CT Wedding Photographer Val Nanovsky

I tend to avoid blogging about topics not directly related to wedding photography. But this one is well worth reading – especially for those of you looking for a creative professional to give your company image a strong visual presence.

I met Sarah last fall at one of the networking groups I was considering joining. Sarah owns Paolucci Illustration and Design. She is “a creator of illusions, characters, catalogs, logos and lifelike drawings”, as she calls herself. We hit it off right away – she is one of those people with such a warm personality you just can’t pass by.  A few weeks later we were already working on projects for each other.

I needed somebody to help me out with one of the brochures I was planning on having for the 2009-10 engagement season.  This wasn’t an easy one to do, let me tell you. I was envisioning a piece unlike any other wedding photographer’s brochure – in terms of design, shape, typography, you name it. Quite honestly, I was concerned that no one I knew back then could easily handle something like this. It was quirky, hard to produce; having it on paper involved quite a bit of explanation and tricky negotiations with the printer.

But wait until I saw the first draft of the design. Sarah nailed the main concept so brilliantly, elegantly and effortlessly… it took my breath away! In addition, she saved me so much effort finding a decent local printer to convert these ideas into a materialized product. Later on, somewhere after the 1500th revision (yeah, that’s me) I thought she was going to show up in front of my door with a gun in her hand – but she was still the same Sarah I knew – radiant, cheerful, open to suggestions,  always coming up with a fantastic new idea,  so so easy to work with. What can I say…

I’ve had the opportunity to meet all kinds of people through the years. But one rarely has the chance to work with someone as talented as Sarah Paolucci. The following shots were snapped at my place one cold February afternoon. In them you can recognize the true artist I am talking about – or so I hope. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Sarah Paolucci.

To claim you are green can be a tricky statement. The terms “green” and “eco” are so loosely used nowadays that  almost anyone wants to sell you something with the “green” and “eco” label. There are no defined rules as to what exactly “green”, “eco-friendly”, “earth-friendly” or “sustainable” mean. And yet, since green has evolved into a hot new trend, people are showing explosive interest in this area without really having any second thoughts about what really makes a particular vendor “green”.

I have chosen to become a green wedding photographer because of one simple reason: my heart is there. I love Nature, I treasure it deep down in my heart and I would give anything to protect it so that the generations after me would have the same opportunity to experience the best it has to offer. Being born on the other side of the Atlantic and having had the chance to travel quite a bit, I’ve seen such unworldly beauty few people have ever witnessed. My CT wedding photography business is closely tied with that because it gives me the opportunity to combine the best of the two worlds – landscape photography, and on the other hand, modern wedding photography – into one finished product touching the most delicate parts in people’s hearts. (continue reading…)

I am not much of a hip-hop dancer, but I did try.  With the right tools anything is possible – kudos to the folks @JibJab.

Happy New Year my friends! Here’s to a peaceful, healthy and prosperous 2010.

Cheers!

- Your Pal Val

Hi folks & Happy Friday!

OK, I admit, I’ve been undercover for a while. It’s been really busy the last couple of weeks.

Part of the craziness was PDN Photo Plus Conference and Expo in New York City last week. Some folks have been asking me lately about PDN and what it’s all about. In short, it is the biggest yearly event in the photo world – between 20 000 and 30 000 visitors. It is a really cool place to see what is new in the industry, meet with friends, make new ones, network with other photographers, vendors, and so much more. And the conference – it’s worth every single penny. Hands down, I have learned so much from these classes that I don’t know where I would be without that knowledge.

Yesterday afternoon I had a chance to sit down in front of the computer and quickly edit the clips I captured last Saturday with my little point & shoot Fuji (it’s always a great idea to have one of these in your pocket). Here’s the final video.

Excited? Heck, I am!

Hi everybody,

It’s been a while since I last updated VALDORAMA and I am really excited to announce this last update. It is quite an unusual one – it almost doubled the size of the whole web site with 9 new galleries and 300+ images, many of which have never been posted on the blog.

New galleries:

Wedding Gallery 3 (with big updates in 1 & 2 )
Valdorama GREEN 1
Valdorama GREEN 2
Valdorama GREEN 3
The Beauty
The Venue
The Deco
The Fun
The Kids

Happy browsing,

Val

Hey everybody,

It’s been such a whirlwind here in Europe these past three weeks. I am totally psyched. Time is never enough here – there is so much to see and do. We started off from Barcelona and Madrid, went through Paris, and ended up with an awesome trip around Bulgaria. I’ve been photographing extensively – mostly wedding photography  - engagement sessions, full weddings, trash the dress sessions, did some architecture photography for my personal collection.

So many things are different and unique here. There was a full-blown Christian Orthodox wedding and another mixed Indian/Christian Othodox wedding. I took awesome images of couples high in the mountains, next to gorgeous waterfalls,  jumping off picturesque cliffs on the Black Sea coast, trashing the dress in the sea, driving a vintage Corvette at full speed on the narrow streets in Varna and so so much more. The next few weeks I’ll be editing all that great material in Connecticut and will be posting many of the images – keep checking the blog for new posts.

Within an hour we’ll be heading to the airport and will be home soon after that. I can’t wait for the rendez-vous with my own pillow – it’s been a while ;-)

Hugs and kisses to everybody,

Val

Everything has been happening so fast lately and I never had a chance to upload the pictures from my planned and unplanned European trip. The following galleries contain a small part of these photos and will give you a rough idea what I saw through the lens. Enjoy.

The Eiffel Tower through a fisheye lens, some time around midnight:

La Pedrera from below – Barcelona, Spain:

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