I had the great fortune last summer of seeing two of the most lovely people in the world get married to one another. My friend Jacquee finally decided to make an honest man out of Solomon, or is that the other way around? At any rate, last September, these two decided to get married and they asked me to photograph their wedding. Of course I immediately replied “No, absolutely not” for a number of reasons including not wanting to mess up a day most important to some dear friends, but perhaps more importantly, I had never shot a wedding before. I will say that while many view wedding photography as something they would avoid like the plague, there are those who specialize in wedding photography and are produce beautiful work. These folks are worth every penny as they have developed an art and a skill set specific to this task. For those that like this style, an experienced wedding photographer is the way to go. Needless to say, I do not possess these skills and was not about to pretend on a day so important to my friends.
However, my friends insisted that they liked my style (more photojournalistic) and did not want photos that were posed and cliched. Through their persistence, I eventually relented with the provision that I bring a professional with me that knew what they were doing. Between the two of us covering the wedding from two different perspectives, Ann and I shot the entire day and well into the night, filling up around 40GB of memory cards, doing some posing, but mostly capturing the event from a spontaneous approach which was mighty hard to do given the available light in the evening up in the mountains. Oh yeah, did I mention that the wedding was held up at Snowbird, Utah? It was a beautiful venue and we even had a moose show up, settle in some bushes across the way and hang out for several hours before deciding to move on, a good omen indeed. Though perhaps he just enjoyed all of the laughter.
In retrospect, the wedding was a beautiful experience not to mention a great party where 200 or so people celebrated the wedding of Jacquee and Solomon with food, fun and outstanding music provided by family and friends. I had not laughed so hard or so long for quite some time and left that evening with cheeks that were sore from so much smiling and laughter. What follows is a small selection of some of my favorite images from that day.
