There’s another half to my life, one I speak not often of here, and it is absolutely and abundantly true that the half it occupies is much larger than half in truth. I am a wedding photographer, one half of the team that is Chasers of the Light Photography, the other being my lovely wife, and it’s been this way for what will be an astonishing 15 YEARS this January. Fifteen years in what feels like a blink, but if we’re honest, if our bones could speak and our muscles had voice loud enough for you all to hear, it also feels like much, much longer.
As Indiana Jones once so profoundly stated, “It’s not the years honey, it’s the mileage.”
The mileage, indeed. Over the last 15 years, I have lost count how many miles we’ve put on our feet chasing the light with wedding couples all over the planet. We’ve flown over the entire Atlantic Ocean from West to East ten different times, back (obviously) another 10. 20 Trans-Atlantic crossings in 15 years, and sprinkled inside that, weddings and elopements in half a dozen other countries and almost every single state in the USA. Last year alone, we flew almost 70,000 miles and drove 7,000 between March and November. We are the memory keepers, we are the trappers of time, and as such I wanted to impart upon you some of the lessons we’ve learned over 15 years of doing this job, of being with all of you on what is arguably one of the happiest days of your lives.
I should say, we’re still booking weddings, right this very now, and we’re trying our best to fill our calendars with more of YOU. Our schedules are opening and we’re booking dates in 2025 and 2026 as we speak, and I will say, it’s gotten so much harder to market ourselves over the last few years. If you or anyone You know is looking for wedding or elopement photography, we’d absolutely love it if you sent them our way. Click the little button to be whooshed away to our Chasers of the Light Wedding Photography page.
We see everything whilst doing our jobs, it’s always been this way. We start each shoot intimately connected to the people we work with, often being the only ones with them as they put their wedding dresses on, as they step into their brand new and freshly pressed wedding suits. We’ve seen you naked, we’ve seen you sobbing, we’ve seen you shaking with excitement, we’ve seen you deep breathing to get yourself down an aisle you know has 700 people waiting.
We’ve seen weddings that cost over $4 million dollars, we’ve seen some that cost $4, literally, and we’ve seen every combination between the two. We wander after the ceremony ends, before we steal our couples away for private breaths under stunning skies, and during this wander, we observe. We melt into the backgrounds and we absorb it and we learn.
I had no idea just how much learning there would be, in the end. I didn’t realize, 15 years ago when charging pennies for hours and hours of exhausting work, that I wouldn’t just be learning about weddings, about the business of photographing them, not even just about love, but about life, too. So much about life, and I know now that the lessons one can glean from hefting around 8lbs of camera gear for hours on end in some strange place that is not your home amidst thumping music and repeated playings of the Cupid Shuffle or the Wobble, are actually much deeper, are much more applicable to life as a whole.
Here are some things we’ve learned over these 15 beautiful years, some lessons we have taken with us, and felt so very thankful for learning.
The World Is SO DAMNED Beautiful - We’re lucky, we know this. We’ve been afforded the opportunity to travel all over this planet for more years than we ever thought possible. The best, and most unforeseen thing that has happened with all that travel, is that when we go, we most often do not go to places that most people choose to vacation to. We go to small towns in the middle of nowhere, we go to places that have never been the marquee destinations, but somewhere on the far fringes of them. Sure, we’ve photographed weddings in New York City, in Boston, in Los Angeles, Austin, Edinburgh, and many others, but, BUT, we’ve also photographed them in Boerne, TX, in Pana, IL, in Sleepy Hollow, NY, on the far southern coast of Jamaica in a fishing community, in a village of only 4,000 on the eastern border of France and Belgium. What we’ve learned is simple: THE WORLD IS GORGEOUS. Everywhere has a charm, every place a reason to visit, and honestly, it’s the spots off the beaten path that truly have our hearts. There’s a time for Paris, sure, but dammit, there’s so much more magic to be found hiding outside of the places most tourists stay.
