Featured Wedding | Pinecroft Mansion at Crosley Estate
When you get paid to create sometimes the hardest thing to do is muster up the energy to actually be creative. It’s a weird thing. As an artist you constantly find yourself making small goals or projects for yourself to continue to push yourself forward. If you don’t push yourself forward then you will never grow/get better. For an artist, staying the same feels like you are getting worse. Like I said, it’s a weird thing.
Last year I found myself in one of those places where I needed to push. I was really comfortable with what I was doing, but everything was the same. So I started to think about the place I wanted to go next with my photography. I found that I every time I edited a wedding the pictures that ended up in black and white were always my favorites. The reason I loved these pictures is because of stories they told and the emotion they conveyed. Black and white seemed to distill each scene down to what is most important.
As photographers we too often get caught up in all the “stuff”at a wedding. It’s part of the culture of wedding blogs and always striving to get published. The problem with focusing on all the “stuff” is that we lose sight of the fact that the core of each wedding is real people. A real couple with real friends and family. All of these people have emotions that tell a very important and authentic story. Each wedding is a story about how love brings people together despite the overwhelming forces keeping those people apart. I can’t think of a better story to tell.
So when I thought about pushing myself to do something different I knew it needed to center around two things: Black and White Photography and Storytelling. So last year I asked if there was anyone out there brave enough to let me try this idea at their wedding. I understand how much thought goes into wedding colors, florals, details, etc. and finding someone who was willing to let me shoot those things in B/W was going to be difficult. Then along came Ali and Marcus. When Ali called me and said she was interested in this idea I was so happy. I had spent an entire day with Ali as the maid of honor of Anne and Matt’s wedding. She’s funny, she’s caring and so easy to be around. Then she told me that they were having their wedding at Pinecroft Mansion so I knew that this was going to be something special.
I will let you get to looking at what an amazing day it was, but I do want to say that this was a watershed moment for me. I couldn’t be prouder of how these pictures turned out. This wedding will always be special for me. I feel it awakened something inside of me and there is no going back. The stories I tell from here on out will be stronger and more focused. The relationship I built with Ali and Marcus taught me how two people can give so much even on their wedding day. I am a lucky person to be able to come up with a crazy idea and have people that believe in what I do enough to trust me to make it great.
Enjoy the pictures.
Also, for those of you who might be interested in what the whole day looked like, here is the slideshow that does a great job of telling the whole story: