On Film, Vulnerability, and Photographing Weddings as an Artist

I started shooting film in 1995, long before I understood what I was looking for.

In my final years of high school, my friends and I would dress up and photograph one another. I remember photographing my friend Melissa in beautiful, unusual gowns, wandering through the tide pools in Maui and exploring abandoned school buildings that were slowly falling apart. I would place her in dark corners or on windowsills, drawn to the shadows and the feeling of something just beyond what you could see.

I didn't have the language for it then, but I was drawn to photographs that felt a little mysterious, a little unsettling. I liked what happened when light disappeared into darkness, when a photograph didn't reveal everything at once. There was something beautiful about what remained hidden.

That instinct never really left me.

Finding My Way Back to Photography

After moving from Hawaii to Ohio, I began pursuing photography more seriously. It felt natural. I understood light, composition, and the feeling a photograph could hold. Film cameras made sense to me, and I wasn't particularly interested in making everything perfect.

I began turning the camera toward myself, making self-portraits that became something like a visual diary. I photographed my relationships, the places I lived, and the people I grew close to. I was trying to understand myself, to become comfortable with who I was, and perhaps to see something in myself that I couldn't quite put into words.

Those photographs were intimate and vulnerable. I wanted them to tell the truth, even when the truth wasn't especially flattering or easy to look at. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hoped someone else might see one of those photographs and recognize something familiar in it. Maybe they would feel a little less alone.

Over time, the photographs became a record of who I was. They held the places I'd been, the people I'd loved, and the versions of myself I'd grown through. I still turn the camera on myself today. I think there is something important about being willing to look inward if you want to photograph other people honestly.

Eventually, I made my way back to Maui. I continued working on personal projects, but I also stepped away from photography for a while. Life moved in other directions, and the camera wasn't always in my hands.

When I eventually returned to photography, it was through assisting a wedding photographer. I learned how the wedding industry worked, how to direct couples, and how to create the kinds of photographs people expected from their wedding day. But I also began to recognize what didn't feel right to me.

I found myself wanting something less rehearsed, less predictable. I was interested in the moments between the poses, in what happened when people stopped thinking about the camera. I wanted to photograph weddings with the same curiosity and instinct I'd brought to my personal work.

Over time, I began photographing weddings of my own, learning to trust those instincts rather than trying to fit into someone else's idea of what a wedding photographer should be.

Returning to Film

When I moved back to Cleveland in 2020, I found my way back to film. Cleveland offered me access to the medium again, something I hadn't really had while living in Maui.

I began developing my own black-and-white film in my garage, hanging the negatives in a closet to dry and scanning them with my digital camera.

It's an imperfect process, which is part of why I love it.

Sometimes there are scratches. Sometimes the grain is more pronounced than I expected. Small variations in the process leave their mark on the final image. I don't always know exactly what I'll get, and I've learned to welcome that uncertainty rather than fight against it.

I especially love the grain in black-and-white photographs. It gives an image a physical quality, a sense that it has lived a little. The photograph doesn't feel so separate from the person who made it or the moment it holds.

Film also makes me slow down. Every frame asks me to pay attention. I think more carefully about what I'm seeing and why I want to photograph it.

Working with digital photography at different points in my life, I sometimes found myself taking pictures simply to document what was happening. Digital photography offers incredible clarity, but I missed the feeling of making a photograph with intention. I missed the uncertainty, the texture, and the imperfections that had first drawn me to photography.

For me, returning to film was a way of returning to something I had lost.

I want my photographs to feel like something, not simply show something.

I want them to bring the soul back into the frame. To bring me into the moment. To feel real and truthful.

In 2025, I moved to Florida, carrying all these experiences with me. My surroundings changed again, but the things that drew me to photography in the first place remained. I'm still interested in the shadows, the imperfect moments, and the things that reveal themselves when you stop trying to make everything look a certain way.

Photographing Weddings Outside the Formula

When I first began working in the wedding industry, I assisted another wedding photographer. I learned the familiar poses: ask the couple to look at each other, kiss, whisper a secret, and repeat the process against a different background.

