Matt Adcock

We just shot a killer wedding there, just wanted to post it for more photos to browse for those interested in booking them... del Sol Photography Wedding Photojournalism Also, I did some writing about our creative lighting style on my flash flavor lighting blog. This may be an interesting read on how del Sol goes the extra mile to make dynamic photography! I actually asked other photogs what they would do with this setup: FlashFlavor Blog Archive what would you do Then posted results from my setup here: FlashFlavor Blog Archive here is what we did

Quote: Originally Posted by RyanAmanda PHOTOGRAPHER I just booked Del Sol!! My sister loves photography (if you want to see the cutest baby EVER, she has a photo blog of her son HERE) and when we first canceled our 'at home' wedding for our Mexico wedding, she told me all about this guy from Flash Flavor who was amazing and we had to hire. After seeing one Del Sol picture, I was sold! . FYI, FlashFlavor is a blog that I started a little over a year ago. In this blog, we actually discuss our professional lighting techniques and pretty much give away our ideas and creative process to ALL photographers. This blog is intended for the pro photog. It has helped us become published internationally in photo magazines and also led to several teaching jobs. We at del Sol work not only to please the bride & groom but to educate other professionals in our biz. Its just what we can do to give back! Cheers! mateo PS, cute baby!

Congrats on your decisions! As you already know, we will do all we can to accommodate you and offer any suggestions. Doing so makes our lives WAY easier FYI, diego's website is still under construction. We aren't really accepting full time reservations for him as we are currently overworked and using him for assisting US when we shoot. For anybody that cares, his portfolio is del Sol Photography - Associate Photographer - Diego I look forward to shooting your TTD We are coming up with lotsa kewl ideas and have some new photo toys to play with in the future!!!! Cheers & best of luck with all your planning! Mateo

Quote: Originally Posted by adias.angel Thanks guys. Yea 45 minutes is a bit far. I was thinking of going no further south than xcaret. I'm not too optimistic that you are going to find anything south of PDC and inbetween Xcaret. There is only a few hotels in PlayaCar but the beaches there are all not so pretty and erosion is taking over. Xcaret has no beach, all rocky. You may want to consider resorts North of Playa del Carmen. Do you have a wedding coordinator? That would be a HUGE start, especially dealing with all these hotels that are 100% slammed right now due to high season and with slow turn around time to email requests. Also, there is a private beach in PlayaCar, Phase 1 that we shoot weddings at. Check out: del Sol Photography Wedding Photojournalism and Sol Tamargo Photography Wedding Photojournalism Those weddings were on that beach, receptions would have to take place in Playa somewhere or wherever you decide. In the background 1/4 mile away is a pier for the ferry to Cozumel, just to get an idea... hope that helps matt

Quote: Originally Posted by pryzeless Thanks. Do you think this also applies to the Riviera Maya area? YES It may not rain as much, but it is a tropical location. We just had the first tropical storm of the season roll through the Yucatan. Even though it wasnt a direct hit on the RM, the outer banks of clouds caused quite a bit of rain and we had a few ceremonies that were moved indoors and a TTD session that had quite a bit of rain.... luckily, we were in a cave HOTNESS, definitely. Holy moly. We actually take most of July-Sept off from the Maya due to the harshness of the weather conditions. Its really tough on your guests to have an outside ceremony... I'd recommend start time close to 7pm if you insist on having a beach ceremony. Also, DONT MAKE YOUR GUYS WEAR BLACK SUITS or Jackets.... sheesh, this is absolute punishment. We see it though and wonder why... Hope this helps! Cheers, mateo

Here is one more of my fav dramatic shots that Ben took. Mateo, Sol & Ben all going at it. Thanks diego for snapping this one! This one has a little creative flash lighting Cheers & congrats Paul & Rachel! mateo y sol

