Sunken Meadow Pavilion Wedding Photos
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Caity + Mike
Every time I go to Sunken Meadow Beach—a New York State Park just 15 minutes from our house—I wonder why I don’t go there more often. It’s a beach on the north shore of Long Island, which means it has more shells, rocks, and pebbles, than its south shore counterparts, but it also has a nice wooden boardwalk, clean sand, and a gorgeous view of the Long Island Sound. Caity and Mike’s wedding at the Pavilion was the first time I photographed a wedding at Sunken Meadow State Park and it won’t be the last.
Golden Hour Sunset Pictures
It’s funny how good (and bad) wedding weather tends to come in bunches. For the beginning of the season I remember a stretch of rainy, cold, cloudy days. Then came the unbearable heat wave that lasted pretty much all summer. Finally, the last few weeks gave way to slightly cooler temperatures with impressionist-esque cloud formations. The fluffy skies created some absolutely surreal, dreamy golden hours like the one Mike and Caity got. Those moments are some of my favorite to share with our couples; where we all get to step back from the party for a moment and revel at the beauty of the day and our lives. Gratitude always feels good.
Downtown Northport Wedding Photos
Yet another first for me was photographing a wedding and family formals in my hometown of Northport, NY. Northport is a cute harbor town that has old trolley lines down the center of Main street, where restaurants, retail and ice cream shops, and delis line the sidewalk. At the base of the hill is a parkside marina with a dock, playground, pavilion, and lots of green grass for picnics and pups to play. I had my pre-prom photos down in this area and I couldn’t help but be transported back in time when we were photographing Mike and Caity. Fun fact is that Caity and I went to the same high school and it rained on her prom day so she has always wanted to do photos downtown Northport–her wedding at St. Phillip Neri was the perfect opportunity!
From Photographers to Friends
Probably the most underrated part of our job as wedding photographers is getting to know our couples and their families. We are constantly welcomed into tight knit circles and given the license to document relationships as they evolve in real time. Mike is actually the brother of one of our previous brides, Kristen, and seeing her and her partner (also Mike) at the wedding was such a fun shared experience. The way I see it, most people in 9-5 jobs don’t get to constantly meet new people at work, let alone make lasting relationships. Photographing weddings as an extrovert is a cheat code to ignite creativity, connection, and appreciation for both the finer and simpler things in life.
vendors
Photography | Apollo Fields
Venue | Sunken Meadow Pavilion | Kings Park, NY
Dress | All Who Wander | Arlo
Boots | North Fork Bridal Shoppe | Miranda Lambert Idyllwind
Florist | Black Dahlia
DJ | Absolute Entertainment
Suit | Black Tux
Rings | Squires Jewelers
Hair | Ink & Ivy | Nikki Lee
Makeup | Laura Brooke
Cake | Dortoni
Wrapping up the night
With Caity and Mike! We had a great time with these guys!! Reach out for your own wedding photography below:
2021 Recap: Our Year in Review "What The Hell Just Happened!?"
Destination Wedding Photographer Based Out Of NY | Husband And Wife Wedding Photographers | Editorial Engagement and Wedding Photography NYC
2021 Recap: Our Year in Review "What The Hell Just Happened!?"
It is 9PM on a Tuesday and I am about six hours into editing a big job. The job is from our second-to-last wedding of the year and I’m only about 30% the way through the gallery when my mind begins to drift and reminisce on all the gigs we had this year: 54 weddings and at least as many other sessions, across thirteen different states. I look up from my monitor and think to myself, what the hell just happened??
What I mean by that is, what the hell was 2021!? What actually just happened??
This was bar none the craziest wedding season that I’ve seen in my seven-ish years of doing this, and that’s not even taking into consideration the fact that we had a tiny and completely dependent baby throughout the whole thing. It was the perfect storm, really– take all the covid rescheduled weddings (for us, approx 35) and then pile them on top of our organic biz, now funnel them down into the finite number of Saturdays in a year, and now hand pluck out all the vendors who peaced out of weddings after 2020, and you have yourself the 2021 wedding season.
Oh, and now add the baby back into the equation.
See our grand plan back in the beginning of 2020 was to go HAM on weddings while I was pregnant and then chillsies for 2021 when we had the baby. You know, take a *few* local weddings and some passion projects here and there, but sort of coast. Enjoy family life. Do newborn stuff, whatever that is.
