I Shoot People

Choosing a beautiful church in which to be married is a wonderful delight.  Choosing just the right color for dresses is something the bride may have dreamed about for years.  Deciding on entrees and flowers Read the rest of this entry »

Time for another photo-safari-ish sort of thing. I left town today, and will be gone till shortly before turkey day.

Milwaukee to Oklahoma City today. 800 miles. Time for a snooze.

In the meantime, here’s one from a recent wedding….

The location you choose for your wedding will have a huge impact on what your wedding images look like. A photographer captures what is present, not what is not.

In my public wedding galleries I show real wedding images, not photoshoots arranged to LOOK like weddings. And the real choices that brides and grooms make about where they want their wedding to take place has a huge impact on HOW the images capturing their wedding will turn out.

It seems that in recent years there’s been this “thing” about brides being princess for a day, or having the right to control the entire day and all within it. And that’s fine. Fads and attitudes change with the times — that is how people see the wedding day at this point in time.

But I mention it because a lot of wedding photographers only show the work from their most expensive and elaborate weddings and the more typical bride begins to think that their wedding pictures from a $10,000 or $20,000 wedding will look like the photoshoot version of a wedding that might have cost $100,000. I think that’s really unfair to the client and I don’t do that.

Most of my clients are quite unique as individuals — by that I mean that they know what they want and don’t have to shop a hundred photographers to make up their mind about who to shoot their wedding. They find my work and realize that I have an eye that syncs with the things they imagine about their wedding.

Whether YOU choose to have your wedding at a posh resort, or a tiny local rented church you can rely upon me to be there to create visual memories of a special day that reflect the love and attention you put into your OWN wedding. I’ll be there to collect images of the “players” in that drama, to record the rituals that loom large in expectations, and to create a collection of details that will not only record the attention you paid to getting all the parts of that day just the way you wanted them, but also that will bring back special sentiments, emotions and joys that were part of that day.

A bride spends unknown hours deciding on all the little details that will compose the symphony of her wedding. Some of them look best at the beginning of the day when no one has touched them, or bumped into them. But sometimes the little details end up summarizing the mood of a wedding, the quiet moment, or the peak of excitement, maybe a reflection about some family member who may not have lived much past the wedding, or the baby who arrived shortly afterwards.

What details are important to you?

In your life? In your work?

Or perhaps in your relationships?

I know that since Frank’s death I’ve looked at life differently. The candle of life is partially burned and what has gone up in smoke can never be rekindled — but the illumination that life has provided has helped a good many people along their way.

Candles are nice — details are nice — but nicer still are the people in your life.

Leona was a featured performer in a recent wedding I shot. In an auditorium large enough to seat 1000 I thoroughly enjoyed how a single dancer could occupy enough of the stage to “fit” the space.

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