How to disappear

About four hours into the day, the bridesmaid turns to me and says, “You're so easy to have around. It's like you're not here. How do you do that?”

Now I have two huge cameras on me, and I'm the only male in the room of a bunch of women getting dressed and ready for a wedding. By the time she asked me that, I had taken around 600 photos of these women.

“Well, I'm comfortable in my own skin. So I'm probably comfortable to be around,” was the answer I came up with at the moment. I've been thinking about that question ever since though, because it's a key piece of my photographic process.

Photography is only a little bit about cameras and lenses and technique. The skills to use that equipment have to be completely fluent and unconscious, of course, but I do this stuff every day. I respond a lot faster than I can think about it, but I'm paying constant attention to the equipment side. If there is backlight, I'll adjust the exposure compensation. If I move environments, indoors to outdoors, the first thing I do is reset my ISO. I'm always watching for compositional possibilities, imagining what the scene would look like if I were seeing it from that direction instead of where I am, and if the image in my mind is better, I'll move myself over there.

That's maybe 20% of the job. The rest is presence. I'm engaged with my subjects, not so much with what they're doing, and not even so much in conversation. I often don't say a lot. I'm just there. Sitting on the floor half the time, or scrunched up against the wall in a really awkward position. Watching what's going on. Sensing how I fit, if I need to give someone near me some space, or if I can be closer. It's that hypersensitive energy thing that I can't really explain, and I couldn't tell you how much is innate and how much is learned behavior. I'm one of those people for whom, if there are small children (or cats) in range, they will soon be crawling over me unbidden.

I'm engaged in what is happening around me in the moment. And I'm engaged, as a witness, to what is happening inside me as I hang with the scene I'm in. It's from that dual attention that I work the photographs. And I have to keep it up for 12 hours. Weddings are about the hardest gigs I do.

When I photograph a wedding, I want it to be from deep inside the event. And afterwards, I need about a day to not talk to anyone before I am fit for company again.

Comments

[Christine Bogan]

Dear Doug,
I'm a reader of your blog for more than a year. This was the most interesting writing I have seen here. There is some mysticism in the art of photography with other people.
By the way I'm a hobby dancer and like these pictures very much.

Christine

[Pat]

Hi Doug,

That is a very good point about photography being 20% of the process but it is still critical to quality pictures and as you say it becomes second nature over time.

I'm also with you on keeping a low profile but personally believe you have to take charge at times as well to ensure the essential shots are covered, such as quality bridal and bride & groom portraits. At least for me, my wedding clients select very few reportage images and tend to go for the more artistic ones we create and the traditional group shots.

What do your clients choose for their album?

Pat
www.patbweddingphotography.com

[Doug Plummer]

Pat, you're right that there are expectations to be fulfilled, and I do produce well lit portraits and group shots as well during the day. My marketing works to select clients that are sympathetic to what I do, because the last thing I want to be is all things to all people. They're either going to get me or they're not. I'm fortunate in that I don't do that many weddings, so I really enjoy the ones I do.

I'm probably odd in that I don't produce a traditional album. Clients get a proof book of the best 300, a CD with high rez of everything, and a Blurb book that I compose, that functions as the album. I use Shutterfly as my online gallery, and I set a ridiculously low markup. My business model is not to make the prints the primary profit center, I just want everyone to get their pictures, and I don't want to be a fulfillment business. I get it up front on the fee.

[JH]

Thanks for pointing out the requirement to be present. This concept seems to be similar to "the flow", as described in Wikipedia: "Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity."