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(Not that Hollywood)

I’ve gotten a lot of requests to do workshops outside the NYC area, and I did a test seminar in New Orleans back in 2009, but I wanted to wait until I could be sure I could take this show on the road and do a great job with it.

March 18th and 19th are that time.

This workshop, “What Would MacGyver Do?” will take some of the best things I’ve learned in the shooting and business workshops I led in 2010, as well as all of the preparation work I did for my DWF lecture in January. We’ll be taking the kinds of real-world problems that wedding and portrait photographers deal with all the time — bad light, not enough time, bad locations, awkward subjects, and more — and working through them to get technically and emotionally compelling photographs. Recommended for people-shooters who can at least count upward in f-stops.

This is a night-and–day workshop, with the night of the 18th given to networking and discussions of the hows and whys of shooting professionally. I take great care to make sure that people can get benefits not only from me, but from lasting connections to other photographers with shared skills and interests, and it’s been great to see lasting friendships come out of previous workshops.

Cost is just $500 for registration before March 1, and $600 thereafter. E-mail ryanbrenizerworkshops@gmail.com to sign up or get more information.

Fun fact: This will be the first of my workshops planned by more than one Brenizer.

UPDATE: I should note that with my current schedule I won’t be doing many workshops this year. My current plans are one West Coast workshop, one East Coast workshop, and one in December in Asia. Going to be another busy year with lots of fantastic clients.

As soon as I discovered Junebug, I knew that they were a publication that really “got” photography, feeling free to publish images just because they loved them, whether or not they showed the latest styles in centerpieces. It is an honor to be on their list of photographers they love.

I wrote a little personal statement for them, might be worth sharing here:

I have been blessed by photography. It has filled me with purpose and joy, and taken me places I never thought I’d go. I have covered three U.S. presidents, been blessed by the Pope, and been stared down by Muhammad Ali. I’ve shared a laugh with Smokey Robinson, and had a picture I took of him used when he received a lifetime achievement award. I’ve photographed a 110-year-old woman as she told me what it was like to climb onto the torch of the Statue of Liberty. I was chosen as the only independent photographer allowed near Obama and McCain in their last meeting before the 2008 election. But I have never felt so blessed by photography as when I am photographing a wedding. At weddings, we are most visibly ourselves — the walls we walk around with come tumbling down under the forces of joy, anxiety (and sometimes a bit of alcohol). To document that experience, the relationship of friends, families, and a couple launching a new stage in their life, is an incredible feeling. When a client says “This is the first picture of seen of my parents that actually looks like them!” I feel like I’ve done something with lasting value. And to do that with so many wonderful couples, from down the Manhattan street to as far away as Singapore, makes it all the better.

I am a storyteller and a problem solver. When I am posing you, I work to make you comfortable enough to find the real emotions and expressions within you. And when I am documenting the day, I work to make you comfortable enough to forget I’m there.

Exciting news! I’ll be joining the ranks of well-known photographers like Cliff Mautner and Joe McNally as a lecturer in Adorama’s workshop series. On June 21, I’ll be giving a talk on a subject near and dear to my heart: “Creativity on the Fly, Turning Bad Shooting Situations into Great Wedding Photos.”

Weddings are, at their heart, barely controlled chaos, and it is the photographers who learn to do good work even when everything is lined up against them who will be successful in the long run. And if there’s one thing that a long history of shooting in New York City has taught me, it’s how to deal with adversity. We’ll be discussing how to think through shoots when the light, the location, and time is against you, and hopefully have some fun. Just $35 for a two-hour lecture, which is about as inexpensive as anything gets in Manhattan.

Seating is limited, so click here to read more and sign up!

Again, I want to say what an honor it is to have people come from across the country and the world to hear me prattle on for a day or two. Some people have asked me why I’ve started to do workshops when I have some rather well-documented gripes with the photography workshop industrial complex. First, it’s really, really fun. Second, it lets me try to address those problems by simply doing things the way I want. But lastly, the more I teach the more I realize that it is going to make me a much better photographer. I do so much client work that sometimes I don’t get the chance to step back and look at what I do from a different perspective. Teaching forces me to do that, to break down what I do and why I do it instead of just, you know, doing it. And by making me put this in some sort of sensible framework so people can reliably see whether a given workshop will be helpful for them or not, it has made me think about exactly the message I want to put out in the world, what things are valuable for me to teach.