Of course, the great cosmic joke was on us when the pandemic totally took us out at the knees. We were forced to halt everything, completely freeze, postpone, revise and re-plan everything. Not a single gig was unaffected and although we still managed to pull of 26 weddings in seven different states, I’d be remiss to act as if it wasn’t traumatic on both a personal and professional level. But we survived, and as we both will attest, even thrived in many ways. It was honestly… a great year… which feels like a weird thing to say given the complete dumpster fire that we were dealing with.
So when 2021 rolled around, things started really looking up.
Vaccines were a total game changer for large gatherings– in our case weddings, and you know, our entire livelihoods. We were just SO. DAMN. GRATEFUL. to have weddings actually happen on the dates they were scheduled for and in the locations they were contracted, that we sort of went blind. To say we had a whole new appreciation for the work we do is an understatement. And let’s be honest, it was also a lot easier on my body to work and travel without being hugely preggo lugging around a big belly and swollen feet for 15 hour long days.
But like I said, I think we sort of went blind. Like we were so grateful to be shooting and working and traveling that we didn’t even realize how bizarre the conditions still were.
We shot WAY heavier than ever before, out of complete necessity to our couples who have dealt with so many curveballs over the last two years.
We did weddings on Fridays and Sundays, which was becoming more normal anyway. But then there were Thursday weddings, a few Mondays, I think we even did a Tuesday. Double headers have always been my happy place but this year were triples and I even swung a quad in October. That’s four-in-a-row for those who aren’t in the know.
Capa, our sweet boy, bounced around strapped to our chests for twelve of our weddings and at least twice that amount of engagement and family sessions. God bless’em because he THRIVED on weddings. Thrived. We never imagined toting our kid around for more than one, maybe two, events but here we are now with a slightly quirky reputation as that husband and wife photographer team who worked with their baby in tow.
The pandemic loomed over every wedding this year and still continues to force us to adapt over and over again as we continue to navigate mask mandates, rapid testing, vax cards, and trying to avoid getting sick while also being completely swallowed by mobs of drunk people flailing to “Shout” like it’s the first time anyone has thought to lay down on a public floor in the name of dancing.
Guests went hard this year. For many couples, elopements and microweddings got all that pesky paperwork out of the way last year and so formalities be damned, they were just there to rage their faces off this time. We thought there would be a gentle transition back into cocktail hours and conga lines but pretty much once April hit, the floodgates opened and people were off to the races en masse. I’ll admit, it did make for good content, and I’ve never been one to turn down a sweet party, so I was more than happy to oblige.
In fact, we had some of our best couples of all time this year…
…and it’s truly impossible to narrow down even the top five. I could honestly go through each event and rave about our favorite parts of each wedding and couple, but I’ll try to keep it short and as unbiased as possible… My mind immediately jumps to Jess and Matt– who had an epic three-day celebration on the top of a mountain at Granite Ridge in Maine. We rented a cabin, brought my sister with us to babysit (unknowingly with a black bear hanging outside the house) and partied ALL night long with their sick wedding band. We still talk about their transition into Flashing Lights.
Then there was Mercie and Dan, our sweet friends who made actual magic on their wedding day by appointing their closest kiddo friends and family to take over traditionally adult duties. Their officiants and their MC and wedding party and speeches and everything were executed by munchkins. And you know what, they all CRUSHED it. These little beautiful humans who poured their whole souls into this heartfelt celebration. I can still hear Merc and Dan singing to one another before their ceremony, holding hands and grounding one another, with their voices almost swirling in harmony over the ceramic tiles in the bathroom they were getting ready in. I will admit that I cried a little behind my camera but I won’t ever forget that moment.
But then jump to August when we got to go back to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone to capture Ross and Michelle’s wedding. A literal dream come true. We were lucky enough to be out there last year for a wedding and vowed to return, which I think is a common thing to do when leaving a destination after a vacation, but getting to be back in those mountains again was another *pinch me* moment. And getting to show Capa one of our favorite places was priceless. I’ll always remember how much fun we were all having blasting music in our rental car, driving through the mountains chasing the light, trying to pierce through the haze and smoke to get the infamous views. And then when we finally found the spot to pull off of as the sun was setting over the plains, Ross and Michelle jumping out to go exchange their vows privately against the mountains made it all worth it.
Then there was Chris and Kristen’s amazing Hamptons wedding which pretty much left us speechless. The whole thing was set up on their family property on the highest point of Montauk with 360 degree views that did not disappoint. There were charcuterie boards that put anything on pinterest to shame. I stuffed my face with oysters. Life was good. But most memorable was their dance party– people went fucking nuts. Over the years we have learned that there is a delicate balance to a good party: a sweet spot for the number of wedding guests, the amount of space that they have to dance, the amount of intoxicants available, the quality of music, energy of the band, and overall cohesiveness to the party. Getting all the ingredients *just so* is a rarity, but when all these conditions are met, fun will be had. And Kristen and Chris certainly had fun.
