Tag: iab-photography

The average wedding just hit $29,000 | CNN Business

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CNN
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Weddings are back, in full force. That’s the good news. But engaged couples will pay a tad more to get hitched in 2023.

The average cost of a wedding, nationally, this year is $29,000, up $1,000 from 2022, according to online wedding planning site Zola. And in some big US cities, the cost is $35,000 and above.

The price tag for a happily-ever-after day is higher year-over-year for two reasons, said Zola – inflation and demand exceeding supply of wedding related goods and services. “Wedding industry vendors have had to raise their rates because they’re also paying more for goods and services like food, flowers and labor,” Emily Forrest, Zola’s director of communications, told CNN.

Weddings started roaring back from a pandemic-triggered halt to all kinds of celebrations in 2022, and, ever since, the industry has seen a surge in demands for venues, photographers, wedding planners, florists and wedding cakes. Add to that a Gen-Z era desire for very customized weddings (hint: don your scuba suit), and prices are rising.

The Zola report was based on a survey of 4,000 engaged couples getting married in 2023.

The report ranked New York City at the top of the list among the most expensive cities in the US to have a wedding this year. A wedding in the Big Apple is expected to cost about $43,536, followed by San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose ($37,284), Boston ($35,902), Philadelphia ($34,111), Miami-Ft. Lauderdale ($33,622), Washington, DC ($33,199), Chicago ($32,281) and Los Angeles ($30,712).

The average guest list, according to the report, is expected to include between 130 to 150 invitees.

But Esther Lee, deputy editor at The Knot, a wedding planning and vendor marketplace company, said the guest list for some weddings might be getting tighter.

“In 2022, we saw an average of 117 wedding guests, but in 2023, we discovered 39% of couples are trimming their guest list. It’s no surprise that people may be prioritizing more intimate ceremonies this year,” she said.

Less traditional can sometimes mean less expensive, experts said. David’s Bridal, a leading wedding-dress retailer, said its business has been dented by the number of brides wearing casual or vintage dresses. But unique can also inflate costs.

“Unique weddings are having a moment with the onset of hyper-personalization, meaning couples are drawing out influences most meaningful to them and infusing these touches into their wedding day details,” said The Knot’s Lee.

“For example, history buffs are interested, as of late, in an antiquities-themed wedding or honeymoon that may involve an ancient book reading or coin motifs from the Byzantine or Roman Empires.”

Pinterest said it has an indication of another trend. It said searches for alternative weddings – especially underwater weddings – have jumped 305% on its platform. “Underwater weddings are a great example of the unconventional wedding searches we see happening on the platform right now,” said Jenna Landi, director of brand research at Pinterest.

“Though slightly challenging logistically, it should be interesting to see the data for underwater weddings in 2023,” she said. “It may be of sudden interest due to the live-action version of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. “

Wedding photographer Kimber Greenwood, who specializes in underwater wedding photography, is booked to photograph 20 of them this year. “There’s been a huge jump in interest,” she said.

Greenwood, a trained scuba diver based in Gainesville, Florida provides a package through her adventure photography business, Water Bear Photography, that includes an officiant, gown to wear for the event (but not to keep), flowers and photography for $3,000.

“I have never had a couple say they’ve regretted the experience,” she said.

When asked about who is footing the bill for weddings, the Zola report showed 33% of couples said they are contributing to their wedding budgets in some way, but another 16% said they are paying for the wedding completely on their own.

The wedding industry should enjoy the recovery, because it may not last. Jewelers report that, because many fewer would-be brides or grooms met their partners during the Covid-19 quarantine era, the rate of recent engagements is way off.

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May 31, 2023
This photographer is creating surreal, dramatic images of Dubai’s stunning skyline | CNN

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Editor’s Note: This CNN Travel series is, or was, sponsored by the country it highlights. CNN retains full editorial control over subject matter, reporting and frequency of the articles and videos within the sponsorship, in compliance with our policy.

CNN
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Dubai is known for its breathtaking architecture and iconic skyline. Now, artist Baber Afzal is capturing the city-state’s famous towers and spires in a new light through a series of stunning images that marry architecture, environment, and atmosphere.

“There are many places that I love out here in Dubai, especially the architectural landscape as it keeps evolving every year – and that evolution inspires me (because I’m) able to shoot from unique vantage points to share a different perspective of the city,” explains Afzal.

