business to a worldwide audience. Our web site provided Harpo with an easy means to review our work.” Their web site, www.alishabrook.com/, received more than twice the amount of hits on the day the wedding was televised. The images taken by Alisha and Brook were also shown on television and prompted Oprah to acknowledge the couple as “fabulous photographers capturing every moment.”

Alisha and Brook wanted to treat this wedding with the same high standards as all their weddings, but one major difference was their not being able to meet the future bride and groom until the day before the wedding at the wedding rehearsal. But shortly thereafter at the rehearsal dinner, held at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, Alisha and Brook began working as exclusive photographers for this part of the overall event. “Usually we like to build relationships with the bride and groom, but in this case that proved difficult,” states Alisha.

Additional complications came when Harpo Productions and celebrated event planner Colin Cowie informed Alisha and Brook that the television cameras were the number one priority for this event and that Alisha and Brook needed to stay out of their way. “The television cameras and huge video lights were placed everywhere in order to cover the event. We had to be aware of them at all times. All this added to the pressure we were feeling, but regardless, we truly wanted to do our best work. Our objective was to stay out of the way but get the shot. Our concern was that the video cameras were trying to do the same thing, so we had to be a more careful than usual.”

One unexpected benefit Alisha and Brook pointed to was that with lighting placed everywhere for the event, they could shoot without flash by relying on the television lighting much of the time. While Kodak did provide each guest with a Kodak digital camera at the wedding rehearsal, these cameras were taken away during the event and returned to the guests later. This was done to ensure there were no disruptions while the television cameras recorded the event, later televised on the Oprah show November 16, 2004.

“Even when Shania Twain was singing or when trumpeter Chris Botti was performing, we did not have a chance to sit and enjoy it as a guest would have, since we were busy working,” says Alisha. “Overall we took 117 rolls of 36-exposure film, totaling more than 4200 images. We met with the printer that evening who worked through the night to print all the images. We then arranged them in proof books that were shipped overnight to Kodak along with the negatives and high-resolution scans of all the images on CDs. The bride and the groom were actually the last to see the images. But with all that was entailed, this was definitely a dream wedding to photograph!”

Some of the images from the fantasy wedding can be found on Oprah’s web site—accessible through a link from Alisha and Brook’s bio on their web site, www.alishabrook.com/.

The couple points to a favorite quote of theirs from Andrew Carnegie, “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” And fun is something that has never left them and clearly shows in their work.

Fantasy Wedding—No Small Event!
The fantasy wedding was talked about on the Oprah show for weeks prior to the televised event and hailed by Oprah as, “The most spectacular event you will ever see.” Thousands of couples wrote in, but the show’s producers only chose six couples to compete, with one couple winning the fantasy wedding.

More than 30 vendors participated with master wedding planner Colin Cowie hired to put together this extravagant event. Colin’s crew of more than 200 specialists were dedicated for 36 hours to decorating the dinner tent and transforming the ballroom in the Hotel Bel-Air into a nightclub for the evening.

For this event, Cowie’s crew decorated a white outdoor gazebo with 5000 roses flown in from South America that framed the bride and groom during the ceremony. In the dinner tent hundreds more roses were hung from the ceiling as if they were floating in air. More than a thousand orchid blossoms were flown in from Amsterdam. In all, more than 15,000 flowers were flown in from all over the world and put in place. Large quantities of linens and china were needed and more than 2000 yards of amber satin and rust chiffon were draped to line the ceiling of the dinner tent.

The bride wore a Vera Wang bridal gown; one of only five custom wedding gowns Vera Wang makes each year. The gown was made from 18 yards of silk duchess satin and took nearly 500-hours to hand stitch. Vera Wang also provided the bride’s jewelry and shoes. Ermenegildo Zegna provided a $5000 made-to-measure custom tuxedo for the groom and also provided off-the-rack tuxedos and cufflinks for groomsmen. Dozens of bottles of Perrier Jouet champagne were ordered at more than $125 each, and 15 chefs spent a week preparing the food for this grand event, with 100 hours alone spent creating a magnificent five-tier chocolate and caramel wedding cake.

Oprah introduced the surprise entertainer, Shania Twain, who sang her popular “You’re Still The One,” the bride’s favorite song. Jazz trumpeter Chris Botti played his version of the hit “When I Fall in Love,” providing additional entertainment. The successfully planned event was aired on the Oprah Winfrey Show: “Fantasy Wedding Dreams Come True” on Tuesday, November 16, 2004.

Alisha and Brook Todd will be speaking at WPPI 2005. The name of their program is “Film, Fine Art & Photojournalism,” and it will be presented on Tuesday, March 22, at 9:00 a.m.

Peter Kotsinadelis is a writer/photographer living in Pleasanton, CA. He may be reached at peterk727@gmail.com.