Speaking of these kinds of nights, Lia and Brendan also top out at our favorite tent set up of all time. Two epic sperry tents, immaculate decor, another freaking gorgeous private residence with views that you can only dream of. And then their golden hour. Stealing a couple for these shots isn’t easy sometimes, but always worth it, and the ten minutes that we pulled these two onto the golf course next door was a dream. Lia was beaming, legitimately smiling from ear to ear. Her dress was off the charts gorgeous. Cotton candy clouds billowed in the sky behind them as they sprinted off the green together. The pictures are epic, but the image in my mind is honestly just as good.
Heather and Chase are our most recent holy-amaze-balls wedding and deserve all the shoutouts for their stunner of a Palm Beach wedding. While our dreams of escaping the cold north in exchange for sunny Florida didn’t happen until the last of our four days there (it POURED rain for most of the weekend, like legitimately dumped on us nonstop), they still managed to have a jaw dropping three days worth of celebrating. It’s hard to argue with chillin’ on the rooftop of the Ben hotel with a cold beer, sweet views, and our giggly pool-loving baby on a work trip.
In fact, many of our work trips look like this on the bookends of our trips. One thing that bringing Capa along with us has really forced me to do is slow down a bit, despite still having our busiest year to date. Slowing down might only be for an hour or two at a time, but sometimes that’s all you really need to cue in and appreciate how cool life can be. We set out to be busy, and none of this was an accident.
So yeah, what the hell happened totally rings true for 2021. Heck, we’re not even done as I write this– we’re about to get on another plane to Nashville to close out our season at a New Years Eve wedding. It’s going to be a banger, and we can’t wait. Midnight on Dec 31 will officially close out our work year, and I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. Our lives are sort of wild but also beautiful and as I just begin to process what this whole season has meant to us personally and professionally, I can’t help but be left in awe at how full and inspiring it all is.
– xo, Heather
Enjoy some snapshots from this year:
Madison Beach Hotel Wedding in CT
Apollo Fields | Madison Beach Hotel Wedding Photos | Connecticut Wedding Photographer | Beach Wedding in Connecticut | Best Wedding Photos | Wedding Photographer Near Me | Candid Wedding Photography
Laura & Zach’s Wedding
No matter how early I suggest leaving for a wedding, Heather always adds on extra time. I used to push back but it’s one of her things--and it is the correct logical and professional thing to do. We can’t afford to be even one minute late to a wedding. So when we were sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-95 on our way to Laura and Zach’s wedding at the Madison Beach Hotel in Madison, Connecticut, we weren’t sweating it. We still had enough time to stop for sandwiches at a local charcuterie and cheese shop before heading to the venue.
As soon as we arrived on location we made our way up to the bridal suite, where Laura and her bridesmaids were relaxing and getting ready. Zach and the groomsmen weren’t arriving for another hour and a half, so I headed back downstairs to get a lay of the land. The Madison Beach Hotel is located right next to the West Wharf, a local beach on the Long Island Sound. It’s not often that I look at the Sound from this angle, as I’ve spent most of my life on Long Island looking across at Connecticut wondering where I was looking at. This whole summer feels like I’m finally understanding the area I’m from by looking at it from different perspectives.
One of my favorite things we do to get to know our couples better is ask them to fill out a questionnaire. The questions range from “How did you first meet?” to “Tell us an embarrassing story about your partner,” and we see all kinds of answers. Well Laura and Zach each gave us an all-time great answer when responding to: “Describe your partner as a scene, song, animal, or inanimate object. Be as descript or simple as necessary.” Zach said, “Laura is a toad. We joke, whenever her mood is "off" she is a toad on a log. Just sitting there not doing anything except making a lot of noise.” LOL. Laura replied, “Zachary is a lake house. Mostly calm and tranquil; simple - what you see is what you get - but can host a rockin' party, family reunion or romantic getaway.” Take notes, people. This goofiness is how you know: 1, that they really love each other, and; 2, that they know each other well.
