A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Absolutely Do Again
originally published March 4, 2014
Somewhere near the bottom of the list of things I always wanted to shoot, probably between “Siberian winter snowscape” and “bottom of Godzilla’s foot,” was “wedding.”
Maybe it’s because I don’t understand a lot of modern wedding photography, with its emphasis on place settings and party favors and other bullshit tchotchkes that have nothing to do with the two people getting hitched, or their marriage. I just can’t picture being eighty years old, turning to a wife and saying, “You know, I’m sure glad we had all that stuff at our wedding and that our photographer took pictures of it.”
Sometimes when I’m at my sister’s house, I’ll grab her wedding album and leaf through it. There’s my grandma. And her brother. My Aunt Sheila and Uncle Walt. Me, with the love of my life that got away (my full head of hair).
And one of my most treasured photographs is of my grandparents on their wedding day. I never asked, but I doubt either of them could remember what the place settings looked like that day, nor do I imagine they would care.
I’ve always valued experiences over things. And this emphasis on “wedding things” — I just don’t get it. So I’m probably not the guy to shoot a wedding. Or so I thought.
A few months back, my friend Brie asked me about some of the lighting techniques I use in commercial work and if they might apply to shooting weddings. It was a great question that I’d previously not considered much at all.
Brie is a wonderful photographer, with an uncommon knack for color and composition. (Check her out here). We work in different genres, have incredibly different styles, and our approaches to any given shot would be so dissimilar that you’d think we weren’t even talking about the same thing. After a few discussions about lighting, she invited me to second shoot a few of her upcoming weddings. Despite my misgivings, I thought I might be able to learn something. I agreed to do it. I’m so glad I did.
Every preconceived notion I had about shooting weddings turned out to be false, and I learned so much.
I learned that time flies at a wedding. An eight hour commercial shoot feels like eight hours, but shooting nine hours of wedding coverage feels like 30 minutes. Unlike commercial shoots, your window of opportunity to nail a frame is evanescent. You do not get to adjust the lighting, take a meter reading, and go back to one. Eminem was right — you only get one shot.
I learned how to disappear into the background — no easy feat at my size.
I learned the limits of my beloved Nikon SB-24s, and unfortunately had to replace one.
And I learned a thing or two from Brie, especially about interacting with wedding clients. While I take a more production-based approach to a shoot, it quickly became apparent that this wouldn’t work for shooting a wedding, primarily because a wedding isn’t a traditional production.
Every last detail on a commercial shoot (or music video, or film) is planned, down to the color of the gaff tape. You can (and definitely should) plan and pre-produce your wedding shoot, but once 150 people and their best friends Robert Mondavi, Jim Beam, and Jose Cuervo show up, you never really know where the night will go. And this is where I learned how much I actually love shooting weddings. When you’ve prepared so much and then rely on outside circumstances to give you something — the only thing I can compare it to is playing music with other people. You’ve mastered (or are at least competent) with your instrument, and now it’s time to riff. As a guitarist, I’d always try to take what the other players were doing, and give something back to them.
When it’s hitting, it’s the most symbiotic, copacetic thing possible and the rush is unparalleled.
The wedding guests don’t know that we’re jamming, but that’s the best way I can describe it. You’ve prepared, taken light readings, set up a few flashes. And then you’re out there, in the middle of everything, taking what people are giving and trying to make something memorable. Trying to make art.
At the risk of sounding too hippie-dippie, what could be more beautiful than making art from the love of two people and the anywhere from 50 to 300 people that love them? I’m not sure I know of anything that is.
Since that baptism by fire, I’ve shot a few more weddings. It’s a great experience, and I can’t wait to shoot many more. So much so, that with my recent move to Denver, I’ve decided to branch out into wedding photography. Commercial work is still my mainstay. And I still love portraits and headshots, and will continue to shoot them, but I’m making room to shoot some weddings.
