My slogan is because your memory is priceless, so what is memory?
“Memory is just your interpretation of what really happened” writes Michael Heppell in his book Flip It. That’s made me think about the way that one of the world’s most influential (and probably high earning) wedding photographer works. Amongst the community of wedding photographers, Jerry Ghionis is arguably one of the most well known, his working style isn’t everybody’s taste, but his images are definitely some of the most stunning around.
A lot of Jerry’s images look like they are reportage, fly on the wall captures, being in the right place at the right time shots. But he’s the first person to people that most if not all his best loved images were in fact set up and carefully directed shots. Staged if you like, or posed to use a word that’s gone out of fashion these days.
His goal is usually to make those posed shots look like they were natural captures, which bring us back to the quote at the beginning of this post, that memory is an interpretation of what really happened. You see, Jerry is always telling people that he doesn’t wait around for things to happen, instead he likes to create the situation by asking people to do certain things at specific places. The result is a set of images where people may be genuinely interacting, but the situation would not have happened if it weren’t for the photographer asking them to interact there and then in that particular way. The photos afterward show beautifully captured moments, the emotions would be genuine and everyone takes home some beautiful memories (and pictures) of the day.
You may gather from this post that I’m a big fan of Jerry. I am a member of his ICE Society, which is a web site he set up to inspire and educate photographers. I recently attended a full day seminar in London and came back thoroughly inspired. As a photographer in Stockport, I’m thousands of miles from Jerry’s home in Australia, but one thing is sure, that is I share his goal of wanting to create and capture the best memories for my couples. Whilst hiring Jerry may cost you the price of a nice new car, I try to be more down to earth, although I no longer cater for the budget end of the market, I believe everyone deserves to have their most precious memories captured professionally, so if you like what you see on the website, then I would love to hear from you and see what I can do for you.