Is wedding photography just portraits of pretty girls & a blurry background?
Interview with Joseph Xu, Ann Arbor photographer
What advice would you give couples who are just starting to look for a photographer?
Don’t hire a photographer just so you can show your friends on Facebook how awesome your wedding is. Your wedding is nuanced with the personal details — the story of how you got there and the idiosyncrasies between you and your partner. Invest in a photographer who is going to care about you, who is going to understand the deeper story, the differing dynamics (both good and bad)
amongst the various parties involved in the wedding (Momzillas are characters, too), and is going to get the inside jokes that you laugh at, too. Have someone who is going to create photography for you, your family, and friends.
You should be able to look at these photographs and see moments that reflect the longstanding relationships that got you there and not just a portrait that shows off how much you spent on the dress and suit.
Will you share some of your secret sauce? What makes your approach to wedding photography, unique?
I’m bad at traditional wedding photography. A lot of traditional wedding photography is posed portraits and making social media posts about “I do this for the moment,” without actually composing around the moment. Half of the battle is being there in the moment, the other half is actually composing and finding a way to translate that moment beyond a snapshot or a simple straight forward wide shot. Learning to slow down those moments, anticipate them, and compose around them is something I try to do with everything I photograph.
What’s a piece of advice you’d give Joseph Xu of 5 years ago?
Research and learn about photography on a deeper level. There’s a lot of inspiration around you with the advent of the internet and social media, don’t just focus in on what your peers are doing (shallow depth of field and portraits of pretty girls) — do something that tells a story and learn how others tell that story beyond the field of portrait and wedding photography.
Don’t just focus in on what your peers are doing (shallow depth of field and portraits of pretty girls)
How long have you been photographing weddings for?
I have been photographing weddings now for about ten years.
What was the moment(s) you decided you wanted to do photography professionally?
I had a midlife crisis at 21 years old as I was about to graduate college with a degree in sociology and not wanting to really do social work or academia (the two main career paths), and I stuck to what I was good at and decided to regimen myself to a plan of doing one photoshoot per week at least. It was that addictive feeling of getting better at something, learning about people, and, if I was lucky, putting some scratch in my pocket to get me to the next feeling. It hasn’t really stopped, I just now get paid consistently to do those shoots.
Tell us a memorable story about one of the jobs you did!
One of my favorite weddings was between a Mexican woman and an Indian man. Their families were from two different worlds and the wedding became about how much the families and friends tried to bridge that culture of understanding in each other through food, cultural garb, dance, and so forth. Both sides embraced each other’s cultures, including the groom’s family comically hiring an Indian catering company to dress up in sombreros and serve guacamole and salsa as one of the catering stations. It was one of the awkward visual moments, but one that was endearing and in the gray as most family and intercultural understanding is.
This piece is a part of our Honeydew interview series. If you want to see more interviews like this, give us claps, or share this article with your friends!
To see more of Joseph’s work, check out www.josephxu.com.