Few things break my heart more than hearing people say “I wish you’d taken my wedding photos. We hate ours.” I think that wedding photography is important, and I want as many people as possible to love their photos, whether or not I took them. And I want as many people as possible to stay in love with the process of photography. And so, whenever I can find time within my packed photography schedule, I teach.

Here some of the workshoppers gather for the day. None of them seemed to need nearly as much coffee as I did to start at 9 a.m. Hmmm…

I always want to do these with people I’m comfortable with, so the day was filled with people who have been featured on this blog before, such as my friend Rochelle, who made a fabulous model. On the left she is looking cheeky for a Brenizer Method demonstration (I took the class through the whole process, from visualizing to stitching and output) and on the right we are mixing ambient and off-camera flash.

It was brisk, but much warmer than February, so we headed outside for some flash composites. This is three frames used for stark contrast with the ambient light.

And here is our “wedding party.” Flash composites are great for group shots, and here it wasn’t used as starkly, just to provide attractive light and better contrast. Again, I took the class through everything from pre-visualizing to the (very fast and easy) photoshop output.

Here I was doing a quick demonstration of Auto-FP flash, using 1/8000th of a second to bring the room ambient to blackness.

Then we moved on to couples, including my intern Isla and her husband Dan. I put them in the only part of the studio you would never want to photograph in — the kitchen we had just made dirty. To bring down the background, I stuck three flashes outside the window, mimicking bright daylight and getting interesting textures from the bars on the window.

Our next couple was the amazing Kindiya and Thomas, otherwise known as “The Couple on the Rocks.” Now we went to the ugliest part of the whole building, a nasty stairway where, Thomas noted, it looked like they were about to conduct a drug deal. Although, I said, it also looked like a place where a couple might actually make out. I don’t know anybody who spends a lot of time making out in front of gazebos. Off-camera flash and some movement to blur the shadows brought the effect here.

Here we used a very warm tungsten video light to cool the puke-green ambient into a nice turquoise. And you can see all the voyeurs in the class.

The sun came out and I showed the class how to kill it dead. f/22 wasn’t nearly dark enough for the effect I want, so we used the Sledgehammer of Light and Auto-FP to shoot at 1/8000th, f/6.3. That sky is straight out-of-camera. No HDR here.

Then we used the dramatic effect with flash compositing to light the couple from the left.

Then I wanted to show how to work when you had very, very little time, such as when you are holding an elevator. Yes, the “shaft of light” from the last post is an elevator shaft. The important thing here is pre-visualizing and then working quickly. We tossed three flashes in the reflective elevator at half power to turn it into a glowing room of white and positioned them right in the doorway. We also had a second, safer shot using video light inside the elevator.

We had a session of free shooting so everyone could work through some of the things they saw, and I took another Brenizer Method shot of Kindiya and Thomas, as well as showing the effects of studio lights (not shown).

Group shot! One of these days I’ll remember to do a group shot at the beginning, before many of the workshoppers leave.

Thanks so much everyone! This is probably the last weekend workshop I can host for a long time, but I’ll put together a weekday one aimed squarely at wedding photographers, covering business as well as wedding-specific issues, in the mid to late summer.

Given that this is a blog devoted to my photography, generally I’m going to feature … my photography. But today I have a good excuse. Phillip Stark, owner of 2 Stop Brighter Studios where I conduct my NYC workshops, sent over some great shots of last time. He has a great space over there, and I thank him for all his help!

I am extremely excited for the workshop on Friday and Saturday. We were full to the level I wanted, but there are a couple spaces open now due to two last-minute personal emergencies, so contact me if you’re interested! We’ll be spending a lot of time talking about advanced techniques that can pull off good shots no matter the ambient lighting you have to work with. In addition to all the great things that we did in the February workshop, it will be a bit more intimate, and I promise the weather will be warmer this time. The reviews show happy attendees despite the freezing weather.

