Rangefinder Magazine
March 2005

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The Last Word by David & Kassandra Beckstead
“The Dress, the Wind & the Waves”

Shooting in exotic locations has become our specialty in the last few years. This wonderful image happened to be from our very first destination wedding. This image and this wedding gave us the bug to travel.

We were on the island of Maui to shoot Jennifer and Dallas’s wedding. The wedding was at sunset on a golden beach. The challenge was to let Jennifer enjoy her day and not shoot her exclusively, non-stop.
The wedding was fantastic, and we couldn’t get enough of the beach, the blooms and the bodies!

Everybody was beautiful and happy and enjoying every minute of the barefoot ceremony.

Jennifer’s dress was one of the most beautiful wedding dresses we had ever seen. It exemplified the feel of the exotic destination of Maui. There was a light wind that constantly tossed her veil and dress to and fro. We spent too much time following the dress as it teased the sea. The dress seemed to have a mind of its own and followed the waves and shoreline.

Jennifer’s ability to model is evident in her relaxed demeanor as she walked down the beach. The dress patterned itself with the waves and and the shore in the form of beautiful “S” curves. We could not shoot enough. Capturing that feeling was one of our goals as we asked her to walk down the beach. The only obstacle we had was her two-year old son who also couldn’t get enough of the waves or her dress. We had as much fun photographing him as we did her! Other fun images we photographed were of Jennifer and Dallas playing in the light waves as they walked up and down the beach holding hands. We all walked up to a small hilltop for refreshments and family candids.

David shot this wedding with 2 Nikon D1Xs, and Kassandra used a Fuji FinePix S2 Pro. Both used Nikon lenses. This image was shot with a Nikon 70–200 f/2.8 VR. Neither of us used external lighting equipment or strobes until the nighttime reception.

At destination weddings we download our images to laptops, 40GB iPods, and burn the images to DVDs. We also bring enough CF cards so we don’t have to erase them until we back them up again on 300GB external drives.

Since that Maui wedding we have switched to Canon digital cameras—Mark IIs and 20Ds. We carry one 16–35mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.4 and 70–200mm f/2.8 IS lens each, and all of our camera gear is carry-on luggage, fitting into two medium-sized photo backpacks—nice and easy with plenty of backup equipment!

We have photographed many destination weddings since this Maui trip. But we will always remember this dress and how it flowed so well with the light winds and waves. We have not seen a dress like this since, but that is what makes these kinds of weddings so cool! They never seem to be the same!