trashthedress

Less than a week before Shelby Swink's wedding in November 2014, her fiancé sat her down, told her he did not love her, and just like that, the wedding was off. As she mourned the abrupt end of her four-year relationship, the idea of a "trash the dress" photo shoot came up. Swink decided that it would be the perfect way for her to mark the occasion and let go of the pain, so she enlisted the help of photographer Elizabeth Hoard to set the photo shoot in motion.

The crushing blow came just 52 days before her wedding: Janine, a blushing bride-to-be, unexpectedly lost her fiancé. The grief was unimaginable, but she didn't let it conquer her. Instead, after taking some time to grieve, she got in touch with Matt Adcock at Del Sol Photography and asked him to help her move on and rediscover the beauty of the world around her.

What followed was an incredibly powerful 'trash the dress' photo shoot full of symbolism: a cleansing shoot that has helped Janine to make her peace with the past and embrace the possibility of a bright future.

It takes work to stand out among today's wedding photographers. After all, you've got shots like these from Iceland to compete with, so how do you create photos that will widen eyes and loosen jaws?

Well, if you're photographer Josh Martinez from Chugach Peaks Photography, you helicopter the couple onto a glacier in Alaska and let nature do the talking while you take some pictures and ruin a wedding dress.

Most portrait/wedding photographers are familiar with "Trash the Dress" sessions. A client, dressed in a gorgeous formal gown is photographed in a location in a less than elegant outdoor location, one usually involving water, and in the process the dress becomes "trashed." It's a fun juxtaposition and it's been popular for some time, but water and mud are one thing...

FIRE is another.

If you're a wedding photographer, you might want to think twice about doing a trash the dress shoot in a moving river. A newly married Montreal-area woman drowned this past Friday during a photo shoot in the Ouareau River.