Fine Art Film and Digital Wedding Photography for the Classic, Romantic, Joyful Bride
Introduction:
Hello and welcome! My name is Michelle and I am passionate about providing timeless images for those who cherish love, treasure memories, adventure together and share a sentimental heart. I love to celebrate and capture one of the best days of your life with honor, respect and joy.
I completely understand firsthand that planning a wedding is one of the most exciting and sometimes confusing things you will ever undertake. In understanding that, I have made it my goal to make the photographic part of your process fun, simple and enjoyable. My heart is to give you an incredible photographic experience from beginning to end.
I want your experience to be all it can be. I want you to feel as strong a love for each other as my husband and I do and to feel natural, happy and comfortable in front of the lens. You should look back with love and fondness on every moment captured. A decade down the road from now, I want you to see just how classic and timeless you look even though the styles may have changed. I hope that you will smile together at your hair before it started greying and laugh at the sweet wrinkle lines you see in each other’s faces fifty years from now. So that’s why I do things like I do…encouraging you in your love and keeping YOU in mind, giving you a wonderful photographic experience.
As much as I love photographing the rings, the florals, and the other lovely details of your day, my focus still lies largely on the tender moments, the shared laughter, the stunning portraits together and the unexpected expressions and the gathering of friends and family. I want to capture the moments in your wedding day that you will treasure forever. I whole-heartedly believe that your wedding is not just about that one day, but the entire experience from the planning stage to the growing old together. I want to provide you with images that you can look back upon and smile, laugh, and remember…to remind you of your beginning and your foundation. Your photography is a large part of your wedding experience and it should be fun, real and memorable.
Features:
Lieb Photographic has been featured in the following publiations and more: Ruffled, South Asian Bride, High Country Wedding Guide, Pretty Pear Bride Magazine, HuffPost Weddings, Brides.com, Southern Bride, The Knot, Washingtonian Weddings Magazine, David's Bridal, Wedding Chicks, Every Last Detail, The Perfect Palette, Fab You Bliss, Loverly, mywedding, Viva Tysons Magazine, Hey Wedding Lady, Artfully Wed, BLOVED, Proflowers.com, August Willows, The Black Tie Bride, The Luxe Pearl, Charlottesville Wine and Country Weddings, BridalPulse, Inspired by This, Rustic Wedding Chic, Smitten Mag, Reverie Gallery, Glamour and Grace, Classic Bride, The Wedding Concierge, Rustic Weddings, Hill City Bride, Eco-Beautiful Weddings, Tidewater and Tulle, How He Asked, District Weddings, Wedding Lovely, United with Love, Knotsvilla, Red Oak Weddings, Luxe Mountain Weddings, Ultimate Wedding, The Tie Bar, Issuu, Love Came Down, Borrowed and Blue, Bride and Breakfast, Brides & Weddings of Northern Virginia, Secret Wedding, Dogwood Brides, Love and Lavender, Modern Weddings, VoyagePhoenix, Melissa Hearts Weddings, Inspired By Style Bride, The Big Day, Belle the Magazine, Weddbook, Trubridal, Honeybook Blog, Main Street Weddings, Southern Maryland Weddings, Richmond Wedding Collective Blog and The Blaze.
Her work has also been featured in galleries across the country including the Center for Fine Art Photography, Soho Gallery, Vermont Photo Place and more.
What you Receive:
Each wedding package includes a second photographer and a complementary engagement session. All of my booked couples also receive:
*A wonderful welcome package which includes some special surprises as well as a very thorough 76 page guide I have created from a photographer's perspective to help with planning your big day.
*My exclusive preferred vendor guide with wedding professionals who are dedicated to serving you well (many also familiar with your venue) and are proven trustworthy to meet your needs.
*Access to my engagement session guide and online timeline sample guide.
*Exclusive access to my new video series for engaged couples coming in 2020. Topics include tips for the grooms, how to pack your detail box and more!
Photographic Biography in Michelle's words:
So here's my photo backgorund! I fell in love with photography and art from a very early age. I first remember my father's photography (hand developed) and loved to see images of my mother at the local fruit market in New York, Alaskan wildlife from my dad's travels and early images of a crazy little toddler (yup, that was me) and still later, my baby brother. My love of the camera never ceased and I went on to receive my bachelor's degree from James Madison University with a major in art and later, a masters degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, specializing in photography and the book arts. I later taught photography as well as advanced placement studio art and advanced placement art history at Liberty High School in Bealeton, Virginia from 2002-2013. After the birth of my favorite photographic subject...my adorable little son, I retired from teaching to focus on being mommy and on the business of photography.
I have continued throughout the years to learn more about digital, traditional, historic, and experimental photographic processes by attending workshops and classes through the Center for Alternative Processes in New York City, the Visual Studies Workshops in Rochester, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond. I received several grants to assist in my continued education in the photographic processes.
I still love the historical processes such as tintypes and ambrotypes as well as the experimental processes like lumen printing and pinhole photography.