Afzal, 40, uses a combination of landscape and architectural photography, and visual art techniques, to illustrate the city of Dubai as he sees it.

“One thing that has remained constant in my work, whether it be capturing the cityscape or the dunes, is the hazy sunsets and sunrises in this region,” he says. “Awareness of the climatic conditions gave birth to a unique editing style and technique to express my visions.”

A Pakistani native, Afzal first started making art in 2007. “My interest in art grew after I experienced capturing and editing the beautiful landscape of Margalla Hills in Islamabad, Pakistan,” he says. “I gravitated toward the editing aspect since shifting color and contrast values really fascinated me.”

Afzal scouts locations prior to a shoot, and says it often takes him many hours to capture the perfect image. He then spends a few days in post-production, manipulating the image and executing his vision to create ethereal, striking pictures.

“Art provides a powerful means of expressing human emotion and experience, and it can be used to communicate complex ideas and feelings that might otherwise be difficult to express,” he says. “I aim to enhance this experience by showcasing visual concepts from a different light that will highlight the unseen beauty that exists in city life and in nature too.”

Afzal’s work has received awards from around the world and has been published both locally and internationally in magazines and photography books. Last month, his artwork “LUMINOUS” was showcased in New York City at the prestigious “NFT NYC 2023.”

He produces much of his work as NFTs (non-fungible tokens), capitalizing on the digital format to add animation and complex imagery to create one-of-a-kind dreamlike moving pictures.

He believes that technology will play a significant role in the future of the art scene in Dubai. “I expect to see more artists, including myself, experimenting with technology and incorporating it into our work in new and innovative ways in the years to come,” says Afzal.

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May 1, 2023
Photos this week: February 9-15, 2023 | CNN

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Michigan State University students gather at The Rock, a popular campus landmark, as they pay their respects to the victims of the campus shooting that took place on Monday, February 13.

Jake May/AP

Published 7:10 PM EST, Thu February 16, 2023

Three Michigan State University students were killed and five were critically injured after a shooting at two campus locations on Monday, February 13.

The gunman, 43-year-old Anthony Dwayne McRae, fatally shot himself as police closed in on him. His motive remains a mystery, said authorities, who are still investigating.

The MSU tragedy was the 67th mass shooting this year in the United States, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

Here are some of the stories that made headlines over the past week, as well as some photos that caught our eye.

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February 17, 2023
Tyre Nichols was a son and father who enjoyed skateboarding, photography and sunsets, his family says | CNN

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CNN
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Tyre Nichols was a father, a man who loved his mama and a free-spirited soul who was looking for a new life in Memphis, Tennessee.

That life was tragically cut short earlier this month after a violent arrest by five officers with the Memphis Police.

Now, as attention turns to the five former officers being charged with second-degree murder in Nichols’ death, according to court documents, Nichols’ family wants the world to know the man Nichols was.

The 29-year-old was the baby of his family, the youngest of four children. He was a “good boy” who spent his Sundays doing laundry and getting ready for the week, his mother, Ravaughn Wells, said.

“Does that sound like somebody that the police said did all these bad things?” Wells said. “Nobody’s perfect OK, but he was damn near.”

“I know everybody says that they had a good son, and everybody’s son is good, but my son, he actually was a good boy,” she said.

Above all else, Nichols loved being a father and loved his son, his family said.

“Everything he was trying to do was to better himself as a father for his 4-year-old son,” attorney Benjamin Crump said at the family’s news conference.

Nichols was someone who brought everyone joy. “When he comes through the door, he wants to give you a hug,” Crump said, speaking on behalf of Nichols’ family.

Nichols moved to Memphis right before the Covid-19 pandemic and got stuck there when things shut down, his mother said. “But he was OK with it because he loved his mother,” she added.

His mom said he loved her “to death” – so much so that he inked it permanently.

“He had my name tattooed on his arm, and that made me proud because most kids don’t put their mom’s name, but he did,” Wells said with a laugh.

“My son was a beautiful soul and he touched everyone,” she said.

Nichols became friends with an unlikely group of people because they kept showing up to the same Starbucks around the same time in the morning, his friend Nate Spates Jr. said.

A couple times a week, these five or six friends would sit together, put their phones away so they could be present and enjoy each other’s company, said Spates, who met Nichols about a year ago at a Starbucks in Germantown, Tennessee.

The group didn’t talk much about their personal lives, and they never touched politics. But sports, particularly football, and Nichols’ favorite team, the San Francisco 49ers, were regular topics.

