“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman
For every session or event that I photograph. There are buttons to push, and dials to whirl, and things to click. Usually the same things, every time. You’d think that with all of that going on, it would be easy to get preoccupied by the mechanics of it all. Sometimes it is, but for me – almost always – what distracts me most is the story my subjects have to tell.
People and their stories interest me so much. No matter how similar an event or a subject may seem to be on the surface to things that I’ve done. People that I’ve photographed in the past, they’re always so unique. I feel as if I learn more about the people in front of my lens while I’m photographing them than they may ever consciously reveal to some people their entire lives.
Weddings are events in which a story has to come together, one way or another. This is an occasion which will live on in recountings to the couple’s children and family for years. And I take the responsibility of documenting that story very seriously (although I have been known from time to time to get in the middle of a dance floor and get in on the action. No one said telling a story had to be BORING). Sometimes in the work that I do, I have to work a little harder to tell the happenings of the day. sometimes the story of a couple and their friends and family on a hugely momentous day for them is just bursting at the seams, demanding to be told.
Julie and Ryan’s wedding at Rosy’s Jazz Hall was just such a story. There was just no containing this couple and their love for one another. All of their friends and family’s happiness for them. I must have smiled and laughed from the second I started photographing their wedding up until the very last bit of revelry was eked out of the night.
It was an absolutely perfect night. The couple could not have possibly been any more beautiful, the weather was fine, the venue was beautiful, and the joy and fun were irrepressible.
Congratulations, Julie and Ryan. That’s a beautiful story you’ve got started, there – I hope you had as much fun making it as I had capturing it.
Julie and Ryan’s first look was killer.
And Julie’s first look with her dad was even sweeter.
Good old Louisiana-brewed Abita beer!
Think her ring will fit me?
That moment when your best friend starts recounting THAT story from college…
This last photo is my favorite of the night – possibly of the YEAR. These three were perfectly lined up. And I snagged this shot JUST as Dad was getting ready to dash out of the frame. <3
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