I just wanted to send a shout out there and say CONGRATS to BDWF Member Paul Sharank and his beautiful new wife and biz partner, Rachel Perry Schrank! It has been an honor working in this region with Paul. Paul has been shooting video for Playa Weddings - Video and Photography in Playa del Carmen and the Riviera Maya for 3 going on 4 years now. Paul & Rachel shot our wedding on Dec 6. They were married on May 4th in Tulum on the public beach near a small restaurant, Don Cafeto (towards the runis from the main road). The beach there is one of the most beautiful in all of the region. The entire coastline is absolutely amazing. Rachel's entire wedding was Gypsy Themed. They had a very beautiful Mayan ceremony that was one of the most unique weddings I had EVER participated in. I've seen nearly 500 weddings folks, theirs blew me away and had me wiping tears on my cheeks. The emotion and energy created by this wedding was literally earth moving. Bride enters from one side of beach with 15 of her closest friends, all playing musical instruments. At the same time, the groom enters with 15 of his closest friends, all playing different musical instruments. This setting generated some serious energy. That beach location is public, so there were many many other onlookers. I highly encourage that you watch the slideshow of photographer favorites, just to get an idea of how amazing the day was. the details and emotions and color are all eye candy. Special thanks to our friend Ben Chrisman showing up to help us at this wedding! Paul & Rachel's slideshow del Sol Photography Wedding Photojournalism thank you Ben Chrisman for this one. our new Associate Diego shot this one of the Mayan Chaman Sol took this one... this was one of my fav detail shots! I'm going to post a few more, just to get the idea of some of our favs...in another post. Congrats Paul & Rachel! mateo

Quote: Originally Posted by itsme7396 we were married march 2007 and i had booked Sol almost a year before our wedding... i would definitely book as early as possible... they're very busy and very popular, you can tell just by reading threads here... and if you look at their photos you can tell why... we also had Matt make our photo album... which is totally amazing... and it makes such a statement when people come over and see it... i think its well worth it... and yes we received the DVD of the photos and we could've had someone else make our album, but we didn't see any point in having someone else do it, since it was matt that took the photos and he would know how best to put the album together... plus after talking to a couple of girlfriends that were married here at home, and talking about their albums/photo packages, there was no real costs saving for us if we had someone else do it... if i can find the link to the photo album layout that matt made, i'll post it... i'll also try and post actual photos of the album when i can... HOLA Jeff & Julie! So good to see you here! Thanks for the rave reviews we loved hanging out with your crowd and we still think about your fun and crazy day! I have so many moments still in my mind from your wedding! The album we designed is here: Julie & Jeff's wedding album (photography by Matt & Sol). One other big advantage we have is that we have a studio in Atlanta where we do all of our albums through another del Sol team member, Melissa. She is a shooter and a graphic designer. We are able to design the album within a few weeks or less of editing all the pictures, so every client has an album turned around ASAP. For example, Sol shot Melia & Steven's Wedding on 4/19. Here is the link to our album design for that album: Melia & Steven Here are a few more album designs just for an FYI: Ashley & Chris revisions Leslie & JR's album Jenn & Matt's revisions Roel & Karen's album Just an FYI on how our album process works. del Sol chooses the photos for the album based on photographer favorites and we create a general storyline that is usually chronological. I can't tell you how hard it is to choose 50-70 images from 400-500. We then send the "suggested design" to our clients online and they go through and make any tweaks or changes to customize the book to their liking. We offer two change sessions and then get their final approval. The books are handmade and take 3-4 weeks to turnaround. OH, the print size can go up to a whopping 24inches wide by 12 inches tall (the same thing we did for Jeff & Julie's book). hope this helps! cheers, mateo

we just shot a wedding there, i'm so happy to hear it will stay open as this is one of our favorite spots : )

Quote: Originally Posted by soontobeamrs Attractive visual!!! sorry bout that... I thought of another thing that I may not recommend. Black suits on the beach. Sometimes, black tie just doesnt fit here. Or, if the ceremony is in May -October, having ceremony start time at 12-3pm. Wow, just painful hot possibilities. If you do, mention to everyone not to wear jackets and have some water options. cheers! mateo