And I LOVE to shoot film on request! Please inquire about the film package addition.
I struggled for weeks to select a photographer that was within my budget, was crazy talented, and that I felt comfortable with, as I was to trust this person to capture my big day and I wanted it to be perfect. Michelle checked all of those boxes and more. She's professional, trustworthy, friendly, and is absolutely talented with a camera. From the beginning of the process, she was very understanding and informative when talking about what to expect and what package worked best with my vision, providing insight of what to consider for engagement photos to example timelines for the actual day. As my parents live in VA and my fiancé and I lived in Hoboken, NJ, my fiancé and I were unable to come down to VA before the wedding as often we would have liked and we were not familiar with ideal engagement photo locations. Michelle went above and beyond, suggesting locations (which we loved), and the engagement session itself was the most natural and easy first-time meeting, as we had only chatted on the phone before that. With the wedding, Michelle was flexible in working with our day-of schedule, where we had quite a bit of photos on our must have list as my parents are divorced. When she arrived at my house to start the photos, it was like greeting an old friend and she was a pro keeping the group to the timeline from the wedding at Holy Comforter to the wedding at King Family. In receiving all our photos after the day, I was so surprised at how much had been captured and quickly turned around - we loved the black & white variations, behind the scene moments, and Michelle's eye of capturing the most intimate moments. If you're considering Michelle, stop what you're doing and secure her right now.
Sent on 08/09/2020
Brittaby
· Married on 09/06/2019
5.0
Quality of service:
5.0
Responsiveness:
5.0
Value:
5.0
Flexibility:
5.0
Professionalism:
5.0
Amazing! Definitely book her for your wedding
We have booked Michelle for our wedding next year- and she is amazing! She has been extremely responsive to all of my questions and very helpful throughout this whole process. We just did our engagement shoot with her and she made the photo shoot very fun! We always tell ourselves that we are not photogenic but she told us how to pose and what to do. The photos turned out amazing!! I am so happy with them and I am so glad I booked her for my wedding! She was one of the first vendors I booked: definitely book her for your wedding!!!
Sent on 10/19/2018
Kristi
· Married on 08/10/2019
5.0
Quality of service:
5.0
Responsiveness:
5.0
Value:
5.0
Flexibility:
5.0
Professionalism:
5.0
Simply perfect
Michelle was an absolutely stellar vendor and one of the best choices we made in our wedding planning process. It was really important to us to have a photographer who could take beautiful pictures of people AND details, since our wedding involved a lot of vintage and homemade touches that we really wanted to showcase however we could, and Michelle absolutely did not disappoint on that score. We were deeply impressed by the many recommendations and testimonials we had read, and so Michelle photographed our engagement shoot, my bridal portraits (plus same-day boudoir), and our wedding + reception.
Michelle’s attention to detail, along with her responsiveness and receptivity to our vision, was fantastic; she made time for an in-person consultation before even the engagement shoot, and I always felt like we were on the same page throughout the planning process. She was extremely organized and her timelines were essential for our planning; this along with her preexisting relationships and excellent coordination with our other vendors are a case in point for her commensurate professionalism in the wedding industry.
Michelle also went above and beyond on several occasions, including shooting in a totally new location (the Virginia State Arboretum) for our engagement session, adjusting our wedding timeline to include a first look, and facilitating a private, comfortable bridal portrait/boudoir shoot at Rixey, another venue with which she had a strong preexisting professional relationship. Michelle’s guidance and clear expertise helped me to feel more confident for the bridal portrait shoot in the weeks before the wedding itself, and the wedding photography went without a hitch even with some last-minute adjustments. Michelle’s second shooter (in our case Nicole) was extremely helpful too, giving excellent direction and helping to make sure everything, even the complicated group shots or sets of shots across multiple settings, stayed on-time. They were both accommodating, attentive, and they absolutely brought out the best not only in us but also in our friends, family, and wedding party.
We were really excited about Michelle’s fast turnaround of final pictures too — my bridal portraits and boudoir shoot were two weeks to the day before our wedding, and we received the photos days before our actual ceremony + reception. We received our wedding photos in a similarly timely fashion — nearly 1,500 edited photo files only two and a half weeks after our wedding! — and we could not be happier with the way they capture the spirit of our special day. Having Michelle as part of our wedding was an absolutely marvelous experience and her expertise and keen eye are worth their weight in gold; we’d recommend her to anyone in a heartbeat, and we’re so grateful for her work!
We were so fortunate to have Michelle lend her artistic eye capturing photographs around the property of our new venue on a few different occasions. Having worked with her personally for years, I knew she would be the best photographer to help us get started when launching to the wedding community and engaged professionals.
Time slips away so quickly once an event has ended....it has been far to long and I apologize for not singing your praises sooner! Working with you was a dream. You make everything so smooth...easy and inclusive. I love the way you capture every little detail with your photographs...I believe your talent knows no boundary. I look forward to working with you again!
Michelle Gillespie, Owner
Occasions By M&K
