The Best Camera Bag For Wedding Second Shooters: The Wandrd Prvke Lite

I feel like, as a photographer, a lot of us end up with a lot of camera bags for different circumstances.

I have 4 bags in my rotation depending on the job at hand. The one I’m sharing today, the Wandrd Prvke Lite, is my go to for small photography jobs or when I’m second shooting a wedding and need a small kit.

It’s incredibly light, weighing at only 2.5lbs. I’ve had back problems for years, so to have something so light and well padded do the job like it does is incredible.

It can pack all of the gear I need. For second shooting a wedding, I carry 2 Nikon Z series bodies, 4 Nikon S series prime lenses, 2 on camera flashes, batteries, memory cards, and other odds and ends id need to support those items. It stores it all without feeling bulky.

I’m also a big fan of the color. I know it’s a small, inconsequential thing, but that Wasatch Green looks pretty dope.

I want their love to dictate what they show me and my cameras

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.

Gifts From A Bride

I knew the minute the first groom received his gift from his bride, a pin with photos of family gone but never forgotten who meant something dearly to him, I captured a moment that will make even the hardest of people feel something. I'm getting choked up just writing this.

The second groom had me chucking because he tried so hard to keep himself together while opening his gift, including the bracelet shown. Even while reading the card from his wife, he told me he wasn’t very easy to crack. He kept his composure for sure, but I know he had a lump in his throat once he saw his bride and chatted with her about the gift.

I always tell the bride or groom, when they mention they don’t want to cry or are embarrassed to show so much emotion, that it’s okay. This is one of those days where it’s perfectly fine.

One Day I'll Be These Parents.

For me, I know I've succeeded in my job as a wedding photographer when I'm culling my photos and I run across the photographs of my couple's parents.

They're usually off guard and enjoying a moment or experiencing something so beautiful, they forget I'm there documenting.

It means the world to me to see these, and I know it means the world to my clients and their family to have these.

Every single time, every time, I tend to start crying over my keyboard when I get to the couple’s dances with their parents or grandparents. I get so damn emotional over those.

Appreciation For The Places We Say "I do."

Wedding photography has granted me the privilege to do what I love in places that inspire the emotions I want out of my couples.

Before wedding photography, I didn’t venture out of New York City very often. But now, I’m blown away by the places I’ve been, primarily in New Jersey and Connecticut, but I can’t wait till I get to work with clients and friends in other states.

Our couples are just as swooned by the destinations as I am the minute I step foot on the grounds.

The venue means so much to the quality of the wedding day.

I got married in my apartment in The Bronx. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better “venue.”