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.