Quote: Originally Posted by El Dorado Royale El Dorado Spa Resorts & Hotels and Azul Hotels, by Karisma strive to provide exceptional wedding services and meet our guests' every need. As such, we have listened attentively to feedback provided by the bridal community and have updated our outside vendor policy. Outside photographer and videographer vendors are welcome at the property for a charge of $500 per day. It is no longer a requirement for them to stay at the hotel but are welcome to do so if they choose. Vendors must be pre-approved in advance by the wedding coordinator and must abide by all Mexican governing laws which require foreign workers to obtain proper licensing and work certificates while in Mexico doing work for themselves or on behalf of others. The hotel reserves the right to request proof of such license and/or work certificate. We place a great deal of emphasis on our overall wedding services, guaranteeing the highest level of guest satisfaction such as offering U.S. based wedding planners, on-site professional coordinators, unique beachfront ceremony locations (including seaside chapels), gourmet cuisine, blood work done on property, customized weddings and amenities, and affordable prearranged wedding packages like our Free Sweet Wedding Package, to name a few. At El Dorado Spa Resorts & Hotels and Azul Hotels, by Karisma, we take pride in our wedding services and ensuring couples experience the ultimate day of celebration, romance and a lifetime of memories. We look forward to continuing to work closely with you, creating perfect destination weddings. Do you have a name? Its nice to see Karisma tune into the Internet web sector of their target demographic. If you are going to be posting about policies and so forth, it would be nice to know who we are talking to and your position inside Karisma's Goliath company. del Sol photography also strives to provide exceptional wedding services and meet our guests' every need. In fact, we strive even harder to sell your hotels to our clients by posting slideshows on this forum. Our clients are members and talk about their past experiences. The lasting impression every time, their photo story at your resorts. We are in business to serve travel agent style marketing with our online presence through online networks and forums like this one. Del sol Maintains proper paperwork to work in your hotels and yet Karisma coordinators reply to our clients that we were banned due to past unprofessional behavior. When in fact, it was words from very post in this forum where we were trying to protect our clients about these fees and let them know exactly what they were and that they were high and we disagreed with it however it was the only way for us to work on the property. We endorsed this policy and asked EVERYONE to pay the $500 fee. And my count today, is that we serviced 15+ weddings where our clients paid those fees. Our upcoming clients and current Karisma clients wish you would change your policies, especially regarding your smaller Boutique hotels. We are in position to have a very very mutually beneficial professional relationship with constant del SOl referrals from ecstatic clients. del Sol and all of our clients are curious to hear your reply and we would like to THANK our clients for their support. Also, thank you Faith Wishnie for actually making a good PR decision to allow old contracts to continue to have their wedding without last minute policy changes damaging their special day. Regards,

Quote: Originally Posted by Philly_Bride May be it's a little off topic but i just wanted to say one thing i would've done differently! I would shop for a wedding dress more carefully! Out of everything I could pick wrong I picked a bad wedding dress. It’s was so uncomfortable, sliding off my chest the whole time, so all I see on my pictures now is my boobs, they’re all over the place. I’m probably overreacting a little bit, but all I know is I wasn’t happy with it! So my advice to brides to be would be pick your dress carefully, try it on 1000 times, put your hands up, then down, then up again and jump , twist ets. And takes lots of pictures of it! See how it looks on pictures. Then if you still love your dress – BUY IT!!! Other wise you will be looking at your pictures going: "What was I thinking…." I've seen this a zillion times. Brides yanking up on their dress, to pull it up to fit, usually involves something similar to seeing the hands under the boobs, give it a yank while jumping, and they move on... good advice.

