Sacred Oaks at Camp Lucy wedding photo

From an Austin wedding — everyone is more flexible in Texas?

Patreon stuff below: Feel free to read or feel free to ignore and just enjoy this awesome image from Tatiana!

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In 2014 I developed a lecture on how to stay profitable and happy as a self-directed photographer and businessperson*. I have learned since that the advice was really good, partially because multiple people told me how much it helped them, and partially because it helped *me* every time I followed my own advice, but mostly because every time I *didn’t* take this advice I became less happy in my business and less productive. A/B testing the hard way, if you will.

When I finished all my notes and the development process, I had a really good, complete, six-hour lecture. For a 90-minute speaking slot. I know all too well what Mark Twain meant when he said “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one.”

I managed to whittle it down, but there’s a lot left to say. Over coming months, I will not only be dispersing each piece of advice from this lecture extended into article form; I will be adding whatever was left on the cutting room floor that shouldn’t have been, and the lessons I’ve learned since then: Both from the times I followed this advice and from the times I didn’t.

Part of what we do is take pictures … but actually clicking the shutter is the small part. Getting and staying motivated to do each part of the job is what keeps us going and truly makes us better. We will be taking that journey over at our Patreon, and are excited to have people take it with us.

(Also our resident Patreon guru Sam Hurd tells us that we should raise our prices on the premium tier, so we might not be at $5/month much past March! Get it while it’s hot, and you can totally blame Sam if you don’t make it in time for the deadline).

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D3s, Sigma 24mm f/1.4 ART @ f/2. 1/250th, ISO 1000

Park Chateau wedding first look

Man we love a tearful first look … we’ve been tempted to add onions to our gear bag. But no vegetables were needed for Mary and Vin; the emotion was palpable the entire day.

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#sonya7III, #sony85mmgm @ f/1.4 1/125th, ISO 800

New York Botanic Garden wedding panorama

Recipe for true depth-of-field craziness.

1) Take a photo at f/0.95.

2) Take 95 more photos (or fewer; it’s easy to overdo it for safety with the Sony A9.)

3) #brenizermethod

Metropolitan Building wedding photo

There’s so much in this moment at Hans and Scott’s Tea ceremony… and so much more to come.

Prospect Park Boathouse wedding photo

Love is being able to forget the world with each other on a warm summer night.

True love, like Noelle and Francis's, is being able to forget the world on a freaking freezing winter night like this.

Prospect Park Boathouse wedding photo

A9, 85mm @ f/1.4, 1/200th, ISO 2000

When is a moment more than a moment? When it represents decades into the past and future.

Every time we photograph the little moments that might seem familiar, we keep in mind everything that has led to it. The hug of a father-daughter dance — or many similar moments — is a spark of deep emotion, but also represents all of the time these people imagined it, and all of the time they spent forming their connection.

We are already blown away by the idea that Gavin will be married one day, that we’ll be celebrating his own love story. We are living those moments in different but equally vivid ways as we will when we look back on it later, perusing the photos. Each of these perspectives can infuse so many of the smallest moments of wedding days, one of the many things that keeps them more fresh and exciting for us than ever.

The Mansion at Natirar wedding

The Mansion at Natirar is one of those places that seem to beautiful and spacious to belong in the crowded outskirts of New York City, in the most-dense state of the Union of New Jersey. But it’s there, with gorgeous grounds and winding roads and all sorts of areas that you would just love to lazily walk around in … that is, if it hadn’t been close to 100 degrees like it was for Eric and Stephanie’s wedding.

Luckily the heat and blazing sun couldn’t keep them down, and it was tears of joy, not sweat, that mostly rolled down their faces. It was one of those first looks that felt like the entire emotional quota of your normal wedding day had been packed into the first five minutes of seeing each other … and it only grew from there, the intimacy punctuated with exultant celebration. It was amazing to see Eric and Stephanie dance with nearly all of their guests, a whirlwind of inclusion and deep connections with everyone there.

The Lake House Inn Wedding

I love that all you need to know about Cecilia's grace as a trained dancer is to watch her do … anything.

The Plaza wedding photo

A fun moment of serendipity and #tbt (I never know what day it is in the off-season) to 9 years, 3 months, 6 days, 17 hours ago.
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D3, 24-70 @ 32mm f/3.2, 1/80th, ISO 1250

Natirar wedding

Tricks are fun and bokeh beats clutter, but it’s the moment that makes it matter.  

Gloria Rocking It and a quick review of the Sony HVLF45RM

Now it's time for "As long a review of the Sony HVL-f45rm flash as a wedding photographer time for in October!"

Good: It's freaking magical -- why is it so tiny, so well-balanced with small Sony cameras, with such little meaningful power difference? If I'm rocking a reception with a big flash at 1/8th power, on the tiny 45rm I'm *maybe* at 1/8th + 1/3rd, a negligible difference. Here it's hitting ISO 100 f/11 at well under full power, balancing the bright sun outside and highlighting how bad-ass Denise is. And it's the best TTL I've ever used, so good that … I even use it occasionally.

