Author Archives: aliceandjames

Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series

May 12, 2010 – 12:44 am

A few weeks ago, we photographed a Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series event at Provocateur. These events give local artists the opportunity to showcase their work while also raising money for Russell Simmons’ Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation. Bacardi has hired us to cover a bunch of things actually and it’s all due to one of our past brides. Thank you, Christine, for your continued trust in us!

Here’s the artist Jason Faulkner with the bottle he painted.

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The bottle was originally a Bombay Sapphire bottle that Jason modified.  He added brilliant colors and scratches to make the bottle into his version of a cat’s scratching post. 

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The idea is that the scratching post bottle would go with his paintings of cats, which he also exhibited at the event.

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To hear Jason’s thoughts and the inspirations behind his work, click on the image below.  Be sure to turn on your speakers to hear Alice interview Jason!

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Maura & Pete’s Long Island Wedding at the Royalton at Roslyn Country Club

May 2, 2010 – 12:14 am

Maura & Pete got married on May 1, 2009 and had their reception at the Royalton at Roslyn Country Club.  To the happy couple – happy anniversary and hope Pete found a good restaurant for you to celebrate in tonight!

 It drizzled a bit last May 1, but as you can see, the fun-loving Kemptons didn’t let the rain get them down.

 bride and groom outside roslyn country club

bride and groom dances inside roslyn country club

This is our favorite picture of the bridal party.  Their reflection on the limo’s hubcap makes for a very cool-looking photo, don’t you think?

wedding party reflection on hubcap

The happy couple and their friends loved to do shots, so much so that the toasts were done with little shot glasses as well.

toast with shot glass

Maura and Pete had a very fun group of friends and family and the Royalton floor shook with all of their dancing and butt-slapping.  These 2 groomsmen have obviously done the butt-slapping before – they have the technique down to a science!

groomsmen dancing at roslyn country club

We had a great time capturing all the merrymaking that night and we’re happy to say that the Kemptons loved what we captured.  In Pete’s words, “all we can say is that we love them!  You two were amazing on our wedding day and in seeing the first couple of shots we are amazed that you really were able to capture Maura and I as we were that day!  We cannot begin to thank both of you for making our day even more amazing!”

To see more of Maura and Pete’s wedding photos, click on the following image:

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Luciana & Denis’ NY Wedding at Marina Del Rey Caterers

April 24, 2010 – 7:06 pm

Next up in our “anniversary series” are Luciana & Denis. They got married at Marina Del Rey Caterers in the Bronx on April 18, 2009. To the happy couple – congrats and hope you had a fun first anniversary celebration in Aruba!

Luciana & Denis started their day with a Catholic mass in St. Barnabas Church in Long Island…

st barnabas church wedding ceremony

and ended with a reception at Marina Del Rey Caterers. Marina del Rey is in the Bronx, but with its beautiful pier, you’d think it was in a more exotic location!

wedding party at marina del rey caterers in bronx ny

bride and groom at marina del rey bronx

For those of you whom we’ve had the honor to meet, you know about our “wall of photos.” From our first meeting, Denis has been very keen to get on this “wall.” Well, Denis, we have to say…YES, we love your photos and in particular, the 2 below! One of these will be going up on our wall in the near future.

bride looks lovingly at groom during first dance

bride and groom kiss on dance floor at marina del rey bronx nyc

We’re always very happy to hear that our brides & grooms love their photos. According to Denis, ” I remember saying that if the wedding photos are half as nice as our engagement photos, we are in luck. These look even better. Thanks again for capturing this day and making it look as memorable as it was.”

To see more of Luciana & Denis’ wedding pictures, click on the image below.

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Bride Sues Wedding Photographer on Judge Joe Brown

April 18, 2010 – 12:47 am

We saw a great clip on YouTube the other day and decided that it was worth taking a break from our “anniversary series” to share.  It was  an episode on Judge Joe Brown where a bride had sued her wedding photographer.  Not sure if you’ve ever watched these small claims court TV shows, but Judge Alex and Judge Joe Brown can really draw you in!

This particular episode of Judge Joe Brown shows what can happen if you hire a ”very competitively-priced” (or in other words, cheap) wedding photographer.  As you can imagine, if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is.   In this case, the “professional photographer” had a consumer level camera and lenses and not professional grade equipment.  And, she wasn’t even knowledgeable enough to answer the judge’s questions on photography.  Unfortunately, due to her lack of skill and poor equipment, the bride didn’t get good photos of her ceremony.