There’s a huge hoopla going on right now in the wedding industry about which workshops are rip-offs — 95 percent of you will have never heard of this debate, and you are lucky, as it’s pretty ugly. I don’t have anything to say of consequence, since the alleged scammers are people I’ve never heard of before. But someone exclaimed I was “giving it away!” by offering workshops at $350. Maybe. But I also know how much 10-week courses at the International Center for Photography cost, and they aren’t $30,000. I simply bring the same philosophy to my workshops that I do for my weddings: Price as low as supply and demand will allow me*, and hustle like crazy to do good work. As a long-term strategy of someone who wants to stay in this business for the next 40 or 50 years, and who wants to make sure as many people as possible have great wedding photos, it’s working pretty well.

I’m not alone in this idea. I don’t know any wedding photographer who knows lighting as well as Joe McNally — I mean, really, the guy has evenly lit up coliseum-sized telescopes while standing in a crane — and you might be amazed at the low prices of his workshops. I’m not a rock star, I just know some neat tricks and like to share them. Information wants to be free, I just don’t have quite that much time.

There is also some extremely exciting news to come on the workshop and lecture front, but I can’t tell you yet.

Onto the pictures:

*I should probably point out that this only works well if, by working hard, you are continually raising demand.

I’ve been relaxing a bit to gather myself for the coming season, but I’m really aching to get out, shoot and shoot and shoot and try some new things. So here I asked myself “How have I NOT seen a lot of product photography done?” Well, I haven’t seen a lot of products shot at 1/8000th of a second to take advantage of high-speed sync flash. So I had a bit of fun:

Our first workshop was a huge success (you can read reviews here), and so we’re going to get one more done before the season starts in earnest. This will be the last weekend workshop I’ll be able to offer for a loooooong time.

It would be great if life were always fabulous, if the light were always perfect, if everything happened according to your schedule, if your subjects were always naturally comfortable in front of the camera. But that’s not the world in which we live. So my workshops focus not just on tools that will let you create beautiful imagery, such as “the Brenizer Metho”d of bokeh panoramas, but how to make the most of less-than-perfect situations. What do you do when you want to create dramatic lighting, but it’s high noon, you have a giant wedding party, and one tiny little speedlight? What do you do when you want to create great portraits, but it’s pitch black out? What if the weather is horrible and you can’t go outside, and you’re left with no obviously interesting locations to shoot in?

These are the situations I and other photographers face all the time, and I’ll show you how I work through them, as well as showing you advanced tools for artistic expression like quick-and-easy flash composites, mixing strobe and continuous lighting, and basic flash techniques that guarantee perfect exposures every time.

But photography is more than just exposures. There will also be discussions of documentary style, how to make uncomfortable subjects comfortable, and how to further develop your own artistic style.

Lastly, these workshops are great opportunities for networking, and I want you to have as much fun as possible, so there will be a social mixer at the studio on Friday night (April 16) as well as the full-day workshop on Saturday (April 17), as well as official hotel accommodations for those who need it. Both the mixer and the workshop will be at the fantastic 2 Stops Brighter studio.

And, because I think some workshop prices are a bit nutty, all this is just $350.

To show interest or sign up, e-mail me here!

I feel incredibly honored to have a five-page spread featured on my work and photographic history in the magazine What Digital Camera. The spread was in the August 2009 issue, but since it primarily sells overseas I didn’t see it until now! There is an extensive look at the gear I use and a nice interview to show where I come from and where I’m heading.

Of course, as you’ll be able to see from the gear listings on the sample photos, my equipment keeps changing as I try new ways to capture photos the way I want. That means there are some new additions since the article (such as the D3s, 50mm f/1.2, 35mm f/1.8 and 24mm f/1.8) and of course a bit of gear that was swallowed by the angry god of the sea in Puerto Rico.

You can click on any of the spreads below for a larger, readable version!

Also thanks to Timothy Herzog for taking the photo of me with my kit.

On February 5th and 6th, 35 avid and awesome photographers came to 2 Stops Brigher Studios to talk shop and learn about some of the crazy stuff I get up to as a photographer. I figured I couldn’t teach a workshop about how to be fabulous, since I’m just a pretty normal guy, or how to run a business, since the most important thing I know is to work with other people who know how to do that stuff, or selling actions and presets, since I don’t use them.

