becoming a wedding photographer
Hi guys! I miss writing for fun - and I think the only way to get back into things is sort of a stream-of-consciousness post about what led me to wedding photography! No worrying about sentence structure or word count, just thinking simple > complicated at least for the time being. If you’re a client of mine, you might have heard this story in some form over the phone or in an email, but it’s just fun to reflect in the off-season and see if there’s anything I’ve missed or skipped over.
When I was younger, my family had a camcorder and multiple disposable cameras, eventually moving over to a bulkier digital one as we grew up. I would be lying if I said I remembered my mom always having one in hand — though I don’t doubt people who do — but I think that’s kind of the beauty of it. The limited amount of photos on each roll of film (36!) made it so that things were only captured selectively and super in-the-moment.
Once high school rolled around the photographic evidence became way too embarrassing to share with you now - my friends and I would bring our purple cameras out into the backyard and do themed shoots where we were wore flower crowns and dresses posing in the middle of the trees or surrounded by a field looking pensive.
Why did we do this? Because that was the era of sharing all 100+ photos from your memory card to a Facebook album, then logging into Tumblr together to scroll through “hipster” posts. I cannot imagine what my mom thought of our endeavors when we walked back into the house in what were basically costumes haha - probably will not be taking any of those posing ideas to upcoming shoots!
My main focus going into college was pure journalism. I wrote in one of my notebooks at the time something like, “I can picture me and all of my ✨ journalism friends ✨ hanging out all semester, grabbing ice cream on late-night deadlines and talking until the sun rises.” Which like: yes to all of that, but I had such a romanticized view of what it meant to be a writer. Can you blame me though - in every rom-com the woman is a successful Manhattanite working some kind of publication!
That love for writing is still there, and I did stick with my major the whole way through. But: in my junior year I ended up tacking on a photojournalism minor to my schedule. One of my first classes in that realm was with one of my now best friends, who sympathized with me about mostly following this path to be a portrait photographer, not an in-the-moment news one. I cannot say I was a shining star at getting the grittiest moments but leaping into that helped me recognize there is more than one way to tell a story.
Somewhere in that time: my sister’s friend ended up reaching out to me and asked if I would photograph her wedding. I don’t even want to tell you the number of Google searches I probably did including “how much to charge for a wedding beginner” but I will tell you I landed at a crisp 600. Genuinely: it’s impossible to know what to do in that scenario - and the more I’ve talked to photography friends, the more I realize how universal that first wedding panic is.
I followed the bride around all day just taking stabs at what to do; of course, there are certain things that are givens, but the little documentary moments of the day were complete guesses. I wore a striped, colorful jumpsuit which is so funny to me now because I have ingrained in my mind to wear a cloak of black to blend in. I didn’t have an assistant and I had never second-shot an event before. At the end of the day: despite how naïve I was to the inner workings of a wedding, there was something special about making so many significant rituals permanent. The rest is history - and I can’t wait to bear witness to your precious moments next.
