Selecting a photographer to document your day of days is possibly the most important hire you'll make.
   -- TheKnot.com

What is wedding photography? What is the job of a wedding photographer, his purpose, his raison d'être?

Is it just to take pictures? To produce a record of various groups of people standing at attention during a wedding?

In the past, that was pretty much it. I remember the photographer at my own wedding. A few shots of us standing by the minister. Me and my dad. My wife and her family. All of us together. Me and my wife. My wife and her grandmother. And so on. Dull, soulless, and utterly forgettable.

We've all seen those wedding albums. A couple dozen pictures of people standing stiffly by some flowers, a shot of the cake being cut, and a few "candids" mostly of people eating.

Today, things haven't changed much. Most wedding photographers still produce the same old photos, produced by following the same old "shot lists" downloaded off the Internet. Then they make some prints and stuff them into a big album with slots for various sizes.

That's not what I do ...

My approach to a wedding it totally different. I'm trying to tell a story. Your story. The story of one of the most important days of your life.

It goes far beyond capturing who was there. Oh, we do some of that, the traditional "formal" portraits. But mostly we try to capture the feelings, the emotions, the essence of the day.

To do that, we shoot lots of images. Lots and lots of them. Thousands of them. From the bride's first hair roller to the last glimpse of the car as the couple leaves the reception. For some examples of my style, see my Wedding Gallery page.

I then pull them onto the computer, sort, categorize, label, and finally select the best to include in your album.

The album is so very important. After the wedding, it's pretty much the only thing left from that day. Long after the last piece of cake comes out of the freezer, years after the dress is relegated to the back of the closet, the wedding album is the only thing that can take you back to that day, to show your children what a special time that was.

And not the traditional "matted" album. No, no. My albums are totally different. They're like fine-art coffee-table books. A beautiful hardcover book starring you.

That, for me, is the photographer's reason to be there. To create that special book, that touchstone, that treasure chest of memories. Not just a collection of photos, but a storybook, a fairy tale to be looked at for many, many years. If you'd like to see an example of my idea of what a wedding album should be, check out my Wedding Album Design page