We pride ourselves on our photography skills and the quality of our equipment.  They allow us to get great photos regardless of the circumstances on your wedding day. We have lenses that EACH cost more than all of the camera equipment that this so-called “photographer” uses to shoot weddings. 

We understand that everyone has a wedding budget, particularly in today’s economy.  And, it’s very easy in this digital age for someone to put up a website with a few good pics and call himself a professional wedding photographer.  How do you determine who is a tried and true good wedding photographer?  This is not an easy question to answer, but a good place to start is to look at more than just the few website images.  You should ask to see diverse samples from his or her portfolio covering all sorts of lighting scenarios.  At minimum, a good wedding photographer should be able to show you great photos taken in dimly-lit churches and midday sun.  You should also request to see examples from a wedding similar to yours. For example, outdoor ceremonies can be difficult to photograph depending on where the sun is at that time of day.  We weren’t available to shoot a friend’s wedding and she asked for our opinions on a few photographers that she was considering using.  We noticed that one of her choices only showed photos where natural sunlight was available.  There weren’t any photos in his portfolio of church ceremonies or evening receptions. This made us wonder “hmm…does this guy know how to use a flash?”  Natural daylight is great, but what if you don’t have any?

Hope you’ve found this information to be helpful!  Feel free to contact us if you have any questions on possible difficult lighting situations that your wedding might encounter.

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Salwa & Ahmed’s NJ Wedding at the Valley Regency

April 14, 2010 – 2:11 pm

We’d like to start our anniversary series with Salwa & Ahmed, who got married on April 5, 2009 and had their reception at the Valley Regency in New Jersey.  We knew quite a few people at the event since we had photographed the weddings of many of Salwa’s friends!  This is one of our favorite wedding photos of Salwa.  She was just about to get into her limo and we caught her in our side view mirror.

reflection of bride in side view mirror

Doesn’t Salwa look so happy here?  She and Ahmed are about to start their Zaffa.  Many of you reading this are probably saying “a what?”  A Zaffa is an Egyptian wedding march led by performers in colorful garb with tambourines and other instruments.  That’s part of the fun of our job - we get to see how different cultures and religions celebrate marriage.  We’ve found that wedding celebrations across different cultures have a lot in common.  It must be because love is universal AND we all like to party.

  egyptian bride at zaffa

Here’s Ahmed at the Zaffa with his wedding party.  You can see some of the performers with tambourines in the background.

groom at beginning of reception at valley regency wedding

Hmm…since most of them are kneeling, you can’t really see the groomsmen very well.  What is that we hear?  You want to see their handsome faces more clearly?  Voila!

cool groomsmen photo with swords

This is another fantastic Egyptian wedding custom- dancing with swords.  As you can see, Ahmed and his brother are very good at this.

groom dancing at valley regency wedding

In February, we called Ahmed and told him about a great anniversary gift idea we had for them.  Salwa loved the slide show we had put together of their wedding day highlights.  We asked Ahmed to say a few words and then, we added his voice and message to the slide show and sent it to them for their anniversary.  Our intuition paid off because Salwa loved it!  In Salwa’s words, “I looove everything!!…Thank you so much for being a part of the most amazing day of our lives- I really feel like we’re family and am a little sad we don’t have any more work to do together.”

To see the slide show we created, click on the image below.

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To Celebrate Our Wedding Anniversary, Special Rates for Happy Couples-To-Be

April 12, 2010 – 10:08 pm

We got married on May 28, 2006 and will be celebrating our fourth anniversary next month. As part of our celebration, we’d like to dedicate the next few blog postings to our newlyweds who will be celebrating their first anniversary in the next few months. Congrats to all of our happy couples!

Also, in honor of the occasion, we’d like to offer a “Thompson Anniversary Gift” of a 10% discount to all couples who hire us to photograph their 2010 wedding from now until May 31!

Contact us at team@funicostudios.com or (646) 234-8927 to find out more.

To see more of our work, visit our website at: www.funicostudios.com

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42Below Cocktail World Cup Round One

March 24, 2010 – 9:16 pm

We’ve photographed a few mixology competitions.  The latest was for the 42Below Cocktail World Cup competition.   Round 1 of the contest took place in 13 US cities and we photographed the one in NYC.  The event was held at the Cooper Square Hotel, which as you can tell, has a magnificent view of the Manhattan skyline.

