Shara and Kareem

I love Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares.

If you haven’t seen it, here’s the rundown. He goes to these poorly run, on the brink of closing down restaurants and he finds out what’s going wrong and then he’s brutally honest and about as direct and un-tactful as you could be when he samples their food, or goes through their walk in refrigerator, or when he’s critiquing the waitstaff.

This criticism becomes sort of a crucible for the owners. This pressure makes people show their true colors, some get ugly right away, some fight it, but some wake up and respond right away, in the end, saving their restaurant.

Wedding days are a lot like that. Something, maybe small, maybe big, will go wrong. Some detail will not be just the way you planned it, and the bride and groom show their true colors. It’s like reality TV, but without the TV.

Shara and Kareem’s wedding at the Powell Crosley estate in Sarasota went so amazingly smoothly and beautifully, in no small part because their planner, Anna Pohl (truly one of the best I’ve worked with) was at the controls. Except for one thing.

When Shara and Kareem came back from grabbing some pictures with me, just before the intros to the reception, the girls went to adjust her wedding gown. I was in the room at the time, I hear a gasp, and then the room goes quiet. the zipper to her dress broke. Like completely. Enter the crucible.

Some brides might start crying, some might blow their top. Not Shara, she wasn’t thrilled, I’m sure, but she took it in stride because she’s quality people. As was her mother, Lynn, and Shauna, her maid of honor and sister. They swung into action, had her take off her dress and chill with a drink while it was stitched up (Kareem later told me the fix somehow involved duct tape too).

She laughed and joked with her bridesmaids while she waited, no worries. In about 15 minutes Shara had her dress back on, she looked great, and she and Kareem got to swim in happiness for the rest of their day. That’s showing some class, that’s quality people, my favorite people to work with.

 

 

I couldn't help but put this one in. Hannah, one of Shara's bridesmaids wouldn't dance all night long, this was how the girls got her out on the floor, and then Priya, Shara's sister in law, got her to finally loosen up, loved it!

Jess and Sean

I love Indian food. It’s just full of all these varied and complimentary flavors and rich and spicy, it’s like a punch in the face (in a good way).

I love making pictures like that too. I like ‘em with full bodied blacks and dark tones, with smooth and flavorful mid tones leading to a crisp finish of gleaming, singing highlights, with a generous presentation of vivid color, not unrealistic, but big and beautiful.... or something like that, maybe I’m just hungry right now.

Jessica and Sean had there wedding recently at a beautiful private estate in Odessa, just outside Tampa, and this place had color and texture bursting out of every corner, jumping out at you around every bend. So, yeah, it was fun photographing there.

Jessica and Sean were more than happy to follow me around this photographer’s playground to make some great images, from the dark and intimate, to the spontaneous and vivid.

Heather and Scott

I was always taught not to stare at people. If you’ve ever been a kid before, you know that curbing this instinct doesn’t really come naturally.

I guess that’s because when you’re a brand new person, you want to turn and crane and stretch to see anything that might be another clue, another piece to this big puzzle of a world we’d been tossed into.

I think it’s great that part of my job is staring, well, not creepoid staring, maybe you could call it searching out a face. You see, everybody has these little trademark things they do with their lips, or their eyelashes, or their eyebrows, or whatever. Everybody, but some more than others.

And it’s these little unconscious ways that a face moves that defines us, and they are preamble or a punctuation to what’s said. And If I can find that little trademark of yours and take a picture of it, that photo will be real one.

For Heather, it was her wide, luminous eyes. They’re so perfectly put together, I was actually afraid people would think, as I was photographing her, that I over-photoshopped them or something. But they really look that way in person, wide and ready to take in anything.

That was just the way she and Scott were on their wedding day, innocent and kind and wide-eyed, gliding impossibly high, staring far into the rest of their lives from the clouds.

Tiffany and Jeremy

Women need to be in the center. And while that's true for a whole buncha things, it’s especially true for photographs

What I mean is, it feels like there are places in the frame of an image that are intuitively masculine or feminine. It feels nice to build a picture with Jeremy along one side, sort of framing his fiance Tiffany, putting her on display.

On the other hand, this whole love thing is very much a matter of pursuit and capture, so it also feels right to make Jeremy the advancing one, kinda capturing her in the frame, Tiffany letting herself be caught.

I’ve never actually consciously thought about all this while on a shoot, it just sorta happens, it just comes out looking the way it needs to look to tell the story of two people in love. It reminds me of that old song:

A man chases a girl until she catches him
He runs after a girl until he's caught

He fishes for a girl until she's landed him
It all comes out exactly the way she thought

Uncertain, he tags along behind
Uncertain, till she makes up his mind

A man chases a girl until she catches him
But don't run too fast while you are saying "No"
And once you've caught him don't ever let him go

I love making that song into a picture.

Tracy and Dave

When you have a little blond girl and you go out in public, it’s like walking around with happiness.

People turn and smile in your direction, wave, offer to help you. It feels like you’re wrapped in a gauzy glow of contentment, made all the more special because the innocence in her blue eyes will gradually ebb year by year as she becomes a woman, her little-ness is a rarity, only to be enjoyed for a little while.

When I walked around with Tracy’s wedding dress, on my way to set up and make her dress shot, people looked at me the same way. Girls cooed, old men smiled warmly, and mothers looked on with fond reflection of what was. A beautiful wedding dress like Tracy’s is a ethereal, fleeting thing, it’s a moment to be enjoyed that day, and then it’s over and a memory.

Tracy and Dave knew how to enjoy it though. I was caught up with how in the moment they were, how relaxed and ready to laugh and make each other laugh, and it came through and shone brightly on each shot.

 

 Jennifer, Tracy's best friend and Maid of Honor, was just too photogenic: