Aloha!
I wanted to share a great news today :) Yuco, an editor for the biggest wedding magazine in Japan called Zexy contacted me for featuring my wedding photos from Hawaii a few months ago. I am always thankful that Zexy has been very kind of publishing my photos and sometimes even feature who I am and what I recommend these years. This time, they wanted to make this editorial about “new trends for Hawaii destination weddings”, and they were looking for hip and stylish photos from Hawaii - and they asked me to provide my favorite photos from 2018-2019.
It was very hard to choose which ones to send to them, especially because everybody’s eyes and preferences vary. So I decided to create a link where they can see all of my favorite photos so they can choose which ones should go on their editorial. They picked more than handful photos, but one of the photos caught their eyes - a drone shot from Kelly and Yoshi’s engagement shoot.
That shooting day was very memorable. Why? Because it was the date that Hawaii got a false missile alarm from North Korea. There had been strong tension in North Korea around that time, and that morning we heard very spooky alarm… supposedly from the city speakers, but for me just from my apartment speaker. They said there was a missile coming towards us and stay alerted. I was about to leave for our engagement shoot just before the alarm. So I called Kelly and Yoshi with a bit nervous and horrified feeling. We never talked on the phone, but I remember how comforting her voice was since she wasn’t panicky or scared at all. Just super chill. I asked her to stay with her family until any further notice from the news. Luckily, it turned to be a false alarm (or… maybe in fact they took care of it fast enough before reaching to Hawaii?), and we decided to meet an hour later.
When we showed up to the beach, the weather was perfect. Kelly and Yoshi, a super cute couple showed up with a simple outfit and a beautiful bouquet her friend made for her. Yoshi was a bit shy in the beginning, but soon with Kelly’s big smiles, I got to capture lots of happy photos. At the end of the session, I took out my drone to take some bird’s-eye view shots. I saw a boat there in the water - I thought at first I would photoshop it out later on, so I just kept shooting it in the frames. When I saw the photos in Lightroom, actually the boat made the photo unique so I decided to keep it.
I think I made the right decision for keeping the boat in this photo. This is now one of my favorite photos from Hawaii, and I have been using it for my business cards and also on my website. Then this time, Yuco’s eyes got drawn to this photo in bunch of others. I was so stoked to hear that she wanted to use it for the editorial cover page!
A photo is just a photo, however, it gets more meanings and values when people like it. I really felt fortunate that more than just my couple who are in the photo but also an magazine editor enjoyed this piece and wanted to share with numbers of their readers nation-wide. If you were interested in seeing the magazine in person, come visit my office or you can also find it at book stores including Japanese Amazon.com.
Thank you for all your support and love always!!