Quote: Originally Posted by SunBride But again, my advice would be if you are going with a resort photographer, more time would be better since they are generally not as highly skilled if this is the case, then I'm pretty sure as you mentioned, at some point you will be standing there with smiles or fingers fidgiting wondering where the heck is y our wedding crowd... We think this is a crucial time to enjoy. Wedding day goes by with LIGHTspeed. I wish I could bottle it up and experience just 10 minutes of my wedding again. Time is precious, excellent photographers are too not just del Sol, but any pro photog out there rockin some seriously fast, artistic, photographic journalism. my hats off to ya! mateo

Quote: Originally Posted by LC_Rachel Honestly, we didn't do HOURS worth of photos after the ceremony. I think it was only about an hour. We are on a more strict schedule at Las Caletas, but I was more than happy with the amount of photos we received from that time period. yeah, i agree...hours of photos is enough to kill someone. 1 hr should be fine and what we recommend. A cocktail hour is sufficient. After all, the wedding shouldnt be planned around the photographer needing time but the brides schedule and in this timeline of 1 hr post ceremony, its all perfect for us.

Quote: Originally Posted by SunBride These were shot probably about 30 - 45 mins before scheduled sunset This one was shot I think pretty much right at scheduled sunset (maybe 15 minutes before). We had stopped taking pictures for about 15 minutes to half an hour at this point, and then we went back to try to get just this one with a sunset (she said she would try playing around with editing since the sunset was not that good) I has posted this elsewhere, here was the schedule of my day. I think it worked out really well (allowed my photographer to take 2000 photos!). It would have worked equally well I think if we had started about a half hour to an hour later, but I didn't mind having extra time. If you have 2 photographers you could condense the time more, seeing as I had to leave time after my photos for the groom's photos, so I just hung out in the room for an hour We would prefer for your ceremony to start 20-30 minutes before sunset. The light in the sky at the end of your photo session is just about perfect for us. my opinion on this: (allowed my photographer to take 2000 photos!)... Every photog has different styles and different editing styles... Some have happy trigger fingers (like a lead foot in driving). We shoot nearly 2000 frames in a 8 hour wedding too however years of experience and my editing style has taught me to edit down to a tighter edit (500-600) for best results. regardless, the point it to make your clients happy and I'm sure sunbride's is a happy client. WHich is why we recommend a ceremony start time for every wedding. I could go through hours of explanation on the phone with any bride, if you want to hear it ok, hope this settles things... good luck gals, mateo

Quote: Originally Posted by Morgan Thanks! very helpful. The sunset lighting I'm talking about is when the sky looks like the sky in Matt's siggy pic. Or maybe that's something the photographer captures with their camera settings. I honestly don't know how it works. When I watched Matt & Sol's video the sky didn't look as intense as it turned out in their pictures, so it must be photographer magic. Shutter speeds? Also, this picture of Nics • TAMARACK STUDIOS • And Jean-Marcus posted a wedding with beautiful sunset pics. I wish I knew more about this when I scheduled my wedding. I'm worried we'll be outside during the harshest part of the day & eatting dinner when it's beautiful. Our siggy pic was taken by Photographer Jonathan Adams in Teton County Wyoming after then sun went over the mountains and just before a rain storm, shot with my Point and Shoot Canon 750 Powershot. No photoshop magic at all... Its all about timing and NO DIRECT sunlight. the lower the sun is on the horizen the better the clouds color will be, also the later in the day. THIS IS ALSO a fact. The more of the atmoshpere that is filtered by the sun the more colors you will see (hence the low sun on the horizon)

I thought of another "I'd do again" First, try a new cerveza OTHER THAN CORONA. Sheesh, these folks market like crazy to get you to think that it is the mexican beer, when in fact, fewer mexicans actually like it. There are a SLEW of great ones, my personal favorite: Cerveza SOL Wonder why eh? Oh, try a Chelada (beer on ice with lots of lime) salted rim, yum yum!