Nichols was a “free spirited person, a gentleman who marched to the beat of his own drum,” Spates told CNN. “He liked what he liked. If you liked what he liked – fine. If you didn’t – fine.”

Spates said he saw himself in Nichols and recognized a young man who was trying to find his own way and learning to believe in himself.

He saw Nichols grow and start to believe he could do whatever “he set out to do in this world,” Spates said.

Spates’ favorite memory of Ty, as he called Nichols, was last year on Spates’ birthday, when Nichols met Spates’ wife and 3-year-old at their usual Starbucks. He watched Nichols play with his toddler and talk to his wife with kindness.

“When we left, my wife said, ‘I just really like his soul. He’s got such a good spirit,’” Spates said.

“To speak about someone’s soul is very deep,” he said. “I’ll never forget when she said that. I’ll always remember that about him.”

Spates joins the rest of Nichols’ family and wider Memphis community in being frustrated at the lack of information that has come out about the traffic stop that resulted in Nichols’ death. He said he’s had to do a lot of compartmentalizing to be able to even speak about his friend.

“I just hope that this truly does open up honest dialogue, and not dialogue until the next one happens, but a dialogue for change,” he said.

Nichols’ daily life was ordinary at times, as he worked and spent time with family, but he also made time for his passions, his mom, Wells, said.

After his Starbucks sessions, he would come home and take a nap before heading to work, said Wells, with whom he was living. Nichols worked the second shift at FedEx, where he had been employed for about nine months, she said.

He came home during his break to eat with his mom, who would have dinner cooked.

Nichols loved his mom’s homemade chicken, made with sesame seeds, just the way he liked it, Wells said.

When he wasn’t working, Nichols headed to Shelby Farms Park to skateboard, something he had been doing since he was 6 years old. He would wake up on Saturdays to go skate or sometimes, he’d go to the park to enjoy the sunset and snap photos of it, his mom said.

“My son every night wanted to go and look at the sunset, that was his passion.”

Photography was a form of self-expression that writing could never capture for Nichols, who wrote that it helped him look “at the world in a more creative way,” on his photography website.

While he snapped everything from action shots of sports to bodies of water, landscape photography was his favorite, he wrote.

“I hope to one day let people see what i see and to hopefully admire my work based on the quality and ideals of my work,” he wrote. He signed the post: “Your friend, – Tyre D. Nichols.”

Skating was another way Nichols showed the world his personality. A video montage of Nichols on YouTube shows his face up close with the sun shining behind him before he coasts up and down a ramp on his skateboard. He grinds the rail and does tricks on his board in the video, which was shown at a news conference by his family’s attorney Crump.

Sunsets, skateboarding and his positive nature were all things that Nichols was known for, longtime friend Angelina Paxton told The Commercial Appeal, a local paper.

Skating was a big part of his life in Sacramento, California, where he lived before he moved to Memphis, Paxton said.

“He was his own person and didn’t care if he didn’t fit into what a traditional Black man was supposed to be in California. He had such a free spirit and skating gave him his wings,” Paxton said.

Paxton and Nichols met when they were 11 years old and attending a youth group, she told the Appeal.

“Tyre was someone who knew everyone, and everyone had a positive image of him because that’s who he was,” Paxton said. “Every church knew him; every youth group knew him.”

When Paxton found out about Nichols’ death, she crumbled, she told CNN affiliate WMC.

“My knees gave out,” she told WMC. “I just fell because I could not believe that someone with such light was taken out in such a dark way.”

Paxton attended Nichols’ memorial service earlier this month in Memphis. She said she represented the people in California who knew him and wanted to support his family.

“There would be a couple thousand people in this room,” Paxton told WMC, if the memorial had been in Sacramento. “He was such an innocent person. He was such a light. This could have been any of us.”

For his family, seeing the turnout and feeling the outpouring of support meant a lot.

Nichols’ stepfather Rodney Wells told WMC: “My son is a community person, so this (memorial) was good to see.”

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January 26, 2023
Alito’s mentions of Ashley Madison and children wearing KKK costumes cap an awkward Supreme Court day | CNN Politics

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CNN
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As the Supreme Court gathered for more than two hours on Monday to discuss whether a graphic designer can refuse to do business with same-sex couples, the justices somehow strayed into dueling hypotheticals concerning Black and White Santas and dating websites.

