I posted the multimedia story I photographed for Time Magazine last summer about the great work Remote Area Medical is doing providing free health care across the country to uninsured Americans. Mother Jones recently published some of the photos so I thought I’d share them with you. 
Archive: January, 2010
Health Care story in Mother Jones
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010Honeymoon wedding photos in Paris
Saturday, January 16th, 2010This year started off with a “first” for me since I had an assignment in Paris to photograph a couple on their honeymoon. Wedding photos on your honeymoon is slightly unusual. Linda and Johnny contacted me the middle of last year about their plans to have a quiet wedding ceremony in Amsterdam (yes, they are Dutch) on December 31st which most of their friends and family didn’t know about. They were then heading to Paris for their honeymoon and wanted to do their wedding portraits there. Paris was in the middle of an extreme cold snap with temperatures at zero degrees celsius during the holiday week, but we were fortunate that the sun came out for the morning to help warm things up. What we didn’t count on was Linda and Johnny being something of a tourist attraction during the session. They ended up in countless tourists’ vacation photos and at one point had an Italian school group sing to them in the courtyard of the Louvre and mob them to congratulate them (see below).
To any bride getting married in the winter you might want to take note of Linda’s smart use of long johns under her wedding dress.
Locations: The Louvre, Pont Neuf, Eiffel Tower
Good vs Great Wedding Photos
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010I read this article recently and thought it did a great job summarizing many of the things I try to communicate to the couples I talk to about choosing a photographer for their wedding. Hope you enjoy it.
Wedding Photography and the Difference Between Good and Great Wedding Photos
By David Freund
A couple of days ago I was involved in an online discussion about wedding photography and what makes great, soulful wedding photographs. I thought I’d share my thoughts on what takes good wedding photos and makes them great wedding photos.
A couple of years back I had 5 out of 6 straight weddings at the same location, same celebrant and same reception venue. My wife asked how I was able to do different work for each couple. It’s simple. I’m taking photos of two people on their wedding day. Not the venue, not the locations.
I believe there are 3 kinds of wedding photos. Who was there, where it was and what happened.
Old school ‘posed’ photography is often little more than a pictorial record of “who was there”.
The stuff that gets published in magazines and makes photographers famous is “Where it was”. The magazines want to see details of the decorations and locations so other brides buy the magazines for their own wedding research. When they show photos of a bride it’s normally only so they can illustrate what the dress looks like.
Great wedding photos are “What happened”. Photos that capture the unique nature of the couple. Their emotion, their personal connection.
It’s why people put awful, blurry photos of them drunk and stupid on Facebook. Those images have true meaning to the people in them and they feel an emotional connection to the time and place they were taken.
Same with wedding photos. The connection evoked by great wedding photos is one of love between the couple, their families and guests. Not a memory of a photographer telling them how to stand, where to look and how to kiss.
Originally posted at davidfreund.com.au