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The Morning After

Six am the night after a party is, I’ll admit, a crazy time to sit down and write about that party. I should be sleeping. I definitely should be sleeping. I went to bed so late, and it's so early, that I’m quite sure there is still plenty of champagne in my bloodstream.  Maybe that’s why I feel so happy. Or perhaps it has more to do with the fact that a couple of my oldest friends, Bonnie and Colleen, flew all the way from the west coast, my brother caught a red eye from Virginia the same day he got back from a business trip and spent the whole day helping me get ready, my sister has been jumping through hoops for weeks now to make Exposed a success, my sweet friend Tia got a sitter and came in to the city to be at the party even though she’ll be photographing a wedding all day today, my brother-in-law, Tim, got behind the bar and poured champagne all night, and an amazing crowd of people showed up and were kind and generous beyond belief in their support of Exposed. Not to mention the fact that John, my husband, has been funny, loving, and patient (goodness knows) beyond all reasonable expectation for absolutely ages now. At the risk of sounding like I’m making a speech at the Oscars: Thank you all so much!

Everyone is still asleep. The refrigerator is full of leftover cupcakes and champagne – well, not too full…we managed to put away quite a lot of both. There are hot pink and bright orange flower arrangements on almost every table in the house, the kitchen is littered with leftover pizza, plates dirty with powdered sugar and melted chocolate (my daughter and her cousin had a good time last night too, it seems) my coffee tastes like ambrosia, and I am just about as happy as I have ever been. It is a very clear, bright feeling. Something to pay attention to and say; now, right now, I am happy. I can feel my good fortune the way you feel a cool breeze on your skin on a sunny day, with a shiver of pleasure and a feeling of being wide awake to the sensation of happiness. I am paying attention.

My book has now been out in the world for a week.

Oh but what serious fun this all is! Amazing to walk into a bookstore and see Exposed right there on the shelf. Ok, so maybe they only have two copies, but I can still sign them. And then I walk into a store and they say “sorry, you can’t sign any books here because we’ve sold them all.”  It’s the stuff of my wide-awake in the middle of the night dreams. My book has now been out for a week. Did I say that already? Well, please forgive me; I’m still pretty excited about all this.  And in the realm of the surreal, A few days ago I went on NPR and chatted with Neal Conan on Talk of the Nation. I listen to Talk of the Nation at least a couple of times a week. I sat there with headphones on and listened to him introducing me, and simply thought “no way”. Before now I would have said that having your heart in your throat was merely a figure of speech. It seems it is not so. My heart was, I’m certain, settled dead-center in my throat.  I set the bar pretty low, and agreed to declare victory if I managed not to entirely embarrass myself. So I feel pretty good about the whole thing. It may be a while before I go listen to it though.

But the best part has turned out to be something I didn’t think about at all. That people would read my book and then write to me. That they would tell me things about their own weddings, or how they felt about the new gay marriage laws in California, or how they wished they’d behaved differently when they planned their own weddings, or why my book gave them pleasure. I just didn’t expect that. That people would be so generous with their time and their feelings. Yesterday I was sitting having lunch with my brother – giving him a bit of a rest before I made him continue with party preparations! - and the phone rang. It was a woman calling me from Chicago to tell me she had just finished Exposed and how much she had enjoyed it. A wedding photographer herself, she had, she said, experienced almost every situation in Exposed herself. I tell you this not because I want you to know people call me and say they liked the book, but because it gave me such pleasure to get that phone call and it made me think. How many books have I read and loved. Have I ever sent a note or picked up the phone? I think I sent an email once. That’s it. How remarkable that that person in Chicago just picked up the phone and called me and made my day like that. I have a few long overdue notes to write!

I loved writing Exposed. It was pure pleasure for me. And now I’m busy writing something new and finding it quite as interesting, absorbing, and challenging as Exposed. It’s a completely different subject this time. I’m pretty sure I’ve told all the wedding stories I want to tell, and I am completely sure that I don’t want to say anything else about myself – so it’s all made up from here on out, and it’s turning out to be just as much fun. I should myself get a second cup of coffee, and then maybe there’s time to go back and look at what I wrote yesterday before everyone starts stirring.

If you are reading this and were at the party last night – thank you for coming to celebrate Exposed with me. It was perfect.

Claire.

*If anyone has some pictures from the party, send them along and I’ll post them here. I’d love to put up some of the photo booth portraits, so if you have one you can scan and send my way that would be great!

** Please forgive the somewhat sloppy style of this note…after all, it’s the morning after.

C.

No Bridezilla's Here

When I started thinking about writing Exposed I imagined it as a collection of stories about all of the bizarre things that had happened to me as a part of my work as a wedding photographer. Crazy bride stories mostly. That's not quite how it worked out. First of all, it got personal. Somehow my own story got mixed up in that of the work I do. Which makes sense, because my work is not separate from my life, and the reasons I do it, the way I do it, and my feelings about it, are bound up in the facts of my life. Both the practical, and the more personal ones.

I realized that, if I was writing about other people's weddings, I should, in all fairness, also write about my own, as well as why I do what I do. Having worked for a number of years as an editorial, travel, and portrait photographer, I started photographing weddings at a time in my life when I needed to work and still be able to take care of someone I loved who was very ill. Later I found wedding photography to be the perfect solution if I wanted to continue working as a photographer, have plenty of time with my young daughter, and still be able pay the rent.  I talked about all of this in Exposed, and then started writing about my own wedding, my husband, and later, my daughter and - well, as you can see, it quickly became something other than just stories about badly behaved brides. The more that the writing of Exposed made me think about my work, the more I was also reminded of the other reasons, way beyond just the practical ones, that kept me photographing weddings. I was not only telling stories about difficult brides, just as often, I found myself writing about couples I admired for their ability to navigate your way through the stormy seas of tight budgets, friends advice, religious, family, and societal pressures - not to mention the bridal guides and magazines that overwhelm you with pictures of impossibly perfect weddings and reed-thin brides. Difficult to say the least. Many of the couples I photograph do manage this with good grace, and a great deal of humor. I wanted to tell their stories as well.