What I do know as a New York City photographer is how to make the best of situations that aren’t always in your favor, and I thought it might be useful for some people to get my perspective. Also, I’m always looking at photographic gear and saying “Is there anyway I can use this in a weird way that would make some pretty cool pictures?” and we spent most of the day talking about some of the things I’ve found that can give you some new tools for bad situations — things like the “Brenizer method” of bokeh panoramas, video lights and light-painting for low-light, using flash composites for dynamic shots on bright days, and more.

I had such a wonderful time, and so many people have been asking about it, that I am going to host another one soon! I’m thinking April. Watch this space.

There are going to be a lot of photos in the full write-up, so click below to read the rest!

The weekend started with me hosting a mini-convention for photographers of Flickr’s Starting a Wedding Photography Business group at my studio. It was cold, but a lot of fun, as we walked around NYC, and I showed them the NYC way of shooting gigs — work quickly before the security guards come and yell at you. In NYC, there are always security guards.

Here was a little fun we had when I was showing off video lights, and how I would work the ambient of a night-time scene:

Then I showed off a little light-painting before we all froze and headed back inside:

On Friday night, everyone was invited to a mixer at the studio. It was important to me that people see this as an important networking and social opportunity as well as a learning seminar, so I threw this in for free, and will be doing it at all future seminars. Then we all piled in for the workshop!

I knew I would spend most of the day talking about the “Hows” of photography, so I started off with perhaps a more important question: What are your “Whys?”

Here is my brand-new intern Isla, also an attendee, already hard at work on one of the models’ dresses:

We went into with a full demonstration of the “Brenizer method” of bokeh panoramas, because, well, I know a little something about it. I showed everything from pre-visualization to capture to the Photoshop process:

I gave a short demonstration of good techniques for bouncing flash properly. I took a bunch of bad bounce shots I won’t show here, but I also showed how to set up your cameras so you can quickly bounce the light from exactly where you want it to hit your subject:

Then, just to show that you can bounce flash in situations you might not expect, I took this one with the flash bounced off a black fleece jacket! Not art, just a proof-of-concept:

Next was an instructional seminar on flash composites. This is a technique commercial shooters have been using for decades, but I wanted to show them how to do it in five minutes, not five days. So first we set up Lydia alone:

15 seconds of photoshop. Next we set up a mock bridal party:

Four minutes to shoot, two minutes in Photoshop.

Then I challenged myself to get some shots in a horrible, boring situation, and walked the group through how I would handle it. You’ve seen one of these before:

Then we headed out for a bit of street shooting, but it was really cold! April’s seminar will be a bit warmer, I promise:

Still, the participants had fun and did yeoman’s work as light stands:

Thanks so much for coming everyone! We didn’t think to take a group shot until 10 or so people had left, but it was so great to have everyone there, and to see how many photographers wear black:

I couldn’t have had a better time at Saturday’s workshop, and was absoutely thrilled with how everything went — my staff, Isla and Thomas, did a killer job throughout, Phillip Stark could not have been more gracious a studio host, and our models and couples were top-notch! But, as they used to say in Reading Rainbow, “You don’t have to take my word for it …” When you have an audience filled with 35 people, almost all of whom have a blog, you know there are going to be a lot of independent reviews. The first comprehensive one I’ve seen is this article by Dmitri Gudkov, but let me know if you have any others and I’ll add them to this entry!

You can also see 117-and-counting attendee photos here, including proof that it is nearly impossible to take a good shot of me while I am talking.

(Photo by attendee Jeniel Corpuz)

UPDATE:I randomly stumbled across this review in a Nikon forum by one of the attendees. Since he didn’t think I would see it, that means he’s not sucking up to me. ;-)

I am inspired by his shooting philosophy. He lives for the “worst” shooting conditions and actually gets bored when things go right the first try. I take that as always learning and being prepared for the worst. I also appreciate his take on ‘getting it right in camera’. I hate using photoshop and really appreciate the fact that he can get such great results with spending 5-10 secs per image and sometimes not even touching them.

I highly recommend his workshops and I will be attending one of his in the future again.

UPDATE: A nice review by Zack Delaune, who came out from New Orleans for it:

After two days of hanging with Ryan, I knew this wouldn’t be any normal workshop. And he confirmed that right out of the gate by starting the discussion with the “why” of photography rather than the “how”. His philosophy on the subject definitely changed the way I think about photography, and especially wedding photography. So, big thanks to Ryan for flipping da script, as the kids say.