42below cocktail world cup new york competition venue

NYC skyline view

Ten local bartenders showed the crowd and the judges what they could do with 42Below vodka.  Masa here brought some very enthusiastic fans to cheer him on.

bartender and his fans

It was fun to watch the bartenders put together their tasty treats. You would be amazed at some of ingredients they used, from raw egg whites to custom-baked cookies.  Yum, yum – cookies to make the sweet tooth happy!

bartender making drinks at 42below world cup round one

Congratulations are in order for to Sean Hord, the bartender in the above photo.  He was part of the USA team that just won the International 42BELOW Cocktail World Cup competition, which was held in Wellington, New Zealand.  Sean is a bartender at the very trendy PDT bar in New York city.

Looks like the judges really enjoy their jobs.  Who can blame them?

42below cocktail world cup judges

The judges told us at the beginning that the competition is not just about the drinks.  Presentation is also key.  Think they also told the contestants because one team really took the presentation element to heart.

bartender presentation

42Below is made from New Zealand water and as they say in New Zealand, “it’s all about ‘Love, Drinks and Rock n Roll, Baby!’.”  To see a slide show featuring the competition highlights, click on the image below.  Be sure to keep your speakers on because you don’t want to miss what Mr. funny man in the above picture said!

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Our Best 2009 Funico Wedding Photo…As Selected by You Folks…

March 8, 2010 – 3:54 pm

Thanks so much to everyone who voted in our 2009 best wedding photo contest! We were surprised that so many people participated and are delighted to see that 700+ votes were cast. A lot of people just voted for the image they liked, but some of the comments were priceless. The belly dancer (#14) in particular had lot of special admirers, but unfortunately, she didn’t receive any votes. The tally is complete and the results are (drum roll please):

#28 was the winner with 219 votes. Congrats to Linar & Mike!
#67 was a close second with 206 votes. Congrats also to Susan & Julius!

As the winning couple, we’d like to offer Linar & Mike a 16×20 gallery wrap of the image of their choice.

Since the contest was so close though, we’d also like to give the second-place couple a prize. We’d therefore like to give Susan & Julius a 16×20 print of their choice.

Thanks again to everyone who voted!

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Come Out and Support Cents of Relief at PARTY FOR A PURPOSE

March 4, 2010 – 12:49 pm

We are contributing our photography services for a charity event on March 11th, 2010. Come join us in supporting the Cents of Relief at PARTY FOR A PURPOSE — Empowering Victims of Trafficking through Health and Education. The party will be at the very hip 40/40 Club, located at 6 West 25th Street in Manhattan. It starts at 7PM with free vodka drinks for one hour. You can purchase tickets online for $25.00 by going to: http://tinyurl.com/ykmwvo7 or buy tickets at the door for $30 (cash only). They will also be providing a free mini day spa compliments of Aveda, free 1-week membership At Dolphin Fitness Clubs plus other valuable coupons.

Cents of Relief

More information about the event and this organization can be found at http://www.centsofrelief.org/party.html

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Contest for the Best 2009 Funico Wedding Photo

February 16, 2010 – 11:59 pm

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A new year started 2 months ago. On to new beginnings and new experiences. We’d like to take a few moments to reminisce about 2009 and announce our 2009 Best Funico Wedding Photo contest. The slide show below has our favorite wedding images from last year. We obviously couldn’t narrow them down. Help us select the best 2009 wedding photography image by casting your vote! CAST YOUR VOTE BY POSTING A COMMENT BELOW. Only 1 vote per person please. The name of each picture is the number below it. For example, the first photo is called “1.”

We’d like to give an award to the winning photo. The winning image will receive a complimentary 16X20 gallery wrap. Of course, if the winning couple prefers, we’d be happy to give them a 16X20 gallery wrap of another picture from their wedding (maybe they’d like to hang something else on their wall!) CONTEST WILL CLOSE AT 12AM ON 03/04/10.

We will post the results on 03/08/10.

We searched high and low for an appropriate song. After looking at a lot of “best 2009 song” lists, we decided on Beyonce’s “Sweet Dreams.” Great lyrics for newlyweds, don’t you think?

We had a lot of fun putting this together. It sure brought back a lot of memories. Hope you have fun watching the slide show! AND, DON’T FORGET TO CAST YOUR VOTE BY 03/04/10.

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AJAXed with AWP