Kirra Cheers—one of our favorite Aussies living in New York, co-founder of The Brooklyn Collective and a 2013 Rising Star—always keeps it fresh and interesting, both in wedding photography and beyond.
Her blog Tempting Alice is a wonderful creative outlet for her artistic side, and her black-and-white, first-date photo project, Tinderella, had those of us who’ve experimented with online dating saying, “Yeah, girl. I get you.”
Cheers sent us this super-unique wedding at The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, that she had to share with us — and thus we had to share with you.
“Was it a wedding? Was it a broadway show? Was it an art exhibition?” wrote Cheers in her blog post about the day. “It was neither, but all of the above at the same time. A celebration of all that is Brian & David. An expression of where they have come from and who they are as individuals and as a couple.”
Cheers says the venue was like wonderland for a wedding photographer. “I loved the colors, the setting, the styled rooms, the people, the humor, the creativity. I love that they curated all the screens and that the guests were free to roam the building and explore.”
While photographing in a darkish museum is a huge, new challenge, Cheers saw it as a positive. “I felt this played to my strengths and let me indulge an aggressive use of on-camera flash that is becoming a key component of my style,” she says. “There was no set time for portraits; as a photographer who favors candid imagery, this was pretty much my dream, but it presents a whole new set of challenges, and I was conscious of capturing enough photographs of them together.”
To do this, Cheers primarily shot with a Nikon D800, 35mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.4, SB-900 Speedlight with remote triggers and (“my personal favorite,” she says) the Gitzo traveller tripod. “I like to keep my kit simple,” Cheers says. “Good photography stems from a developed eye and unique vision and not how many toys you carry in your bag.”
As for the couple, Cheers says David and Brian already had a lifetime of memories together, and the wedding was a celebration of their journey. “Both are supportive of the other but in entirely different ways,” she says. “It was the perfect example of how a partner should lift you up and bring you back down to earth.”
See more of Cheers’ work on her website, and follow her on Instagram @temptingalice.
Want to submit a Wedding of the Week? Email Jessica Gordon.