Heather and I love when our couples don’t take themselves too seriously--it means that they’re really comfortable with one another. That they’ve stayed up late, laughing and asking those questions that always push the next one a little further. Early on in Heather and I’s relationship we skipped town (NYC) every couple weeks to explore a place we hadn’t been before. We camped near Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, caught the Perseid Meteor Shower at Sharp Top Mountain on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, and endured a torrential storm inside a leaky tent in West Virginia. We’ve been logging hours on road trips ever since and we still have a great time goofing around and asking each other stupid questions.
So when Heather asks me to leave two and a half hours early to get to a wedding 30 minutes away I don’t push back anymore. I just think of all the silly questions I can ask her when we’re sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic or scarfing down another meal on the road. There will always be more places to discover and new things to learn about your partner.
Enjoy these photos from Zach & Laura’s wedding at the Madison Beach Hotel:
vendors
Photography | Apollo Fields
Venue | Madison Beach Hotel
Floral | Candi’s Floral Creations
Suit | Ted Baker
Dress | BHLDN | Amsale
Rings | Tower Square Jewelers
Makeup and Bride’s Hair | Emily Nantucket | Blow Dry at the Beach
Signage | Fonts and Flourishes
Invitations | Minted
Cake | JCakes
DJ | Powerstation Events | Kevin Williams
Hey hey!
It’s us with Zach and Laura for our ‘last photo’ of the night!
Northport Long Island Elopement Photography
Jamie and Allison's Crab Meadow Beach Wedding Portraits | Northport NY Photographer | Apollo Fields Wedding Photography
The birds of the beach soared over our heads, higher than the early morning rising summer sun, taking turns plunging into the Long Island Sound. Their impacts sent a sputter of splashes on the surface, wings flapping amidst the spray, almost like they were cooling off in a ceramic bird bath at the center of a peaceful garden. The air was fresh and only slightly saline as high tide swept up the shore, covering the thousands of small, hollowed-out sandy homes of Crab Meadow Beach with a shifting layer of foamy water. Allison and Jamie bowing their heads, gently closed their eyes, bringing their foreheads to softly rest upon one another like wings spread in the wind, floating above the earth, ready to take their dive at any moment.
Jamie and Allison took the proverbial “plunge” or “dive” a couple months prior under the tree cover of a forest in Maryland at the height of quarantine. They, like many other couples who planned to get married in 2020, had to decide what the celebration of their love would look like during a pandemic. It’s so hard to shift expectations when they’ve already been set, but if it’s anything we’ve learned from Jamie and Allison and the difficult situation in general, is that love, like water, will always find a way.
Jamie and Allison’s Zoom wedding celebration in June was intimate and endearing, heartfelt, and natural. Figuring out how to get hundreds of little faces to fill a series of screens on several different devices changes the physical landscape of the audience but not the nature of the celebration. Love is—and always will be—at the core of weddings, and we’re watching in real time how we are all adapting to our expression of it. While a few family members were on hand to photograph the ceremony and first dance on the day of, Jamie and Allison decided they would take a trip up to us in Long Island, NY, to further honor and document their love and connection.
The idyllic found a home in circumstances less than ideal that morning on Crab Meadow Beach. Jamie and Allison moved effortlessly in the sand in their stunning wedding clothes as we watched and snapped away in awe. Heather is a sucker for evening golden hour and sunrise wedding photography and our morning with Allison and Jamie further solidified her resolve. The golden shape of their smiles and the aura around their faces hit the lens and our hearts with equal emotion. It was hard not to be happy.
And that’s what many couples think they are missing during this tough time. There’s definitely some truth to it but Heather and I and Jamie and Allison are the silver (or golden) lining kind of people; we are the kind of people who know that our love and our effort will carry us through the tough times and lift us even higher in the lighter ones; we are the kind of people who commit and take a plunge when we need to but extend our wings and float in the breeze while we can.
Enjoy some of the pics from Allison & Jamie’s Wedding portraits:
Crab Meadow Beach Elopement in Northport, NY
Tracy & Matt's Fourth of July Beach Elopement at Crab Meadow in Northport | Long Island Weddings | Apollo Fields Wedding Photographer
My Fourth of July began at 4:15AM (the same time that many of yours might have been ending)! I woke up to a black night with no sign of sunrise, went downstairs, drank a cup of tea, and forced my reluctant dogs to go to the bathroom outside. Even they weren’t ready to be up, but I had been stirring every fifteen minutes for the past few hours, squinting at my clock to see if it was time to go to work yet.
Go to work. A sentence that I’ve been looking forward to for MONTHS during this pandemic. While many people might have eased into this stay-at-home lifestyle, I clung to the promise that I would be able to go back to shooting on location. Working with couples, documenting their important milestones, traveling to new locations, celebrating their love— all of this is my muse and very much what keeps the gas in my tank.
