(photo above by Emin Kuliyev)
This time 4 years ago things were very different for us, we were approaching the end of our degrees trying to work out just what we wanted to do with our lives. Personally I’d become completely disillusioned with the film industry and my passion for film making had been all but extinguished. Back when I was 16 I had saved up all summer for my first camera by working as a landscape gardener with my dad. Within a year I’d contacted as many bands, managers and venues as I could and I was shooting a bit of live music work in my spare time. At that point though I was fairly set on moving into the film industry. It wasn’t for money or fame, I just loved the idea of creating films, either writing or directing. Unfortunately I found that in reality film making is much more collaborative that I’d expected, and my wide-eyed enthusiasm waned as each term passed. By my third and final year I was busy taking production stills on films I was meant to be directing. Although my enthusiasm for moving image had fizzled out photography had continued to fascinate me and by the time I graduated it was officially an obsession rather than a hobby. For me photography is an all-consuming interest, it changes the way I look at the world and it has given me a career that forces me to strive to be the best I can be.
(photo above by Dave Getzschman)
So there we were, two soon-to-be graduates in love with camera’s trying to figure out just how to pay the bills. I’m not sure what it was that pushed us to take the step to weddings, I do remember reading an article about wedding photography in Professional Photographer magazine with interest. Whatever the catalyst I spent the last couple of months as a student reading up on how to make a basic website as well as looking at the leaders in the industry. Sites like Junebug weddings, Best of Wedding Photography and the WPJA were (and still are) full of inspiring work. As great as it was the photography on those sites seemed a world away, awesome angles, great equipment, these guys had it all.
Last year we were blown away when we were invited to join Best of Wedding Photography and over the year we found that we were getting more and more enquiries from aspiring photographers. It never really occurred to us that we might be starting to attract more and more hits from aspiring photographers as well as brides and grooms to be. Throughout the course of the year we received ever increasing applications to be assistants, second shooters or just to get some pointers. Given that we always work as a team we are unfortunately unable to offer any second shooting experience, but it did get us thinking about what we could do to be a useful resource.
(photo above by Emin Kuliyev)
So that’s how we got here, but we wanted to know other’s stories. To ask photographers we admire the questions we get asked and to make these interviews accessible to anyone who wants to read them. From now on we’ll be aiming to make these interviews a regular feature on our blog. We were fortunate enough to hear back from some incredible industry leading International Wedding photographers who have been generous enough to give us some time for a (Sometimes not too brief) Skype chat.
In the next few weeks we’ve got some of the world’s very best photographers lined up, several have won WPJA’s photographer of the year award and there’s even a few from the incredibly prestigious American Photo magazines Top 10 wedding photographers in the world. In the next week we’ll be putting up our interview with the fantastic Dave Getzschman of Chrisman Studios (Whose generosity in time means that I’m currently making notes on a two hour conversation we had on Monday) we’ll also be posting interviews with WPJA favourite Emin Kuliyev and the ridiculously cool Matt Miller. Future interviews include Citlalli Rico, Samm Blake and Todd Laffler.
Suffice to say we’re VERY excited.
– Chris
(photo above by Dave Getzschman)
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