Featured Photographers - Viridian Images

Together, Orlando and Lissette are Viridian Images Photography. A husband and wife wedding photography team based in Atlanta but available to document beautiful stories anywhere.

We enjoy good music, interesting design, vacation getaways, volunteer work, and all things Italian. Most of all, we love photography because it artistically challenges how we express a sense of what’s happening in the moment.

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HOW DID YOU GET STARTED IN PHOTOGRAPHY?

ORLANDO: Lissette started with photography in her late teens. Later she worked as an assistant to a wedding photographer. I was pursuing a drawing and animation path, roughly around the same time. We met, got married and we landed some very successful corporate jobs which pulled us away from the arts. It was not till after several years of marriage (around 2010) that she was feeling burnt out with her career, and I suggested she quit her job so we could slowly begin building a photography business. Early on she taught me the basics of handling a DSLR, and I also began taking workshops with respected photographers.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE?

ORLANDO: Documentary with a fusion of high contrast, vibrant colors and artistic concepts. Throughout the course of a wedding, we let events evolve naturally. However, when the time for portraits arrives, we will make suggestions that help us achieve the creative vision our clients hire us for. We don’t subscribe to boxing ourselves into a specific genre. We let the couple’s story and relationship dynamics shape how we use our environment to implement our creativity.

WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR IN AN IMAGE?

ORLANDO: Feeling, light, composition and geometrical shapes

WHAT INSPIRES OR MOTIVATES YOU?

ORLANDO: Color, graphic designs, nature, relationships, textures and simplicity are some of the many things that inspire us. Providing for our family is obviously a big motivator. Still, exceeding personal expectations is perhaps the best of all.

WHAT CHALLENGES YOU?

ORLANDO: Fear of mediocrity. We never want to be ordinary. We feel we should be delivering unique imagery for every couple that supersedes what we’ve accomplished previously.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT OF A WEDDING?

LISSETTE: Portraits. Usually by the time we get to this point in the wedding the couple is a bit more relaxed as the ceremony has concluded. They can begin to let loose. You can sense that relief.

ORLANDO: It’s weird but I like to look at how the couple holds hands during the ceremony. How they nervously twitch fingers. Or how one person tries to calm the other person. Hands say a lot!

OF ALL YOUR IMAGES, DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE ONE?

LISSETTE: Maybe the photo of a bride and groom strolling through a lantern room in Mexico. This was one of our all-time favorite weddings because the couple was such a dream to work with. I had to climb on a table to get high enough to shoot through the lanterns for that portrait before security would come by and check on us again. Thankfully I didn’t fall or break the table.

ORLANDO: Perhaps the black and white photo of the bride with what looks like a crown around her head and the groom silhouetted in the foreground. It was pouring rain outside when the time came for portraits with this couple and I was really struggling to find something to create that day. Then I walked by the elevators of the hotel and saw this small mirror over a sideboard table that had a starburst look to it. We had the bride climb on the table and positioned her head in the center of the mirror. Then I had the groom stand right in front of the camera so I could shoot over his shoulder and compose the bride in the frame. He was slightly taller than me, so I had to get on the tip of my toes to shoot. What was looking like a disaster turned out to be one of the best images of my career.

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LISSETTE AND ORLANDO?

LISSETTE: Originally from Miami, Florida. Obsessed with Italy. Chocolate Mousse-aholic. Loves to sing while editing. First camera was a Mamiya Reflexa.

ORLANDO: Originally from Denver, Colorado. But I want to live in New Zealand. I can listen to Neil Finn constantly. I run 4 miles every day. I built my own 8000-gallon pond and unintentionally I’ve become a turtle rescue. As everyone brings me turtles they save from the road. I have 31.

TELL US ABOUT DVLOP

DVLOP was a game changer for us. It has made editing fun again. The ability to mix and match presets to achieve a specific look or feel is unmatched by any other system. Sometimes we edit just for the sake of creativity. We definitely recommend DVLOP for any professional photographer looking to polish their images!