I love weddings. I do.
Like more than is probably normal for a person who says they love weddings. I love telling wedding stories. I love watching couples enjoy their day. I sincerely feel like its watching a live action Rom Com I get to do unit stills for. (The still photographer who works on movie sets makes unit stills – cool fact huh?)
I also love the planning process. If I wasn’t a photographer a planner or florist would be my alter ego. So I love watching brides talk their wedding out and share tips and tricks. And I love Facebook groups and other places I get to listen to brides discuss their plans for the day. The one thing though that I hear a lot is how brides plan to use Pinterest to direct their photographers day
Now before you get all in a huff, Pinterest is a GREAT tool for wedding planning. It’s full of ideas, I share on it regularly on my boards, not just for weddings but my home décor and nail art etc. But its super super important that you not turn your Pinterest board into a checklist for your photographer.
Let me explain why
A wedding is a living breathing thing. Every wedding has different light, different people, different relationships, different dynamics and timelines. Everything about a wedding is not the same as the one before. And if your photographer is so busy trying to recreate other peoples moments instead of being focused on capturing yours then in my very humble opinion, what was the point?
It would be easier to set up a styled shoot (a day where everything is preset and nothing is left to chance and a particular style, lighting expectations are all preset) than to try and turn what is supposed to be a day about your love into a posing party.
If you are choosing me, if you give me a check list like this and tell me to capture “this” I’m the wrong photographer for you. This is not to say I don’t want to know whats important to you.
I LOVE PINTEREST.
I use it and I like to see their boards and their dreams but if we are gonna reduce my job to a button pusher while you recreate other peoples memories, I am not up for that job. And the bigger issue is, you can’t really recrate most Pinterest images. There are lighting and venue limitations. If you show me California desert wedding images and say “I want this..” I am gonna ask you what is it about this image that you love? the light? the color, the trees? if the answer is yes I am gonna then ask if we are doing a wedding at Joshua Tree? If the answer is the emotional connection? The color? the big emotional output by the people in the photo?
Then I am gonna say, we can’t fake that for a posed moment. We can’t stop and demand people perform for my lens.
I won’t.
What I will tell you I am excited to do is document you living your day, focus on your relationships. Choose someone who understands light whose style you love and then give them the freedom to rock that shit til the wheels fall off.
Live your day.
When you hire a professional who’s work you’ve followed, enjoyed, and deeply reviewed (check their insta, follow their tikky tokky etc), you will LOVE your photos because they are YOUR moments, and the images, when you let them do their job, you will obsess over because they feel real to you and your love.