The bad: Weirdly fragile, in my experience. We are fairly good to our gear these days, and out of the four Sony flashes we own, four have been to the repair shop for hot shoe issues. Now we pack it as gently as we would a newborn kitten.

Newport Vineyard wedding -- Brenizer Method panorama

One awesome couple, one amazing vineyard after the rain, and a whole lotta frames with an 85mm f/1.4.

I've been playing around with some of the new smartphone tech because I'm still just a photo nerd at heart, and I admit that as artificial depth of field gets better and better through computational photography, I stopped and said "Hm, moving this slider is a lot easier than taking a hundred images and feeding them through a computer." But of course, that's only because of an upshot of the less talked-about side of the smartphone photography revolution: not that most photos are taken on phones, but also that most are viewed on them as well.

I've never truly seen most of the Brenizer Method photos I've delivered. This photo could be printed at 300 dpi at five feet across. I've made those prints and each time I've been surprised: "Oh, *that's* what this photo really looks like!" It's part of the point of also taking the long way around and making things specifically so that they last and go a step beyond what is easy. (Even though I still often use DoF-faking apps for fun and personal creativity. I'd rather play on the lawn than tell the kids to get off it.)

The Secret: Find Joy in Solving Any Problem

If I had any tips to achieve long-term success and happiness as a wedding photographer, it's to learn to appreciate as many of the tasks and skills required as possible. In the end, this job consists of making thousands of choices and solving innumerable problems each wedding day, and there is a joy to be found in simply doing well, whatever the task. We both entered into wedding photography with a joy and expertise in storytelling and using light and lenses in interesting ways, but now we also find joy not just in things like organizing large bridal parties in flattering ways but also things that are entirely structural and non-creative.

I look back with pride on weddings where we entered into family photos 90 minutes behind schedule and finished on schedule, or when we had 25 table shots to do in 30 minutes and somehow pulled it off without making people feel rushed or harried.

Some of these things may not be the stuff of Pulitzers, but it is all part of the job, and learning to find joy in each part not only helps you as a photographer and avoids burn-out, but you'll inevitably do all of these things better.

(Especially since one of the best hints for any group photo is to be wearing a genuine smile).

Rolling (not) review (yet): Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM

Pre-orders are up!

October 26:

I have not seen or touched this lens yet, so this is in no way a review, but I've already placed my own order…

What’s the point, given that I have no more direct experience so far than you do? Well, just kicking this off, this shows a few important things: 

1) This shows how important I consider this lens if it lives up to its potential — I could have probably finagled a small discount, and definitely didn’t have to pay sales tax if I took the time to fill out the paperwork, but it was more important to me to be able to place my order at 10:01 a.m. Because if waiting for all that paperwork meant the difference between having this lens at a wedding or two or not … and those weddings are such where it would make a real difference in the coverage (hello, pitch-black NYC dance floors!) then the extra cost is worth it.

(Of course, the lens is at least $800 less expensive than I thought it would be, so that helps, too.)

2) This should forever be inoculation against the idea that I am shilling for Sony, or anyone. Full cost, sales tax and all. No one’s even given me a single cocktail shrimp to affect my opinion of this item. All I am doing with my B&H contacts is basically telling them to get one in my hands as soon as possible, but no promises there, either. As always we come from a place of honesty and openness, because why not? 

Lastly we’re doing some site re-organization so that all content will appear here on the “/blog” page including rolling reviews, with separate pages highlighting the different types of posts.

Day in the Life: Ditmas Park

The reason that we are still passionate about weddings more than 1,000 of them later is we love *celebrating* the shared promise of love between two people. There is an amazing story to tell of the meaningful bonds on display on a wedding day and we hope to continue to tell these stories for decades to come.

We’ve always been interested in how these stories play out - in the full story of the family. We listen closely whenever any long-married couple gives advice, no matter how many times we’ve heard similar bits of wisdom before. We love seeing our couples and the families they make. Even algorithms show us that 90 percent of the Instagram photos we personally pay attention to are photos of our friends, family and our clients with their children and pets celebrating life day-by-day in joyfully mundane ways.

And this is a story we want to tell as well. It’s not a brand, or a business, or an identity, or any SEO buzzword. It’s just a part of us, something we live ourselves each day, especially now that we have our own child.

We want to tell the real stuff of family. Those moments characteristic of the people and time, which can slip from your memory in a changing and too-busy life. What was it like when you lived in that old neighborhood? What was it like to be a new parent? How did it feel?

This is just some of the real story of this family. This is a baby enjoying a characteristic morning, smoothies and cereal and all. This is a baby going to Coney Island not because a photographer was there, but because friends were in town and wanted to go to Coney Island.  This is what it was like to get her ready to sleep for the night.

There is a transcendence in families, what it means to be a parent or a husband or a wife or a son or daughter, and there are waves and waves of particulars, the things that surprise us when we look back and say "wow, *that's* what it was like."

We want to tell that all of this precisely because we realize how valuable it is for ourselves.