Once we got into more technical things, we discussed bounce flash techniques, the “Brenizer Method”, and quick flash composites. In that portion of the workshop, Ryan focused on tools we could add to our bag of tricks to make us more versatile photographers, even in undesirable situations. He demonstrated by making some beautiful shots in the ugliest flourescent-lit hallway I have ever seen. This was a refreshing reinforcement of something that I have been preaching lately to anyone who will listen. To get a beautiful shot, you don’t NEED a “beautiful” location

UPDATE: Here’s a nice video by Brett Maxwell showing the process of the shot shown here. I didn’t know I was being recorded and wasn’t speaking with that in mind, so hopefully you can pick up some of the audio. And although it sounds like I was overshooting, taking thousands of shots, those are the sounds of all the attendees’ DSLRs behind Brett. When I’m thinking about shooting, and not about talking, I say “you know” a lot. But before and after this I explained to the attendees more about the process, and showed the results.

Is there a point at which you will think “I’ve arrived” in the photography world, a goal to reach “before you can rest”?
Photography isn’t a destination. It’s a journey. I don’t want to rest, I want to take pictures.

What do you remember about yourself when you were a child?
I was definitely shorter. And precocious.

Been a fan of yours since your early days on flickr. How do you stay healthy? And what do you do if you’re sick on a clients wedding day?
It’s important to me to stay healthy. In more than 100 weddings, I’ve never had to miss one for any reason (there are very good emergency plans, but it is very important to me not to have to use them). I try to get a decent amount of sleep. For me that means at least six hours. In college I was always sick because I slept about three hours a night.

Also, I get a good deal of exercise.

Are you a “stuff junkie” or an “experience junkie”?
Experience junkie. If I were a stuff junkie, I wouldn’t keep breaking it.

How do you get people to so such cool stuff on the dance floor?
They’ll do it. All you have to do is be unobtrusive enough to be in front of them without them noticing or caring.

What happens at your client meetings? Spill some tricks!
It’s mostly just pleasant conversation and watching slideshows, and when they ask a question I answer the seven they haven’t thought of yet.

Do you dance at all your weddings?
Only if my friends are getting married … then it’s ON.

I read that you said you deliver 100 images per hour, do you feel that delivering hundreds of photos detracts from the end users satisfaction when going through so many photos?
No. I deliver a front page of my 75-100 favorites, so people don’t have to view the full set unless they have a reason to. I like to photograph as many guests as possible, because they were important enough for the bride and groom to invite and pay for.

Could you describe the post-processing you usually do on your images in a sentence or two?
I do way less than most shooters, because I don’t want my post-processing to be trendy. Quite often it just looks OK right from the start. But sometimes I really love a picture and just like to finesse it a little. I also have a default tone curve that I shoot in or apply afterward.

Thoughts on diffusers? I’ve noticed some great photogs use them and others just bounce.
I don’t use them much, but really it’s all just about understanding light, and using the tools that make it looks how you want. Lots of diffusers turn flashes into bare bulbs, which can be useful but I’d rather not have it on-camera.

I will keep looking for ways to help and I hope you do the same. Also, as my friend Charlotte Geary pointed out, at times like these unrelated charities tend to suffer, so remember to keep supporting yor favorites.

Thank you!

I’m a pretty bad marketer. I know it. That’s why it took me years of sitting around, seeing other people successfully brand themselves as “green” wedding photographers without thinking about it until, about five minutes ago, I realized I’m pretty much the greenest wedding photographer I know. How many other wedding photographers choose not to own cars? (It actually makes more sense in Manhattan to rent every time I need one for a shoot, but that means I don’t drive unless I have to).

My office generates a staggeringly little amount of paper. All of my contracts are online. I only give DVDs on request, because DVDs go bad eventually and litter landfills. I give flash drives, with instructions on how to back up photos forever on one’s own hard drives — or, if clients are into it, I provide the online servers for full digital delivery. No mail planes, no torn envelopes, ta-da.

Even my staff, including my brand-new intern (more on her later), comes into the office via mass transit. Albums are made with recycled materials when possible, and my studio requires minimal energy to heat and cool.

We’re pretty darned green here. Who knew?

And remember … awesome archival albums make great anniversary gifts!

