What makes a good storytelling photographer?
What makes A "Candid First" Photographer?
I try to avoid being too aggressively self-promotional but I’m going to take a little bit of a different turn with this post. Hear me out.
The big thing that I emphasize to all my clients or whenever I meet with new people is that I work photojournalistically. What do I mean by that and more importantly why should you care?
What I mean is that the primary thing that I care about as a photographer is storytelling. My goal is that at the end of the day I give you a set of photos that tells the story of the day, but also the story that you are telling and living.
Every wedding, engagement, and event is built on the stories of the people that planned and participate in them. That’s kind of the point of weddings. Generally I’m actually pretty skeptical of the wedding industry. The idea of weddings that run north of $30,000 just for one day is almost unfathomable for me. I’ve never spent $30,000 on anything.
For me I’m drawn to this work because I love capturing stories for people. It’s probably not surprising that I tend to work with people that are doing more unconventional types of weddings and engagements.
When I say I’m a photo journalistic type of photographer it also means that I’m not a staged type of photographer. You’re not going to get overly edited, hyper well planned, choreographed shots. Of course I still do posing, I still plan out my shots, and I absolutely curate and edit my images.
But I’m doing all of that with the goal of creating a final product that tells the actual story of the actual day of the actual people who were there. That kind of work is really exciting for me. It feels like a puzzle that I get to solve throughout my whole time working with the client.
I learn about who they are, I get to participate in the things that make them happy, and ultimately at the end of the day I get to give them something that they’re going to have for the rest of their lives.
That is so damn cool. Like what did I do to get so lucky to be able to participate in that?
And the best part is you don’t have to be giving in to the “buy now, sell sell sell” of the wedding industry to do that. Now all of this talk is great but I want to give people an actual example of what I mean and what that looks like in practice.
So here’s an engagement that I did for some friends of mine on a little bit of a budget. It was a backyard engagement planned right before AY (the groom) went off to the Navy.
For obvious reasons it’s emotional but the fact that the two of them are going to be seeing each other significantly less over the next few years is a big deal. AY decided to propose in the backyard of the home they share together in Evergreen.
The engagement itself ended up being a sort of a party – A lot of Hannah’s (the bride) close friends showed up to prepare for the engagement. They went all out and it was really wonderful and touching to get to see, capture, and participate in that. This was a wonderful little testament to how much these two people cared about each other and I got to capture that.
There were a few hiccups – of course – like when Hannah decided to go to Walmart on her way home and we had to figure out a sneaky way to get her to come back before the light faded. Adapting and thinking on the run is all part of the game!
Anyway here’s that photo set. It’s one of my favorites that I’ve ever captured probably. The quality of the venue, the people, the light, and the circumstances shows through very well in my opinion.
And that’s what I mean by photojournalistic inspired storytelling.
