Handstand on a dance floor? Awesome!
But wait … check out the velocity of that tie. That’s no handstand … it’s a backflip!
I’ve seen a lot on wedding dance floors, but that was my first backflip.
Category Archives: documentary/photojournalism
The ring-bearer plays with flower petals after the ceremony.
More nostalgia. This was from the first wedding I ever booked, though I shot it four months later than the wedding from yesterday. Confused? That’s how I was before I got used to knowing exactly where I’ll be on a Saturday two years from now.
Here’s a bit of nostalgia, a nice moment from the first wedding I ever shot as the primary photographer. The ceremony was out on a little island, and the groom, an extremely athletic Man of the Mountains, rowed them both out there in their own canoe. I think I may have been standing up in another canoe to get this shot, which shows that I was never very bright with my equipment.
How cool was yesterday’s wedding? The bride and groom danced to Langhorne Slim. And I don’t mean a recording … he performed for them.
If you don’t know who Langhorne Slim, is, well … Bruce Springsteen’s a fan of his. That’s a pretty good recommendation.
I’ll see some of you at my talk today at Adorama!
A tourist wedding guest looks up at Midtown Manhattan during a rain-soaked double-decker bus tour. This image is proof that I sometimes use Canon when I want to change things up, and that I like to make life hard on myself by shooting photojournalism with the glacially slow 85mm f/1.2.
From Barbara and Michael’s wedding at The Plaza
(EXIF and (hilariously wrong) GPS)
The make-up artist sprays Alicia’s face so the make-up will stay in palce before yesterday’s wedding. This image was taken with free-lensing, meaning the lens was off the camera and held in my hand.
(Happy Memorial Day to my American readers!)
I love crazy portraits more than anybody, and I love well-thought-out details that reflect the couple’s sensibilities. But these moments, the connections between you and the people you love, that’s what weddings are about in the end.
I got my start in photojournalism and spent years working for Columbia University as a photographer, doing mostly documentary work, so I’m glad to intersperse my wedding work with institutional clients, and particularly my undergraduate alma mater and frequent client Fordham University. And there’s nothing more fun in the corporate photography world than being handed a broad assignment with “tell a good story.” So I had a great time covering the recent “Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day.” Fordham did their best to make this a great experience for the kids while keeping the cogs of the university turning, with tours and events all over campus to show them different facets of Fordham professional life. Here is a sample of the day:
Students wander the halls of WFUV, Fordham’s acclaimed radio station
Students, with new t-shirts, watch a chemistry demonstration
Goggles upon glasses.
A student makes sure his work is right as they test acids versus bases.
Rapt attention.
Students make their own races during the roll call.
Doing their best to put themselves in sugar shock at a “Make Your Own Cupcake” station
Students race at the ROTC demonstration
Reporting for duty
He’s just excited because he knows that here, tomorrow, will be the retelling of Sameepa and Bareen’s amazing wedding.
Caught during the ceremony.
Sameepa and Beeren get all the new tech. Not only were they perhaps the first wedding in the world to get an iPad slideshow (starting at 10:30 a.m. on the launch date!), I also shot their wedding with the new 24mm f/1.4. Read my full review of it at Amazon’s End User blog!
I’ve already discussed how my job makes me feel creepy because it’s good to take interest in the way romance plays out in the real world. But there’s more. I have always had a strange sort of photographic memory (pun not intended). If I’ve taken your photo, ever, I remember your face. I remember that I’ve taken a photo looks. I remember what that photo looked like and the expression you were making. But I often will have no recollection of the context, when or where the event was taken. The problem comes from what happens when you’ve taken photos of literally tens of thousands of people — for years I couldn’t walk around the Columbia University area without constant bouts of deja vu as people walked by me.
And, of course, the creepiness. I was in a coffeeshop waiting for the couple for today’s engagement shoot, and I sat next to a young woman. My brow furrowed. Do I say it?
“There’s really no way for this not to sound terrible, but I’ve taken your picture somewhere. Did you go to Columbia?”
No, it turned out, but she was in Rebekah and Jonah’s Korean/Jewish extravaganza.
So how does it pay to be creepy, other than remembering a great day (that has an album coming up soon)? This sort of memory has always been a huge advantage for me as an event photographer. I like to try to get photos of as many guests as possible, and even in gigantic events I can always remember at a glance which guests I’ve gotten good photos of and which I haven’t, giving clients as robust coverage as possible. So I guess I’ll have to live with the deja vu.
It also says something interesting about the profound cognitive effect the process of taking photos and reviewing them can have, at least for me, since I do not have a particularly good memory for your face if I haven’t taken your photo.
Ilana and Paul‘s dramatic first kiss.
I suppose I should be talking about the secret camera I’m testing that adds the important sense of smell to your digital images, but I think that’s been played out.
A couple gets more than they bargained for, sitting on a cliff overlooking a choppy ocean at the Rockhouse Hotel in Negril, Jamaica.