Sharing Food Is Sharing Love - I’ll be honest, I can’t eat almost anything, so this lesson was more observational for me than all the others, but still it stuck. I eat a Clif Bar at weddings, no time to stop and eat, plus I’m allergic to garlic and onion, which should be dubbed the official wedding spices, so I’m watching others share a meal, and I’m watching it often. I’ve learned that it matters not what you’re sharing, matters not how much money was spent or how fancy the food is, just that you’re sharing it. A meal, eaten whilst in the company of the ones you love is a sacred thing, and we’ve seen stunning examples of this over 4 course gourmet dinners, sure, but we’ve seen even more beautiful examples over bowls of Cheez Puffs and Red Vines. Yes, I am serious, that was served as the food, the only food, at a wedding we photographed, and EVERYONE was still happy. It just doesn’t matter.
Money Doesn’t Matter - Like I just said about food above, this lesson could arguably be the biggest we’ve learned over these years. I say this with confidence now: I have seen ZERO, absolutely ZERO correlation between money and happiness. They say it can buy it, sure, or at the very least it can buy the comfort that leads to it, but I’ve never seen it. The happiest people I’ve ever worked with had the least amount of money, spent the least, worried about it the least. This is not to say that the wealthiest people were tragically unhappy, though many were, but it is to say that the presence of worry, of posturing, of comparison or competition seemed to rest heavier on the heads of those with a lot, than it did on those with very little. Joy was found no matter the money spent, no matter the fanciness of the clothes, no matter the grandeur of the location. Stop wasting your time aiming at some gilded number to be truly happy, find joy where you are, how you are, and treat anything else as a bonus.
I’d Rather Have 4 Quarters Than 100 Pennies - I’ve always said this, always believed it, but have truly embraced its validity in my life more after all we’ve done and seen. Our wedding, once we finally were able to apply some of these lessons to our own planning process, proved to me the power of being surrounded by people who truly understand and love you. We had 22 people with us in Scotland when we said our I Dos, and while we probably made others a bit sad in our exclusion, we felt so much lighter, so much more deeply invested, doing it this way. In my life I have only a few close friends, a few Quarters as it were, and not very many pennies at all. I seek depth of connection over the width of its spread, and it has served me so very well. I believe we’re not built to have so many connections in our lives, not built to handle the load of so many souls, and so I tend to keep that sphere small, without meaning to at all. Find your people and invest yourself into their joy, their peace, and let them do the same for you.
Away From The Things Of Man - Nature is the thing. If you’ve been here long you’ve noticed this as a theme reoccurring, the power and medicine of nature, and our jobs have absolutely cemented this as gospel. Of all the weddings in all the places, the theme that rises most often is this: Those in or around nature, are by far the happiest and at the most peace. With cities, with the din of urbanity, comes an inherent rise in blood pressure, in an overall weight that no matter how accustomed to it you might be, does come with a cost. Something happens when people step into the wilds of nature, even if those places are small and isolated within a bigger urban environment, something slows, something stretches out and breathes and settles into a level of relief that cannot come anywhere else, at least not that I have seen. We seek these places quiet literally all of the time, insisting on them when with couples, even if that means wandering into a jungle-buried Mayan pyramid in 100 degree heat and humidity. We seek, we go, we breathe, we capture magic. Remember this. Cities aren’t going anywhere, but dammit, we’re losing bits of pristine nature every single year. Go, before it’s too late. Go.
I love our job, though often feel too old to still be doing it. I know I’ll be doing it as long as I possibly can and as long as people like you wonderful folks keep hiring me. I’ll probably be the old man in the corner with the old lady with silver hair (hell, her hair is ALREADY silver, oh no) holding a heavy camera and limping around with a cane on a wild coast of Ireland, smiling though exhausted. Who knows, but I do know one thing for sure, I’ll learn even more lessons, I’ll absorb even more bits of wisdom from the time I spend with the people that trust us to capture their day.
I’ll count myself lucky, all the while. What a job I do, what a strange and wonderful job. Now, spread the news and help get us to where you are, wherever that may be, so we can hang out.
We aim at the love,
watch as it unfolds itself.
We steal the seconds.
Life Lessons From A Wedding Photographer | 10.20.24