So, for this week, until the end of the day Friday, for each person who comments on my blog I will add $1 to my charitable donations to Haiti. While the exact type of donations needed my be different a week from now, I will send it to one of the four-star charities listed here by Charity Navigator. One comment per unique reader will be counted.

So that I can easily tally the comments with a search, all you have to do is this. Find something you like on this blog, maybe in the archives link above, leave a quick note, and then follow it with “#haitirelief”

For example:
Ryan Brenizer — Hey, that is a photo! #haitirelief

The Internet is a crazy thing, and you never know if something goes viral, so for now I’ll have to limit it to $2,500. If for for some reason it comes to it, I will increase that cap if my accountant doesn’t shoot me over it.

For sake of tracking, this only applies to comments on this blog, not the Flickr or Facebook pages. Those comments are MUCH harder to track properly.

I hope you don’t take this as a play for attention. I get plenty, and there are far cheaper ways I could get more. I just want to see what a community of readers can do.

Also featured was a photo by my dear friend Charlotte Geary, a great wedding photographer from Colorado Springs. (She took the above photo; I am still away in Tennessee until tomorrow).

The last thing I ever want to talk about on this blog is politics. Politics are by their very nature divisive, while the work I do is meant to show individual personalities, quirks, and stories, but also to highlight the things that are universal about human stories — passionate love, the bond between friends and family, joy, tension, anxiety, celebration, humor. But I will say this: The wedding featured here, between Jon and Jerry, was perhaps the most emotional ceremony I’ve seen out of more than 100.

You know how certain people spend their entire lives dreaming about their wedding day? Every detail, every look, every color and smile? Imagine thinking your entire live that it will never, ever happen for you … and then it does. That was how the ceremony felt.

I tell stories, and I love my couples. I mean it: When I am shooting a wedding, I am in love with my couples, and that is what allows me to be joyful and sympathetic through my work. I’ve had so many couples I love who are extremely conservative; I’ve had amazing couples where were dedicated Marxists. What I believe in is that weddings are incredible parts of our personal and family histories, and that a good marriage is a thing of wonder and beauty, and I hope that everyone that wants that can have one.

If I made any New Year’s resolutions, it’s that 2010 is the year I might finally start submitting photos to publications — you know, like every other photographer does. But for now it’s always great to be surprised when major media comes calling! One of my photos is in the New York Times’ Book Review this week. You can see the article here or click on the photo above.

Here’s one from the shoot I like even better:

So what do you think? Unfortunately, a limit of the design means that big horizontal photos posted before December will be a bit clipped, but I’ll fix that as I get time. In the meantime, I hope to have a bunch more content uploaded here so I can get as many people as possible photos before Christmas!

Long story short: I’m offering a workshop in NYC on February 6, 2010. Click here for a PDF with more info. If you want to sign up, e-mail me here.

I have always thought that, if commercial photographers were like scientists in a lab, wedding photographers were a bit like MacGyver. (If you don’t know your ’80s television shows, let Wikipedia wow you). We often work under incredibly tight time constraints, with far less set-up and equipment than you’d want to do the job perfectly, usually working with subjects who have no experience being in front of the camera, with venue coordinators tapping their watches, Uncle Bobs getting in your way, little control over your shooting environment, etc. etc. etc. As a New York City photographer, I work with tighter time-frames than most, frequently getting five minutes or less for formal portraits, and try to bring only as much gear as I can carry up the endless stairs on a subway platform.

Whether you’re a harried professional or just an avid amateur, it’s handy to know how to maximize the tools at hand, whether they’re things you brought or whatever is lying around … after all, give MacGyver a baked potato and a ballpoint pen and he could make a nuclear submarine. Or, for example, take an overhead projector and turn it into a dramatic light source. Make small lights look like big lights. Make your DSLR look like a huge medium format camera (the “Brenizer Method” in action). Make your light, cheap tripod enable amazing feats. Give yourself as many tools as possible, so you never have to be stuck to one small set of expressions within your images.

That’s what I try and do with my work, and what my workshop on February 6 is all about. It is tied to a broader three-day meet-up with Flickr’s Starting a Wedding Photography Business Forum, for those interested in meeting other budding professionals, some of them as good as any long-experienced wedding photographer I’ve seen.

