Michelle and Sean

I love, love, love the mind bendingly huge possibilities I have with my camera and lights and computer. Anything is possible, and that really gets me excited every time I focus and shoot a frame.


Sometimes I hear about photographers using this digital technology we got going on here as something to kick back and prop their feet up on. I mean, you can show up, let the camera do most of the work by shooting in some auto or semi- auto mode, send off your photos to be culled and edited by some company you found on the internet, and then drop the batch into a program that spits out an album.


But that's not art, right? It's so... formulaic. It's like finding out you can fly and shoot lasers out of your eyes, and the only way you can think to use your powers is to commute to work and heat up tv dinners.

I can set my camera to make a room feel bright and glowy, or moody and brooding. I can use lights to make an expression look dramatic or obscure, intimate or distant. I can use my computer to make a photo feel like you could step right over the edge of the frame, and into the scene. I feel like I have a whole production crew at my fingertips, and the world is my set.

When I arrived for Sean and Michelle's wedding, the first think I was struck by was Michelle's sunburst of a smile (I later found out Sean saw the same thing when he first met her). So I wanted to make the room and the rest of the wedding a metaphor for her glee; radiant and angelic.

Andrea and Chris

She didn't have to say it. It was in the way she walked around him, they way she looked at him and the way she rested her head on him, Andrea felt safe around Chris.

After a half hour or so of shooting, that was part of what I started to see about them, about their relationship. And, to be honest, I didn't even really consciously think it during the shoot. What I saw, what I felt I guess, was just sort of a intuitive force, guiding where and how the photos started to come together.

Like most people who don't have professional pictures taken all the time, Chris and Andrea needed a little more direction as we got started. But gradually they relaxed and fell into just being Andrea and Chris, which is of course just what I'm looking for. Then I just gotta shaddup at let them be them... and work quickly enough to get those beautiful pictures as they start blooming and showering and scattering all around me.

 

Using a camera as a megaphone...

You know how the insurance company says to take pictures of the stuff in each of the rooms of your house? Well, my brother in law did just that, he does stuff like that. You know, stuff that ‘you’re supposed to do’, but most people never actually get around to doing. That’s just how he rolls. It was a long time ago, so I can’t remember how it is that I ended up seeing something so random of his.

Anyway, the images are etched in my mind as the most boring photos I’ve ever seen. Now, to be fair to Nate, he wasn’t trying to, like, express himself in the photos, they were just cold, banal documents that said, ‘look, this is my stuff’. But they did say that, they said something, even if it was a super boring something.

Now, think of the most gripping, engaging photos you have seen. Like maybe the National Geographic Afghan woman with the eyes. You probably know exactly which photo I’m talking about even before you scroll down, right? Why is that?

It’s so beautiful, so intense and electric. It’s so full of meaning because of how the photographer expressed himself in the photo. He’s shouting out, ‘look, there are real people here, they are human, and they are scared but they’re also resilient, tough. Just like you could be, just like you might be if your were here. Look, humanity’s spark is beautiful even when surrounded by awful circumstances. Look at the life and the beauty and the defiance in her eyes’.

Or maybe you see something else, but that’s the nature of art isn’t it, perception can be malleable, mercurial, as long as it’s authentic and powerful.

It’s really important for a photographer to know how to use his camera, But it’s so much more important for him to have something to say when he looks through the viewfinder.

photo by Steve McCurry

Diana and Jeremie

I have only one picture of my grandparents as young people. Just one. It's the day they were married.

They're standing arm in arm. My grandpa is draping his hand possessively on my grandma's hip. My grandma is squeezing him tight around his middle with one arm, the other folded demurely behind her waist.

I know their stories of course. I know how they were going to get married, packed and everything, and my grandpa was sent to prison for not going to war, despite being a conscientious objector. It would be three and a half years before he would get out and that picture could be taken, my grandma waiting for him the whole time. It shook my grandmother so deeply that to this day she can't tell the story all the way through.

Three and a half years apart, then they could be together. All the torrent of emotion that must have come and gone, like a massive and deliberate tide on some long and now lonely coast. The only thing I have connecting me to them at that time in their life is that solitary sepia photograph. It's priceless for it.

My family has always meant everything to me, and I heard those words exactly from the best man, Jeremie's brother, during his toast to them. You could tell that Diana and Jeremie were very much loved by their family, from Diana's mother's final touches just before the ceremony, to Jeremie's mother tenderly beaming during the mother-son dance, and everything in between.
 All of those images will be their legacy, their heirlooms.

Kristen and Jose

 "I'm just going to sit here", says little 5 year old Emily to me in the limo, and comes to sit right next to me. It's nice to have a fan.

She asked to take some pictures, so I hold the camera in front of her and show her where to look through and what button to press. *tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick. She fires off like, 20 frames in an instant, which is of course what my kids do too.

It kinda ended up working out for me, because Kristen looks over to Emily, laughing, and I get to see them interacting. It's really a cool little moment. It's not as dramatic as Jose and Kristen's stolen kiss on the dance floor. It didn't have the gravitas of Kristen looking over to her soon-to-be husband during the ceremony with beaming eyes. But it was a moment, a little one, and it was authentic, and it was beautiful. And I was there to see it.

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Jennifer and Jorge

Me, walking around Honeymoon Island, near Dunedin, by myself, and I stop and stare for awhile, walk in circles maybe. Squat down, climb up on stuff, lay down and look up. Talk to myself, squint. Fold my arms and stand in one spot, thinking. Walk away, come back. Laugh. Still all by myself. Yeah, I look like a weirdo when I’m scouting a location.

Jennifer and Jorge were just a bit late to engagement session from their tasting, but that was fine by me cause it gave me a little more time to wonder around and ponder and look weird to tourists.

I try to never take the same shot twice if I can help it, so I’m a scout-aholic. Even if I’ve shot at a venue a bazillion times before, I’m there a few days ahead of time, trying to see things I haven’t seen before. Seeing the session, from beginning to end, in my head.

Funny thing is, I sort of forget all about it as soon Jennifer and Jorge arrive. The plan is still there, but just in my subconscious, I guess. It takes a back seat to being in the moment and letting Jennifer and Jorge shine. And shine they did.

huggie!

At the Wehle home on the lake, I've just finished their family session and we've said our thank-you's and good-bye's. Just as I'm leaving, and closing the front door, that's what I hear, "huggie!", from one of the kids.

Not even occurring to me that that "huggie" was aimed at me, I keep going down the driveway with the last of my gear. I hear the door open and 7 year old Bella calls down to me, "Mr Aaron, huggie", she yells, runs down the drive, and gives me a big hug and a thank you. Pretty awesome.

She runs back, I hear the open open and slam, then open again. "Mr Aaron, my brother wants to give you a hug!" I stop and turn, and Jackson, her little brother comes streaking down the drive and gives me a big leg hug. How many people can say that's how they end their work day :)?

that's Bella and Jackson.. oh yeah, and their mom