Holga Power

Finding a photographer marks another milestone in the planning. We did it. As a core aesthetic element, it was in the first tier of arrangements we wanted to pin down. The person we've chosen is Linda Crayton. We interviewed a number of photographers and, classically, she was the first person we saw.


Interviewing photographers, I was never really sure what we are supposed to find out from them, at least what we could not see on their typically luxurious websites. Of course, at the least, one should meet the person who will be hanging around your family and best friends for a few hours without your mediation. This person, unlike, say, the priest or the caterer, will be part of your wedding -- she will be a guest. In this regard, we were less thrilled with one pair whose lair, I mean, studio, featured a pool table for their "boudoir" pictures (briefly, nudes with awkward leg crossing poses). The unforunate pictures were also in evidence. This couple also insisted they would do whatever we wanted, which, as I said before, is not helpful. Another couple we met in their ultra-professional studio and we were professionally charmed. But they cost too much. Another guy, we met in a Starbucks in Bethesda, next to a long separated duo reconnecting furtively across bustling freeway of sexual tension and lattes, and a women in pastel sweats at a crackling laptop. Nice pictures, though.

We drove out to Linda Crayton's Great Falls rambler where we saw more of what is on the luxurious website. Albums sold for more than used Hondas, precious little books of perfect proofs, CDRoms, all that. She showed us her fabulous digital equipment, answering my boldly ignorant technical questions. I could have been looking at a nuclear bomb. We also saw the pictures of flowers in her powder room and the photo of her and her husband at a Moulin Rouge party in the hallway. This party reportedly may be associated with the birth of their first towheaded toddler. In her studio we noted interesting framed prints -- square, raw yet ethereal. These were taken with a Holga. The Holga is budget -- it has an actual socialist history -- and a plastic lens. Facility with this simple instrument showed curiosity, personal passion and possible virtuosity. I hope that rings true in the results.

Pictures

Photography may not seem like the most urgent matter at this stage, but I reckon it has the potential to consume wads of time. So we resolved to start the consumption early. Photography is a detail inviting ruinous micromanagement---we all now have nice cameras and take many many pictures. Some of them are pretty nice. One might thus easily presume that a professional can be given good advice on how to do their job. But I know that's wrong. I'm trying to back away from that illusion, and take a more reasonable approach.

Foremost, we want a photographer that knows what to do. At the bridal expo we met lots of photographers who told us they focus on giving clients exactly what they want. I don't tell my clients that what I want is to give them exactly the summary judgement motion they want. What I want is for the photographer's to take good pictures (and to take the necessary battery of family shots).

Luckily my fiancee and I have similar ideas about what we want in terms of style -- when we find it, we plan to let the photographer do her thing unmolested by hacks' advice. As for that style, we are taken with the current fashion of "journalistic" slash "documentary" wedding shots. These tags imply that the pictures capture, with the unbiased and searching eye of the responsible professional journalist, the unvarnished sentiment of moments, in lieu of some staged presentation. Obviously, the pictures only capture the look of being unvarnished. Substance as style is the modern cry for authenticity in a mostly fabricated world, or something. I feel like we may be coming in mid-fad into a hackneyed academic trope, but we like how it looks. And it wouldn't be the first time.

Letting a photographer loose requires that she is good, at technique and in compositions. I.e., we don't want numerous close ups of wine glasses and shoes. But while we prefer an artist with a point of view, so to speak, we don't want an angry auteur making giving every photo the unnegotiably raw power of the subject. People must look good in the pictures. We've begun searching for this reasonable auteur in some instructive conversations discussed in forthcoming entries.