Ryan Brenizer — NYC Wedding Photographer. Problem solver, storyteller.

I’m happy to be one of the most easily stalkable people on the planet. Googling my name or common nom de net brings up tens of thousands of hits, with the most popular ones going straight to my home address. I figure real stalkers want a challenge — I’m far too easy a target. I’m no one-man media empire like Thomas Hawk, but I get around.

Kidding aside, I’ve been blessed that there are so many people out there who want to follow my work, and I want to make it easy for you to follow exactly what you want to follow, and no more. I’ve been all around the social Internet, from bulletin boards and back, and I think I’ve got it figured out.

If you want to contact me directly: Use the contact page on my web site. Not only will this always go to the correct e-mail address, it will also be flagged as messages to answer first.

If you just want to read my blog: Here is where I post tips on photography, industry news, and some of my images in larger formats with write-ups about my work. The link is www.amazon.com/ryanbrenizer, and the RSS feed is here. You’d think this is a given — if you’re reading this entry, you’re reading my blog. But it’s ain’t necessarily so, and not just because automated spam blogs steal my content.

If you just want to see pictures (five a week-ish) I’ve been on Flickr since it was just a tiny Flash-driven site, and I still post images there quite a bit, since it’s easy and has a great community. Despite some issues, Flickr is probably the best thing to happen to popular photography since the digital camera. My account is at www.flickr.com/carpeicthus and the RSS feed is here

If you want it in one easy package: I’ve compiled both my blog and my Flickr photos, as well as twitter-like status updates, into a site called FriendFeed, and you can get it here: www.friendfeed.com/ryanbrenizer. One-stop shopping, and I will occasionally say useful things in my status updates. Unfortunately FriendFeed does not contain the full text of my blog in its RSS, just the headlines.

If you want the whole shebang: Not just what’s going on with my photography, but also what’s interesting me on the Internet, the music I’m listening to, and basically the stuff that my mother might want to know, you can add me as a friend on Facebook. I’ve been on Facebook since you had to be a fancy-pants member of the Ivy League to get in, and after a year or so of throwing sheep at people and zombie attacks, it seems to have gone back to its no-nonsense origin. It’s also currently the most-reponsive, easiest place to add high-quality video.

What not to do:

• Add my WordPress blog. It only exists to feed content into my Amazon blog, and the graphical interface is deliberately broken.
• Send me messages on alternative e-mail systems such as Flickr mail, Facebook mail, etc. I wish you could turn these barely functional e-mail systems off. I don’t check them.

I’ve noticed a bunch of people leaving comments on my wordpress blog, and I really appreciate it … except it’s not a “real” blog. It only exists to funnel personal posts into my Amazon blog without broadcasting it to Amazon’s main page (anything I post directly to Amazon gets posted to the main blog). To see all of my content without truncated images, you have to go to http://www.amazon.com/ryanbrenizer or follow the RSS feed there.

The title is a ruse: I rarely have anything like a “typical” day.

I know there’s a lot of interest among photography enthusiasts about “what would it be like to do what I love for a living?” Here’s just a snapshot of what my life is like:

8:00: Wake-up, check through e-mail, answering replies and moving things along with about 10 different clients.

9:30: Get on a train for a quick shoot at Fordham University, one of my favorite corporate clients (and my undergraduate alma mater). I planned to arrive there early, which is a good thing because there was a fire on the track, holding me up for half an hour. Preparation kept me from keeping the former New Jersey governor waiting.

11:45: Head into the city for a meeting with a previous wedding client discussing options for professional albums (see her wedding slideshow here)

1:00 p.m.: Especially after the morning’s track fire, I decide to show up for my evening job WAY early. I take the subway down to southern Brooklyn, find a hole-in-the-wall Cuban restaurant that kindly seats me next to a power outlet, and use my laptop to process photos, including the slideshow for Shanté and Akili.

4:30: The day’s big job, an opening of a major research center for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Mayor Bloomberg gets a tour and speaks. A philanthropist himself, he seems genuinely interested in the work the researchers are doing.

Midnight: Get home, scan through e-mail again. Send off a wedding album order that has final approval, process some quick selections for commercial clients, and book a flight to Florida for a destination wedding.

And that was a Wednesday. Things really pick up on weekends. The short answer for “should I become a professional photographer” is “are you passionate enough about it that you can work on other people’s schedules and projects, all day, every day?”

I certainly am, but I’m a bit crazy.