A hidden advantage of the Nikon D4′s live view — being able to compose a shot like this without burning out your retinas. ISO 100, 1/8000th, f/8 — the sun, it don’t mess around.
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Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikon 85mm f/1.4G

April and Rich had deep connections to both sides of the Hudson river, so the ceremony was at the Fourth Universalist Society church in Manhattan, and they decorated the space at the Westminster hotel to meet a classy, modern design for their reception.

The emotions were on the surface, as Rich’s tear ducts had a good workout. In this case, there was no metaphor behind the idea of forming a new family, as tender moments with Rich’s daughter and April showed. Thank you again for letting me (and assistant Braham Rhodes) tell this story.

I try to be a storyteller, but it’s an amorphous thing. We all have a story, sure, but what was the story of your today? Was it just some stuff that happened? Was it something you learned? Something you felt? What will the story be when you look back on it later?

They aren’t simple questions, and that’s just a random day … a Wednesday, even. How do you tell the story of a place like New York? There have been thousands upon thousands of attempts, and they scratch just the surface’s surface of the complexity and the dynamics of this crazy town. Last night I saw a beautiful woman walk by openly sobbing. That, I thought, was a New York story. In the small town I grew up in, we keep our tears and our strangers separate. In New York, people’s pain is in your point, and the pain itself is part of the point. The grind of New York life is perhaps the most pervading part of the story, a rock that we dash ourselves against and that either whittles or breaks us. There’s a reason that if you make it here you can make it anywhere, or as a more recent muse put it “8 million stories, out there in the naked city. It’s a pity, half of y’all won’t make it…”

There are reasons that shooting hundreds of weddings in New York have turned me into a problem solver. We have problems. It’s stressful enough just living here, even when you aren’t planning a wedding.

Or when you’re just trying to get around. Kate and Andy were married at the Top of the Rock today, and while the rain parted for their ceremony, it returned with a vengeance just after, right in time to deal with epic New York Rainy-Day Traffic. The limo driver, who had a habit of leaving us several blocks from our destinations in the pouring rain, also decided to drive right by Times Square and put us in the modern-day Bermuda Triangle of Lincoln Tunnel traffic (for out-of-towners, picture a parking lot, except with fewer moving cars). This is when it’s good for us to remember that you might not always be having fun when a photo session starts. Not only do you have the natural nervousness of being in front of the camera, you might have had to plan a complicated day, get waylaid by a limo driver, have to walk several blocks on shoes you swear are medieval torture devices … and then be happy?

But then you find your place. You hold on to the partner you crossed an ocean just to declare your love and devotion to. An iconic New York taxi drives by and reflects the American flag back into the camera. And then, at incredible odds another one drives by at just the right place as well. Yellow and red and blue all sorts of love cutting through the gray, rainy day. And you remember the most important part of the New York story: New York is hard … but man is it cool.

Thank you Kate and Andy for letting me share in your story today.
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Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikon 85mm f/1.4G

What we must remember as photographers that while we try our hardest to bring technical perfection to an image, there are other elements that are far more important: Emotion, storytelling, that perfect moment. At this moment, a groomsman was readying himself to jump into the groom’s arms on the dance floor. Connection, emotion, action.

This photo was taken at an adjusted ISO of 72,400.

I knew I wanted to get a lot of frames to tell the story of running and jumping, but I was shooting in a dark, hard-to-light area, so I knew my flash couldn’t keep up. I had my shutter speed at 1/250th to catch action, I had my aperture at f/2.5 so as not to be too shallow, so the only place to go up was ISO. I set my flash to a bit lower power setting to catch more frames, but still it had been working hard so it didn’t catch very many. And the adjusted ISO of the non-fired frames brings us to 72,400.

It’s a remarkable feat of the Nikon D4 and Lightroom that such an ISO even results in a recognizable photo. But of course there’s still plenty of grain. Did the guests mind? Does it ruin a moment between loved ones, an expression of years of fun and play and connection? Nope — whenever these shots came up on the same-day edit screen, people kept yelling “Guys, you have to see this!”

Yes, I’m a very technical photographer, and teach technique. Photography is both an art and a craft, and we do our best with both. But the moment always wins.
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Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikon 28mm f/1.8G

I can’t wait to tell this full story once I’m done processing all the photos, but for now all I’ll say is that this fantastic bride had a heck of a week…
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Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6
Light: Westcott IceLight

At play in the peaceful, pastoral fields of … Manhattan.