Hypotheticals are nothing new at the high court as the justices probe how cases before the court could impact different challenges down the road. But Monday’s hypothetical was unusually awkward, with a reference to children wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit to visit Santa Claus.

It all began when Justice Ketanji Jackson expressed some alarm about the extent of arguments put forward by the graphic designer, Lorie Smith, who wants to expand her business to celebrate marriages, but does not want to work with same-sex couples out of religious objections to same-sex marriage.

“Can I ask you a hypothetical that just sort of helps me flesh” this out, Jackson asked a lawyer for the designer.

Jackson wanted to know about a photography business in a hypothetical shopping mall during the holiday season that offers a product called “Scenes with Santa.” She said the photographer wants to express his own view of nostalgia about Christmases past by reproducing 1940s and 1950s Santa scenes in sepia tone.

“Their policy is that only White children can be photographed with Santa,” Jackson said and noted that according to her hypothetical, the photographer is willing to refer families of color to the Santa at “the other end of the mall” who will take anybody, and they will photograph families of color.

Jackson asked Kristen Waggoner, Smith’s lawyer, “why isn’t your argument that they should be able to do that?”

Waggoner finally said that there are “difficult lines to draw” and said that the Santa hypothetical might be an “edge case.”

That drew incredulity on the part of liberal Justice Elena Kagan.

“It may be an ‘edge case’ meaning it could fall on either side, you’re not sure?” she asked.

Jackson returned to her query later and expanded it. She said her hypothetical photographer is doing something akin to the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and wants it to be “authentic” so that only White children could be customers.

Waggoner suggested that in the case at hand the “message wins,” but never really explained what she meant.

Artist explains why she thinks she shouldn’t have to work with same-sex couples

When a lawyer for Colorado stood up to defend the state’s anti-discrimination law, Justice Samuel Alito chimed in.

He wanted to know if a Black Santa at the other end of the mall doesn’t want to have his picture taken with a child who’s dressed up in a Ku Klux Klan outfit whether the Black Santa has to do it?

Colorado Solicitor General Eric Olson replied that there is no law that protects a right to wear a KKK outfit.

That spurred Kagan to jump in, noting that objection would be based on the outfit, not whether it was worn by a Black or a White child.

Alito then uttered an extremely awkward aside that could have been an attempted joke gone astray. “You do see a lot of Black children in Ku Klux Klan outfits, right? All the time.”

At another point in arguments Alito was posing a set of hypotheticals and again engaged Kagan – his seat mate – as he searched for how the case at hand could impact other cases.

He was referring to a “friend-of-the-court” brief filed by lawyer Josh Blackman on behalf of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty in support of Smith. The aim of the brief is to discuss problematic situations for Jewish artisans who object to speaking out about certain topics. A series of hypotheticals was included to show instances in which a Jewish artist would be compelled to betray his conscience.

“An unmarried Jewish person asks a Jewish photographer to take a photograph for his JDate dating profile,” Alito began, referring to a hypothetical in the brief.

He paused. “It’s a dating service, I gather, for Jewish people,” Alito said.

Kagan, who is Jewish, chimed in to laughter, “It is.”

Alito decided to plow awkwardly forward with another hypothetical from Blackman’s brief .

“All right. Maybe Justice Kagan will also be familiar with the next website I’m going to mention,” he said. “A Jewish person asks a Jewish photographer to take a photograph for his Ashleymadison.com dating profile.”

The audience laughed as Ashleymadison.com appears to refer to an online dating service and social networking services marketed to people who are married or already in relationships.

It was another awkward moment with Alito adding: “I’m not suggesting that – she knows a lot of things. I’m not suggesting – okay … Does he have to do it?”

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December 5, 2022
How your phone learned to see in the dark | CNN Business

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Open up Instagram at any given moment and it probably won’t take long to find crisp pictures of the night sky, a skyline after dark or a dimly lit restaurant. While shots like these used to require advanced cameras, they’re now often possible from the phone you already carry around in your pocket.

Tech companies such as Apple, Samsung and Google are investing resources to improve their night photography options at a time when camera features have increasingly become a key selling point for smartphones that otherwise largely all look and feel the same from one year to the next.

Earlier this month, Google brought a faster version of its Night Sight mode, which uses AI algorithms to lighten or brighten images in dark environments, to more of its Pixel models. Apple’s Night mode, which is available on models as far back as the iPhone 11, was touted as a premier feature on its iPhone 14 lineup last year thanks to its improved camera system.

