I have to shoot a wedding!
My daughter Riley laughed when I told her what I was doing a few Saturdays ago. It’s not because she was making fun of me for shooting weddings, but three years ago I decided I was finished shooting weddings. I was not going to do them anymore, and I made a big deal of it, telling everyone. She said I had a ceremony or something to mark my last wedding, that sounds like me, but I don’t remember that.
I had been shooting a wedding since I quit my job at the Gazette-Times. in 2004. Weddings were exciting and saw the whole change in how wedding photography evolved. When I started there were just a handful of photographers shooting documentary style weddings and it was growing fast and very trendy. It was fun to be on the edge of that wave covering weddings just like I would as a photojournalist. I see myself as a storyteller and weddings are great stories to tell, they were fun to shoot.
As my kids grew older and weekends became more valuable time, to spend with them I started shooting fewer of them. Pinterest and social media also changed wedding photography. All weddings began to look the same, and I was getting bored telling the same story every weekend. I thought I was done with them forever.
I still kept weddings up on my website and would even get inquiries about shooting them, but always passed on them. Saying was always “already booked that day” which was right, I was just booked doing something other than a wedding. Earlier this year I told my wife I think I might shoot a wedding this summer, I missed them, and Riley is going to college in the fall so the extra money would help with that. I am glad I did it. Sarah and Brett’s wedding was beautiful with, and their marriage was perfect. I have a few wedding scheduled to shoot this summer, and I am happy to be doing weddings aga