I set a new record for most-photos-per-minute at this session, for reasons I can explain later. But their story continues (for me) tomorrow…
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Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Sigma 35mm f/1.4

Lightroom 5 beta is out, and for once Adobe’s magical new promised tools really are pretty magical. The one-click straightening tool actually does a great job in a one-second edit, and the parallel lines of New York’s architecture thanks it.
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Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Sigma 35mm f/1.4

In February I had my first international workshop in London — I figured it would be a bit tricky to host a workshop abroad, so I figured a hop across the pond would be the easier than starting in translator territory. And we had a great time even though there London was in a freezing spell and the studio manager, apparently unaware of basic principles of convection, put the heater on the ceiling. But we kept our coats on and had wonderful experiences, from working with the fantastic Claudia Nallely to competitive foosball matches after each workshop.

I also learned I have so much in my head from shooting 325+ weddings that eight hours is a staggeringly short amount of time. The perfect length for a workshop, I think, is either 20 minutes or six months. So I’ve strengthened a lot of the free continuing support I provide to participants with separate portfolio reviews, continued online help, direct access to raw files for some of the trickier techniques I use, etc. This continued networking also allowed me to use feedback from members of every workshop I’ve ever given to create an even better, more formalized structure, one that I believe in more than ever, dividing the overlapping worlds of being a better photographer and being a better professional into two days. I debuted this at a workshop this past weekend at the studios of InFocusNYC Photography, and it went better than I could have hoped for. The studio was the perfect space for the group (and properly heated!), studio managers Pete and Daria were incredibly helpful, and I had an all-star cast helping out, from my studio manager Wendy lending her perspectives on the business day, to amazing past couples of mine I was thrilled to see again: Elizabeth and Anthony, Ariana and Eric, and Chika and Andrew.

Much like I learn to be a better photographer from every wedding (which is why I shoot so many!) I learn to impart the hard-won lessons I’ve learned the more I teach, and I enter 2013 more excited and confident than ever about future workshops. Now, of course, I just have to figure out when and where these new ones can fit given the beginning of crazy season.

I also highly recommend the InFocusNYC studio for other events, and for those looking for studio shares. I believe they still have a spot or two open.

This image was a composite AND a panorama, but that wasn’t what made it so hard. No, it was the Universal Law of Shooting in NYC: When you have scouted a location, and the whole time you scouted there were no people there, and you really need no people to be there, right as you’re ready to shoot a hundred schoolchildren will flood the scene.
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Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: 8-image “Brenizer method” panorama with the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G (equivalent of 42mm f/0.68 according to Brett’s calculator)

My first ever (on purpose) double exposure. I’m always eager to try new ways of seeing.
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Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5
Lens: Panasonic 25mm f/1.4

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Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Lens: 40-image “Brenizer method” panorama with the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G (equivalent of 33mm f/0.54 according to Brett’s calculator)

I’ve never actually worked with a big heart balloon on an engagement session before … seems a SoCal staple … so when Florencia and Jay brought one I figured we’d put a twist on it.
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Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikon 135mm f/2 D DC

A lot of the tweaking for this came during my preparation for my recent WPPI speech. I took only a brief break to photograph Kelsie out in the desert, including some fun with Polaroids on the Mamiya RZ 6×7.

But also this was my first wedding since being named of the top 10 wedding photographers in the world by American Photo magazine, and my first wedding since the Foundation Workshops. Contrary to what you might think, the former fact never entered my mind all day. But Foundation loomed large in my mind — I have spent my entire career working as hard as I can to show lasting moments, people’s personalities and how amazing they look at their wedding day, but the intensity of the Foundation Workshop made me work harder than ever at being a perfectionist along the way — stressing over every millimieter of what is and is not included in each frame. Of course, sometimes the moment is strong enough that you just go for it — the ring bearer kissing his brother was impossible to frame perfectly, but even just mentioning the existence of the photo made their mother break out in a huge grin.

Also, though for a mix of modesty and SEO purposes she doesn’t want me to mention her name, I was joined by the amazing T, and she KILLED it. Lots of great photos, and even when running the photobooth she managed to take a simple setup and create art! I’ve never been so tempted to put photobooth images in a blog post. Thanks, T!