There is nothing inherently wrong with those photographs. They simply never felt entirely right for me.

I found myself wanting to look beyond the poses and the expected moments. I wanted to photograph the things that happened when people forgot they were being photographed: the way someone's face changed when they looked at the person they loved, the nervous energy before a ceremony, the strange and wonderful mix of emotion that can fill a room on a wedding day.

Eventually, I began booking weddings of my own and trusting my instincts more. I stopped trying to fit myself into the mold of what I thought a wedding photographer was supposed to be.

I'm an artist first. I'm not really a wedding photographer in the traditional sense. I want to photograph a wedding the way I would document my own life.

That means paying attention to the moments that might otherwise go unnoticed. It means being interested in the atmosphere of a place, the people who fill it, and the relationships that make the day meaningful. It means allowing a wedding to unfold rather than trying to control every part of it.

I'm drawn to photographs that feel as though they could have been pulled from someone's personal archive: images that are a little imperfect, a little unexpected, and full of life. I love the raw, unfiltered feeling of 1990s alternative radio and the photographs I associate with the early 2000s, before every moment seemed to be made with an audience in mind.

I sometimes feel as though I'm still stuck in that era, at least photographically. I want the images to feel like memories rather than content. I want couples to look at their photographs years from now and recognize themselves, not a version of themselves they thought they needed to present to the world.

The Importance of Being Present

For me, photographing a wedding begins before the wedding day itself.

Whenever possible, I like to meet couples in person. We might get a drink, sit and talk, or simply spend some time together. Sometimes I bring my camera along. I'm not necessarily looking to create a formal engagement session. I want to get to know the people I'll be photographing.

Vulnerability is difficult to manufacture. You can't ask someone to be completely themselves in front of a camera if they don't feel comfortable with the person holding it.

I want couples to feel that they can relax around me. They don't need to perform or worry about how they look every second. They can laugh, be quiet, feel nervous, or have a moment to themselves. They don't have to turn every feeling into something visible for the camera.

I'm naturally observant, and I pay attention to the feeling of a room. Sometimes I can sense when something is happening without needing to interrupt it. Other times, a portrait calls for a different kind of attention: a quieter moment in which I step back from conversation and let the person simply be.

I will never fill the silence just because it's there. Sitting with silence is okay.

I think some of the most revealing photographs happen when nothing is being demanded of the person in front of the camera. There is room to breathe. Room to settle. Room for something honest to emerge.

That is the kind of space I try to create, whether I'm photographing a portrait or documenting a wedding day.

A Record of What Was Real

When I think about the photographs I want to make, I come back to the idea of a record.

Not a record of how everything was supposed to look, but of how it actually felt to be there.

The people who showed up. The way your family moved through the day. Your friends being themselves. The unexpected moments, the imperfect light, the little things you might not have noticed until you saw them again in a photograph.

I don't want couples to look at their wedding photographs and feel as though they are looking at strangers playing the roles of bride and groom. I want them to recognize themselves. I want them to see the people they love as they really were, not as carefully arranged versions of themselves.

I want the photographs to feel like a snapshot of a particular time in your life, something you could come across years later and be transported back into. The photographs should belong to you, not to a trend or an idea of what a wedding is supposed to look like.

My approach to wedding photography is shaped by everything that came before it: the film I started shooting in 1995, the abandoned buildings in Maui, the self-portraits, the personal projects, the time I spent away from photography, the negatives drying in my closet, and the years I've spent learning to trust what I see.

My eye has changed with time, but the instinct underneath it is much the same. I'm still drawn to shadows, to vulnerability, to imperfect things that hold a little more than they reveal.

Today, I bring that instinct to the weddings I photograph in Florida and wherever a couple's story takes me.

I want to make photographs that feel lived in. Photographs that don't need to explain themselves. Photographs that bring you back to the people you were, the people you loved, and the feeling of being there.

Not perfect pictures of a perfect day.

Something real to return to.