Something Blue Photography :: Philadelphia Wedding Photographer

Ten years ago, in early June, I loaded the entirety of my girlfriend’s freshman year dorm room into my little Mazda Protege, and moved her back home. We had been dating a couple of months at that point, and this was going to be the first time that I met her parents. I was a nervous wreck. I really liked this girl, and I wanted to make a good impression, so I replaced the Megadeth T-shirt with something a little more appropriate for meeting parents, took a deep breath… and went for it. It went splendidly. After I helped carry all of her stuff inside, I saw a print hanging on their kitchen wall. I still remember that print. It was a beach with huge standing rocks on it, water swirling around them in creamy white tendrils almost like smoke; it looked like something out of a fairy tale. I sat in that kitchen many times and admired that print, and when I asked what it was a picture of, her mother told me that it was Cannon Beach. It was a real place, out in Oregon, and I knew that I had to see it for myself.

Some things have changed since I sat there staring at a picture on a wall… That girlfriend of ten years ago is now my wife of three years. (We had a long courtship.) We’ve visited Oregon a number of times since then, because she has (and now I have, by marriage) a large number of relatives out there. But for all the times we’ve visited, we never quite made it to this magical place that I’ve all but dreamt about all these years. Schedules never worked out… things always somehow preempted making the hour-and-a-half drive to this part of the coast, and since we were out there visiting family, I kept quiet about it. I knew I would have my chance, and so I waited. (By the way, I’m far from complaining about all of my previous visits out there. I can honestly say that I’ve never had a bad trip out there. Ever.)

Every year, that side of the family gathers at Alvin’s farm for 4th of July. Alvin is my wife’s grandmother’s brother. (I KNOW there’s an official title for this, but I don’t know it. Grand Uncle? Uncle Once Removed Twice Added and Once Divided? He’s always been called Alvin, and he has a farm.) We don’t always get to go, but we made it out this year. My brother-in-law, Alex, who lives out in Portland, asked if there was anything that I wanted to shoot while we were out there for a few days. I got my chance, and I’d had the answer to that question for pretty much a decade. Cannon Beach. I wanted Cannon Beach.

Three months ago, my wife and I had another dream come true. Our daughter was born in early April, and probably the biggest reason for us making this trip this year was to introduce her to that side of our family. Her great grandmother was very excited to meet her, her uncle Alex wanted to spoil her with attention, and to put it mildly, she stole the show at the July 4th gathering. And so if my wife and daughter are my cake, then Sunday was the icing! Proof that dreams do, indeed, come true.

Alex, and his very-recently-fiance (CONGRATS GUYS!!!) Annie made the trip with us; in fact played guide to us for most of the weekend’s outdoor activities. It was cold and windy. I was in shorts and T-shirt and I’m pretty sure I saw my breath at times, but I was feeling no pain. I got it!

And now… we’re home. Exhausted from traveling, but you couldn’t wipe the grin off of me. Just for a little while… I got to go and play in that poster hanging in my mother-in-law’s kitchen. Yeah. I have a lot to be thankful for. I know it, and that’s exactly why I’m sharing.

So I had the very best intentions of keeping this blog up-to-date with regular entries. Over the last couple of months, I know I’ve thought that I should really write another entry or ten, and continue on with documenting and describing this year’s weddings and other photography-related news… and every time, reality sank in, and what did I do? I edited wedding photos that I’ve shot instead.

As I sit and write this, I have one more wedding left to do this season. It’s an odd feeling. On the one hand, the last couple of months have been very busy, and as much as anyone, I can use a chance to catch my breath. But on the other hand… I know I am going to miss it. I can feel it already. I have this odd vision of having more time on my hands than I’ve had in recent memory, and not knowing what to do with it. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are plenty of things that I’ve been neglecting through the wedding season that really need doing. In fact, if I pry, my wife will tell me that I have been… but I am still going to miss shooting weddings on the weekends.

Welcome to the Something Blue Photography blog. As with just about anything you’ve ever seen, things have to start somewhere. And so, this is the obligatory first post where I get to introduce myself a little bit.

No, that is not me. But it was pictures such as that one that made me want to rethink my initial stance on photographing people.

A couple of years ago, something drastic happened that changed the way I thought about photography. I had been happily photographing nature, nature, wildlife, and more nature. It was, and certainly still is, a passion of mine. My wife and I were living in the Kansas City area at the time, where her work and social circle revolved around her graduate school work. In that group, I happened to be the token non-student that knew just enough about the subject matter to scratch the surface of being dangerous. (She studied Ecology. While building a career in an unrelated field, I happened to photograph some of the things that she studied. This worked out well when I needed to know what that pretty plant that I just photographed was… or what that bird in the picture is…) And then it started to happen; friends started to get married, and it was one such wedding that did it for me. This particular couple of friends were graduate students from well out of state, and were getting married. Their wedding would be in their home state, far far away from Kansas, and most of those that were now their friends would not be able to make it for the ceremony; nor was it going to be a big ceremony in the first place. (They planned a low-key wedding with very few friends and immediate families.) But who could resist the temptation to throw a party? They decided to have a pre-wedding ceremony and celebration where all of their friends could attend and celebrate with them. And so, my wife suggested that perhaps they would like to have photographs to remember their celebration by.

I will admit that I was apprehensive to say the least. Aside from the random snapshot of my wife, I was quite content to photograph the beauty of the landscape and things that live in it. Wild things. To photograph an event such as this was taking me well out of my element, but with some convincing, I agreed to do it (all the while being quite certain that I would hate it and would never do it again.) Being married to a scholar tends to rub off, and so I immediately started studying the whats and hows of photographing a wedding. With a couple of weeks to prepare, I read every website that I could find and every book I could get my hands on. By the time the big day came and went, I was shocked to find myself in love with photographing people.

There is something magical that happens at weddings; people tend to subdue their displays of emotion on a daily basis, but at these events, they show them so openly that it is heartwarming. Take for instance, the father/daughter dance. Lets assume for the moment that the father is your typical manly man; in normal day-to-day circumstances, you would never see him cry. And yet here he is, dancing with his daughter that had just become someone’s wife, and you see him smile at first, but as the magnitude of what is happening sinks in and he buries his head into her shoulder, you see those interesting little sparkles right around the eyes. Those are tears. That moment is powerful enough to break through anyone. It is a moment that begs to be remembered; to be captured and enjoyed again and again. And it was something akin to that that changed my mind.

A few years later, I have had the chance to work with and learn from some wonderful photographers. We left Kansas City in the late fall and moved back to the east coast, where I started working to rebuild what I left behind in Kansas City, and here we are.