I’m so excited for 2013, and this was a great way to kick off the main season!

As I mentioned in the last post, I had iterations of this specific idea in my head for many years, but I’ve also in general become fascinated with the process required to make it … slowing down. Instead of creating hundreds of pictures on an engagement shoot, what could I do if I worked to produce just five? Three? One? Not the right choice for all clients, but for some it could be perfect, and push me forward in different ways.

It may surprise those of you who haven’t worked for a while as a photographer, but it takes a lot more time and effort to create three photos on a shoot than to create 100. Claudia already has hundreds of photos of herself in bridal gowns, so for her actual bridal session we made just three. Here is the second:

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Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5
Lens: Olympus 12mm f/2

I’m in Europe, where I’ve just got done teaching two London workshops and am currently taking two days in Paris. It was an absolute blast with fantastic attendees, and a fair share of beer and foosball (or “table football,” as it is called here.) But some of the things I stressed were pushing yourself into places you don’t usually go, and working with clients for creative results, so I thought “well, let’s actually practice what I’m preaching.”

As part of the trip, I was reunited with Claudia, a great model who moved off to Germany after getting married, but in the process she never had any wedding photos of her own! So we arranged a bridal session. The problem before me was this: I knew we could get gorgeous photos. She’s gorgeous. I could put her in decent window light and take a snap with my iPhone and it would be gorgeous. And if I’d been doing a couples’s shoot I knew I could find the uniqueness in their relationship. But her husband couldn’t make it from Germany, so how do you shoot a bridal model’s bridal photos without it looking like just another bridal modeling session she’s done? We’re celebrating the real thing here.

I reached back to an idea I’ve had for many years, and I realized this would be the perfect time to put it in practice. And, more importantly, it was fun. Belt Craft Studios was a perfect place for this, with all sorts of props that we re-appropriated, but also a bunch of stuff that we simply stole from our apartment. This was one of the tableaus we created. Thanks to Tatiana Breslow for assisting, and to Claudia for being an amazing bride, and really working her core strength for these.
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Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6

Most of these are with the Nikon D4, but one of them is with the Sony RX1, which is on my pile of “things to review when I break my femur and am actually forced to stop shooting and travelling so much.” The best thing I can say about it is that other than a lucky guess, there’s no way to tell — it has every bit the quality of a high-resolution dSLR in a much smaller package. But I am addicted to viewfinders, so the default lack puts me off a bit.

Thank you Dominique!

Luckily for Dana and Ben’s wedding at the Highlands Country Club, Sandy was still on its way. But with a gaggle of guests from NYC and talks of bridges closing, it took a moment for people to say “OK, we can do this … we can have a fantastic time.”

And they did. Celebrating amidst the autumn leaves that had only hours left to stay on the trees, cooking S’mores with loved ones who made it through the travel hazards to laugh and dance and celebrate together, and knowing that, even if everyone did get stuck there for the weekend, it would have only been a continued adventure … these just added to the joy and thrill of the day.

Thanks to Dave Paek for helping out and braving the storm with me, despite living in Zone A.

“Awards don’t matter,” I tell myself. “I don’t do this job for awards.” And for the most part, I actually believe it. They’re handy signposts for my competitive spirit, but this is an industry where you are only as good as the photo you take next. After all, you will never hear a bride say “I hated my photos, but that’s OK because he’s taken really great photos for other people!”

But making the American Photo Top 10 list sweeps that aside for a moment in a rush of euphoria and amazement. Partially because this is The Big One, the list that everyone wants to be on, and which has been graced by unbelievably talented photographers who have inspired me from the beginning of my career to today. But mostly because this list is nominated by these incredible photographers. It still surprises and bewilders me that these people even know who I am, so to have them say “Yes, he belongs on a list of the best of the best,” is an honor too big for me to wrap my head around. Thank you.

It is also incredible to be named along with nine other photographers who are not only incredible, but who include personal friends such as Todd Hunter McGaw, or the man who made me laugh myself to tears this past week at the Foundation Workshop, Tyler Wirken.

But mostly thank you to my clients and their friends and families, for not only being amazing, but choosing to be amazing in front of my lens. You are awesome, and that’s what this shows. I’m just the guy that gets to document that.

But the competitive spirit in me must push me further. I can’t stop at the world. Wedding photographers of Mars, watch your back.