None of this quarantine felt like a vacation to me, and it did not “recharge my batteries” like it has for some. I love what I do, and that is why I was especially excited for Tracy and Matt’s elopement on the Fourth. At around 4:30, I grabbed my cameras, hopped in the car, and drove to the beach.
I was the first one there and loved the idea that this location would inevitably blow up with families later that afternoon, but for that moment, it felt like mine. The air was still cool and a breeze rippled across the sand. The first light of dawn was breaking, and before long, Tracy and Matt were exchanging their vows against the still ocean, with only the company of their officiant and myself (while I doubled as their witness).
I don’t take these moments lightly. To be included in these sacred experiences is a privilege and it brings me so much purpose to capture even—or perhaps especially—the most intimate of elopements.
There is no “right” or “wrong” way to navigate reschedules as a 2020 couple-- you just have to do what is best for you guys. But let’s be serious, that’s what weddings SHOULD be all about in the first place! If there has been one silver lining that the coronavirus has had on the wedding industry, I believe it is that couples are having to step back and reevaluate their priorities more than they might have had to in the past. A lot of the more frivolous parts of planning simply aren’t important anymore, and maybe they never were.
At the end of the day, a wedding is about two people committing their love and lives to one another. It is no secret that my favorite weddings have always been a bit non-traditional, incorporating personalized details and reimagined rituals. This new wedding landscape is naturally conducive to these kinds of weddings, and it has been so refreshing to see couples adapting with grace and mindfulness.
Photography: Apollo Fields
Location: Crab Meadow Beach, Northport NY
Will I Still Be Grinding When I Turn 68?
Will I Still Be Grinding When I Turn 68? | Reflections on Retirement and Planning For Your Happiness | Apollo Fields
As I was picking up some lunch before shooting a wedding, the woman at the register asked a regular customer how everything has been since he wasn’t in the restaurant for about a week or so. He replied with a generic, “oh good”, then paused, “okay, I guess. I mean, things could be better”.
She was an older woman and unabashedly asked him, “How old are you?”
He goes, “Sixty eight. I’m getting old”.
She sort of snickered, “Sixty eight isn’t old… These are the best days of your life. The hard work is over. You can be retired and enjoy your life now”.
The man looks back, “I am retired. But not the way I want to be. Things didn’t really work out the way I thought”. Some silence continues before he tries to turn it into a joke again, “The only people who think I am young now— no offense— are old women”.
They laughed. She handed over his change, and he left.
It was a short conversation between two almost-strangers, acquaintances at best. But so much was said between the melancholy sadness and authentic laughter. The surface level lesson here is perspective: the “older” woman is envious of the “younger” man, although he no longer views himself as young.
On the deeper level, you have a man who is experiencing some sort of disappointment in a life that he views is past his peak. Things didn’t really work out the way I thought.
Damn dude.
I was a silent observer in this interaction, but couldn’t help wonder what their lives must be like. Could this be me someday? I’ve been thinking about retirement a lot from a practical, financial perspective but have spent less time planning for my own happiness. I sort of wove it into my career path and tend to consider it a given; given that things work out.
But what if they don’t? Nobody plans on being a callous surly crank by 68, right, we all envision ourselves on an Adirondack chair on the front porch of their house watching the sun set, holding hands with their spouse, surrounded by dogs. Lots and lots of dogs… (Or is that just me?)
Here it goes: THINGS MIGHT NOT WORK OUT. Or at least, they might not look the way they we originally envisioned. There’s a good chance that at 68, I’ll be grinding just as hard as I am now, cleaning up horse shit after dark, behind on emails, and beating myself up for not being good enough at something. I might never shake some of my own demons, and that’s okay.
Our culture is moving away from the retirement lifestyle that many of our baby booming predecessors are currently enjoying. We’re not going straight into the work force from high school and college is no longer a luxury, but an expensive prerequisite to a minimum wage job. We’re not buying houses at 23 years old and we’re not having 2.5 kids by 30. It’s just not happening.
We are paying student loans and we are negotiating multiple careers. A lot of people—like myself—are saying ‘no’ to the 9-5 commuter life in search of something that feels more sustainable, and ideally, has more meaning to us. If this “works out” for me, it will hopefully ensure some sort of happiness and sustainability that will be more fulfilling than my IRA alone and maybe keep me from bitching about my old haunts to a cashier at my lunch joint. Fingers crossed.
Photography: Apollo Fields
Location: Long Beach, NY