thoughts on wedding photography

1. being the wedding photographer is, in some ways, like being a member of the wedding party. you spend an awful lot of time with all of the family, with the bride and groom, with the wedding party and you develop these relationships and inside jokes. by the end of the night, i felt like tori and adrien were friends and i sincerely wished them well. it was only when i got home that i realized that i'd only met them earlier that day and that i really had no idea what they were up to next.

2. spending the entire day shooting a wedding made me remember back to the days when we were first dating and when we first married. it made me feel nostalgic and romantic. i wished to hug ryan a million times and, if taking pictures didn't require two hands, i'm pretty sure i would have texted him all day long. so, when he called to ask when seth usually goes down for a nap, i was so pleased. even if all we talked about was the baby. i also realized how little of my wedding i actually remember. also, how unimportant it was in the grand scheme of things. which, at the time, was not how i felt.

3. i left my house at 9:30 (in the morning) to make it in time. i had a bit of a break between portraits and the reception and arrived home at 10:30 (at night). that's about 11 hours of work. on a saturday. then there has been, of course, the uploading, sorting, editing, communicating, etc. conclusion: weddings take an incredible amount of work. they are exhausting.

4. as assistant, not only did i shoot pictures, but i helped lug all of the equipment. leila jones, the woman i was shooting with, had two large bags, a smaller bag, a monopod, a tripod and a reflector kit. that is a lot of stuff. a lot of expensive stuff. plus i had my bag and charla, the second shooter, had a bag of her own. i was in awe of the equipment. and i got to use it, too. that was awesome.

you know, wedding photographers are expensive. but the work is hard! there's a lot of it, plus the other people that are hired to come along. there's editing and sorting and driving and the equipment to pay for. if you want good pictures for your wedding day, then you need to pay for a good photographer. i understand that now, having shot a wedding, better than i ever did.

conclusion: i'd love to do more. i enjoyed every bit of it. but maybe not every weekend. like i said, the work day is a bit intensive and so is the week afterwards. but watching two people commit themselves to one another for all time and eternity? what an honor. totally worth it.

pictures to come!