Very often, as it should be, a wedding is an incredibly happy event. You'd think that would be a given, after all, it's a wedding, what's not to be happy about? In fact, to get to that day in one piece, to transcend the pressures put on you by your own and others expectations, can be incredibly difficult. Much more so than many people who have not had to try to do it may realize. That's why the word Bridezilla does not appear in my book, and why, in writing Exposed, I found that it became (along with some stories of badly behaved brides!) also a book about my admiration for the couples who found ways to have the wedding they wanted without hurting other people's feelings or fighting about it themselves. Couples who could compromise in ways that made their families happy but did not spoil the day for themselves. Couples who could manage, despite the madness, to keep hold of what was really important.

For a time, in my early twenties, I worked in New York as an actress. I find that photographing a wedding is much like being part of the cast of a play. For a limited period of time you are oddly intimate - though strangers, you have a closeness that belies the brief nature of the relationship. The intensity of the involvement is part of what makes the work so interesting. I am always impressed and grateful for the trust people show me by giving me such extraordinary access to a part of their lives. As a photographer it allows me to do the sort of work I do best. Occasionally what I see makes me very sad or discouraged. But I like that too. I cannot imagine doing work every day that I did not care about, that did not make me feel deeply. I am so fortunate that what I do for a living is the same thing that gives me such pleasure.

Why film?

Why do I use film? Or rather, why don't I shoot digital? That's the number one question I get asked by clients, and by the guests at weddings. "Wow," they'll say, looking at me like I'm something from the stone age, "I didn't know anyone used film anymore." I do. I love film. I'm not really all that interested in the arguments about which looks better. I'm sure you can spend hours on a computer creating a print that will rival what can be done in the darkroom. I also know that many - probably most - people can't look at two prints and tell film from digital. I know - boy do I - that it would save me a ton of money not to shoot film, and I also know that it's getting harder and harder to find labs that will carefully process my film and make lovely prints from my negatives. All this I know, but I still have no plans to stop shooting film. The reasons may not sound entirely logical, but they make perfect sense to me.

First, let's deal with the look of film. Someone once told me that they thought digital images looked "less like a memory." I know just what they mean. It's not something I can define, but on an emotional level, it rings true. Digital images often look too sharp to me, too immediate. Of course, I am aware that almost any effect or look can be achieved on the computer, but that takes away something as far  as I'm concerned. The photographer Michael Kenna said in an interview:

Digital and computer technology really hasn't changed the way that I do things. I am quite content to continue with the equipment I am used to. I happen to love the process of photography. I believe that artists should use whatever tools are appropriate for their vision so I am delighted that some photographers have embraced new technology and are using it for their creative endeavors. Having said that, I must admit that I am personally not a great fan of digital manipulation because I think it breaks down the essential link between photography and reality. I believe that the historical strength of photography has been its very tie to reality - it is one of the main characteristics that differentiates it from painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.

Which brings me to the crux of the matter. I like the mystery of not being entirely sure of what I have caught till later. And when I do see it, I don't want to mess around with it.

I like the process of shooting film. The ritual is profoundly satisfying to me. The very things that many people see as drawbacks with film are the things that give me pleasure. I enjoy the way film forces me to slow down and take stock of what I am doing.I like loading the rolls of film into the camera. I like the pause between rolls of film when I'm thinking about what I have so far, and what I still want and need to do. Or even when I'm rushing like mad to get a roll in the camera so I don't miss something. Most of all, I like the way film challenges my imagination by the limits it places on me. That's the real reason I can't imagine I'll ever switch. Because having something to push up against makes photography more interesting.   It inspires creativity not to have things come too easily. It's like love. It's more interesting when you have to work for it. When life puts up a few obstacles. You are forced to pay attention in a different way.

I don't want to be able to shoot thousands of images without stopping, or to see every picture that I take seconds later. I want to have to think about the fact that I do not have unlimited amounts of film. That I will need to pause at some point and reload my camera. That I must make a choice between color and black and white.  It's the same thing as working with the assumption that you will not be putting your images into Photoshop and cropping the image. You challenge yourself to edit as you go. You compose through the viewfinder. It's the high wire without the safety net. The thrill is bigger. All this to say, I'm a bit odd about film. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong about any of this. It's just how it feels to me.

The Quakers have a wonderful saying "it does not speak to my condition." That's the way I feel about digital photography. It's not better. It's certainly not worse. It just doesn't speak to me.

Cheers, Claire.

If you've never been lucky enough to see Michael Kenna's work, you can check it out at www.michaelkenna.net. Besides his beautiful and moving images, there are some interviews posted there that say a lot of things worth hearing.

Getting Started

I never thought I'd have a blog. The thing is, blogs are a bit of a mystery to me. It's hard for me to imagine that anyone has time to read blogs, so it's especially important to me that if someone does read mine I should have something interesting to say so that I don't waste their time.

With that in mind, I'm asking for a little help. I'd like to know what I can tell you about photography, weddings, or writing Exposed that will be of interest to you. That way I can try and answer your questions and be helpful. I'd also be interested to hear some of your stories. It would be great to hear some tales from in front of the camera for a change. Are you a bride who had an interesting wedding photography experience? Did you let a relative photograph your wedding? Do you wish you had done things differently? I've been telling my stories from behind the camera for so long, it would be great to get a fresh perspective! So that's it for now. Thanks for your help! More soon.....Claire.