I say I’m a Colorado wedding photographer, but I’m a transplant from the northeast and brought some of that mindset with me. After moving to Denver, I soon learned that East Coast was a personal adjective, one not generally intended to flatter. Oh, well. We are what we are. I suppose the wedding photographer part of Colorado wedding photographer isn’t entirely accurate either. My background is in photojournalism and I continue to do documentary work. Those categories usually have little in common, but one should be defined more by the way they work than by the the particular story or client. I don’t change, much. My weddings may be slightly more sentimental than my other work, but I’m still essentially telling stories, observing human nature and the myriad ways people connect. 

I market myself here as a Denver wedding photographer, but I don’t actually care about wedding photography per se. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. I do care a lot about the people I photograph, I just don’t spend time looking at or trying to emulate the work of others. Wedding photography is a genre unto itself, with its own conventions, reward systems and clichés. I believe in many ways it has become unmoored from its original purpose, which was to help people remember, as vividly as possible, a pivotal day in their lives that begins to fade from memory with the first sunrise.

I want to preserve things in memory, to record what was, not just to make an image for its own sake. The couples I photograph aren’t raw material for contest entries or cute gimmicks which lose their allure with repeated viewing. Let’s show what’s important. Let’s keep it real.