These tools have come a long way in just the past few years, thanks to significant advancements in artificial intelligence technology as well as image processing that has become sharper, quicker, and more resilient to challenging photography situations. And smartphone makers aren’t done yet.

“People increasingly rely on their smartphones to take photos, record videos, and create content,” said Lian Jye Su, an artificial intelligence analyst at ABI Research. “[This] will only fuel the smartphone companies to up their games in AI-enhanced image and video processing.”

While there has been much focus lately on Silicon Valley’s renewed AI arms race over chatbots, the push to develop more sophisticated AI tools could also help further improve night photography and bring our smartphones closer to being able to see in the dark.

Samsung’s Night mode feature, which is available on various Galaxy models but optimized for its premium S23 Ultra smartphone, promises to do what would have seemed unthinkable just five to 10 years ago: enable phones to take clearer pictures with little light.

The feature is designed to minimize what’s called “noise,” a term in photography that typically refers to poor lighting conditions, long exposure times, and other elements that can take away from the quality of an image.

The secret to reducing noise, according to the company, is a combination of the S23 Ultra’s adaptive 200M pixel sensor. After the shutter button is pressed, Samsung uses advanced multi-frame processing to combine multiple images into a single picture and AI to automatically adjust the photo as necessary.

“When a user takes a photo in low or dark lighting conditions, the processor helps remove noise through multi-frame processing,” said Joshua Cho, executive vice president of Samsung’s Visual Solution Team. “Instantaneously, the Galaxy S23 Ultra detects the detail that should be kept, and the noise that should be removed.”

For Samsung and other tech companies, AI algorithms are crucial to delivering photos taken in the dark. “The AI training process is based on a large number of images tuned and annotated by experts, and AI learns the parameters to adjust for every photo taken in low-light situations,” Su explained.

For example, algorithms identify the right level of exposure, determine the correct color pallet and gradient under certain lighting conditions, sharpen blurred faces or objects artificially, and then makes those changes. The final result, however, can look quite different from what the person taking the picture saw in real time, in what some might argue is a technical sleight-of-hand trick.

Google is also focused on reducing noise in photography. Its AI-powered Night Sight feature captures a burst of longer-exposure frames. It then uses something called HDR+ Bracketing, which creates several photos with different settings. After a picture is taken, the images are combined together to create “sharper photos” even in dark environments “that are still incredibly bright and detailed,” said Alex Schiffhauer, a group product manager at Google.

While effective, there can be a slight but noticeable delay before the image is ready. But Schiffhauer said Google intends to speed up this process more on future Pixel iterations. “We’d love a world in which customers can get the quality of Night Sight without needing to hold still for a few seconds,” Schiffhauer said.

Google also has an astrophotography feature which allows people to take shots of the night sky without needing to tweak the exposure or other settings. The algorithms detect details in the sky and enhances them to stand out, according to the company.

Apple has long been rumored to be working on an astrophotography feature, but some iPhone 14 Pro Max users have successfully been able to capture pictures of the sky through its existing Night Mode tool. When a device detects a low-light environment, Night mode turns on to capture details and brighten shots. (The company did not respond to a request to elaborate on how the algorithms work.)

AI can make a difference in the image, but the end results for each of these features also depend on the phone’s lenses, said Gartner analyst Bill Ray. A traditional camera will have the lens several centimeters from the sensor, but the limited space on a phone often requires squeezing things together, which can result in a more shallow depth of field and reduced image quality, especially in darker environments.

“The quality of the lens is still a big deal, and how the phone addresses the lack of depth,” Ray said.

While night photography on phones has come a long way, a buzzy new technology could push it ahead even more.

Generative AI, the technology that powers the viral chatbot ChatGPT, has earned plenty of attention for its ability to create compelling essays and images in response to user prompts. But these AI systems, which are trained on vast troves of online data, also have potential to edit and process images.

“In recent years, generative AI models have also been used in photo-editing functions like background removal or replacement,” Su said. If this technology is added to smartphone photo systems, it could eventually make night modes even more powerful, Su said.

Big Tech companies, including Google, are already fully embracing this technology in other parts of their business. Meanwhile, smartphone chipset vendors like Qualcomm and MediaTek are looking to support more generative AI applications natively on consumer devices, Su said. These include image and video augmentation.

“But this is still about two to three years away from limited versions of this showing up on smartphones,” he said.

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April 12, 2021