Bottom line here that everyone needs to consider is that the sun sets to the west and the Riviera Maya (most places) face due east. If you DONT get married during daylight savings time, if you start your ceremony at 3pm-4pm, someone (usually always the bride or the person standing on the left) will be blinded by the sun's harsh beams of light. This is a fact, no disputing this unless you are getting married under a covered area. Harsh beams of light make for the hardest to photograph in relationship to contrast. Squinting eyes and just harsh light... We recommend 4-4:30 ceremony start time if you don't get married during daylight savings. I've seen hundreds of weddings on the RM coast, and LOTS of them starting at 3 or 3:30... blasting the poor eyes out of the bride. Check out this slideshow to get an idea of what I'm talking about...this was a JAN wedding: del Sol Photography Wedding Photojournalism shot at 3:45pm, 11/20/07 The light is harsh, contrasty and slightly painful for bride and bridesmaids to stare at... Shot in Playa del Carmen. Here is another non-daylight savings wedding |January 1/19/08 wedding Either way, we think some of the best light in the sky happens AFTER the sun sets. If you have super nice equipment (fast lenses) then you can shoot well into the early evening. We shot this wedding in tulum this year... ceremony started real late after 6pm... , bride and groom walk down the isle at 6:27pm! Last picture we shot on the beach is actually moon lit, shot at 6:54pm. Pretty insane eh? Notice the quality of light during the ceremony.. Here is their slideshow: del Sol Photography Wedding Photojournalism | Shot in Tulum. We don't actually recommend ceremonies to start this late as we won't have time to shoot any formals / b&g portraits post ceremomy, but this just goes to show you the maximum of our camera's abilities very late in the evening! We use very fast pro lenses, so we can shoot with very low light situations...another advantage by hiring a pro photog! You may want to ask your photographer... but you can trust that later is better than earlier for us If you are considering a Daylight savings wedding, try around 5 or 5:30 ceremony start time. hope that helps put some photo perspective to your question! cheers, matt

here are a few more shots of the place... I shot this engagement session for the same couple a few days before their wedding... full slideshow here: matt adcock photography

Heres how I see Marmoa! Also, the bride had the master suite, and a HUGE closet... It was filled up with all their other stuff and requested that the living room closet be the place to hang her dress. Only problem was that there was no closet rod for hanging cloths in that closet. The hotel sent a carpenter to install one on the spot! How is that for customer service! This is a very beautiful hotel!

Quote: Originally Posted by Infinity22 Wow, that's incredible! It's gotta be quite the experience to swim with one of those creatures. How many were there? quite the experience to swim with them! the boat we chartered took us around to see several of them... i'm not sure how many different sharkes we say, but I'd guess 5 or 6 different ones. They monitor radio frequencies that have other boats who find the schools of sharks, then give the position away so other boats can find them... they are always moving. that shark was easily 50 feet long. Its head was as big as our car! Expect to budget 70-100 per person for this day trip. Our caption (Caption Pulpo) took us on reefs snorkling after the shark experience and even offered to go fishing. Unfortunately, Sol doesnt do too well with waves, so take your dramamine for this tour! Cheers! mateo

Quote: Originally Posted by Morgan Matt, we are doing the coba tour you suggested. We are chartering two vans with jorge to see coba & visit a cenote. Thanks for the suggestion! My friends & family are so excited about it. De Nada, I promise you, it will be one amazing adventure I'd like to offer another suggestion: bring along a small video camera and shoot clips of your friends here and there, at different spots. You will walk away with some very priceless footage Enjoy mateo

Quote: Originally Posted by Infinity22 Whole day from 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM $150 USD per person Half a day (From 9:00 AM to 5:00PM OR 5:00PM to 10:00PM) $100 USD per person Those numbers are respectable

OH, I almost forgot! WHALE SHARKS IF you are in the region in the summer (june - august), you can go to Isla Mujeres and charter a trip to go and see the whale sharks migration. We were swimming with them! Check this blog link from my last experience (I made a little movie of this experience, underwater...check it out) Matt Adcock Photography Blog that was soooo insane and i'd love to do it again!

Quote: Originally Posted by Elizabeth Medina Hola Sol! I will second that! I really love the Excellence, the ceremony site is so pretty and the resort is very beautiful at night as well, the lighting is gorgeous. I think it would also make a PERFECT honeymoon location. I have an obsession with lazy rivers and the one at the Excellence is heavenly! best, Elizabeth U got photos to share with this thread? lets see em