I started out as a portrait photographer. Actually, I cut my teeth with street photographer. It took some of the fear of making photographs away.
The move from taking pictures of life at a larger scale to a portrait with a single soul sitting in front of you is so vastly discombobulating, but exciting. You get to really bond with your subject in a different way.
In street photography, you bond with your environment, whether if it's your home or not. There's still a connection, as if it were a person breathing life into your photos.
For wedding portraits, I like to take it easy with our clients. I understand they’re not models. They aren’t trained in the art of modeling, which it for sure is. They’re newly weds in love who finally tied the knot.
I haven’t really found prompts work for me, like telling the couple to think about a happy moment or tell one of them to whisper parsnip in your partners ear or something like that.
I simply tell them to enjoy the moment. Savor their partner’s presence. Enjoy how handsome and beautiful they look today and tell them. I want their love to dictate what they show me and my cameras. However I will guide their bodies when necessary. It’s a balancing act in the end.