I’m very excited about bringing together the style of work that I love with my longstanding love of teaching. People have been asking me to do this for years, but even after years as a photojournalist and documentary photographer I wanted to get at least 100 weddings under my belt before I felt completely comfortable teaching others — and so I have. I know that just someone having technical skills doesn’t mean that they can actually teach them to others, so perhaps my photographic awards matter less as a reference for this workshop than my final for a curriculum course at Columbia University Teachers College, which was graded “A++! Are you SURE you don’t want to enter this profession, PLEASE?”

No, I didn’t know Columbia gave out A++’s, either.

More information will appear on this space, and more workshops will happen as I gauge interest and find the time to do them right. I am in no way slowing down in my true passion — shooting weddings — to teach, so this will be one of the very few ever on a Saturday.

More to come!

Why? Technical issues. When I post preview photos after each wedding (and, for the 2010 season, I will also post previews after each engagement or portrait shoot), having a Page makes it much easier for people to see all the photos, even if they don’t have a Facebook account, and I don’t have to approve anyone to comment. All they have to do is “become a fan” of my page in one click.

Which was the my problem in the first place. I network with a lot of other professional photographers, and the last thing I want to ever have to do is suggest that they should “become fans” of mine. I’ve been using a personal Facebook account all along, because I’d much rather have people call themselves friends. I love the work of so many photographers — every day my RSS feed is filled with stunning new work — but these are my colleagues, not my idols, and I don’t consider myself to be of any different class of person than any other working photographer. In other words, it’s about the work, not about me.

I’ll make an exception for Joe McNally. Not only is his body of work simply ludicrous, but the way he thinks about photography, the art and the work, that skills and artistry need to go hand in hand, resonates deeply with me, and, well, the guy is really, really funny. Still, though, I know I’ve gotten a couple commissions he would have gone nuts over. It’s the photos, not the photographer.

So click “become a fan” if you feel like commenting, but I’ll still consider you a friend. Plus you can always “become a friend” at my sometimes wacky personal Facebook profile.

(I had quiche for lunch).

But I’m open to experiment now that I have this new playground. So I’ll try the next post without borders and see what you think. For the time being, if you see a post with a single image that has a border, it means that image is also hosted on Flickr, and you can click on it to read more comments there.

Yes, I greatly enjoy working with my corporate contacts, and I am proud to work for so many non-profits and charities who do powerful work. But when you spend such intimate, joyful moments with people, their friends and families, there is a very different sort of bond. I freely admit that wedding photojournalism is not the same as editorial photojournalism. While I can be playfully subversive in ways that are “un-weddingy” depending on the environment, I’m not there to shine a cold light of unsympathetic truth. I’m there to see things that I love, and show them.

And so I love keeping track of where they’re from, where they’re going, what forces shape their lives. And I enjoy seeing connections and patterns — and since this is a self-selective group, they’re everywhere. Last year, I photographed weddings of five chiropractors. This year, architects, TV producers, and medical students abound (the speeches at Saturday’s wedding were the first I’ve seen to extol the benefits of yeast research.) I’ve seen the same guests at unrelated weddings, had bridesmaids come up to me and tell me I did their cousin’s wedding, and I get a kick out of it every time. And then, of course, is the referral effect. It saddens me that I’ve run out of Berger and Karplus siblings — there is little cooler than walking into the start of the day at the mother’s house and seeing the walls covered with your photos.

What patterns are next? Secretly, I’m hoping for rodeo clowns.

(By the way, when you shoot a wedding between two chiropractors and start shaking your wrist after too many hours of holding a giant camera, guests will immediately offer to adjust you.)

Next week, I’m running a marathon. Not a real one, but it’s my last three-wedding weekend of the year, with the last sure to be one of my longest-ever working days. Before that, I will be plying you with all sorts of gear geekery from New York’s Photoplus Expo.

But I want to tell some stories about the great weddings I’ve had the pleasure to shoot! So I’m vowing here and now to blog at least four weddings between now and PhotoPlus on Thursday. Even if, to get there, I will have to start drinking coffee that was made out of grinding coffee beans in existing coffee.

As a reward, I will pre-order a new Nikon D3s for next season. Ok, I would do that anyway, but let me incentivize!