Part 1
of
The Art of Creating A Wedding Story
"The Beginning"
The beginning is a very important part to any and every single wedding day. Not only that but it's also a very important part to my method and my process.
This is my approach
Getting back to my philosophy of pushing to create a well rounded and sound story of people's most cherished day.
The beginning is arguably the most important part because it is what leads us to the rest of the day. It's the introduction, the hellos to everyone, often times the first time I meet the wedding party & the family of the bride and groom.However I'm trying my best to change all of that this year.I very much establish things with me clients prior to the moment of me rolling in to do my thing on a wedding day. We met quite a few times prior, we worked together with the engagement shoot, I've schooled them on everything that I need to school my clients on to A) establish the tone & comfort & B) Help us all to be on the same page. There's def a process and method.I want to make it all effortless and easy.I'm always trying to refine everything and apply new tactics that I think will help me do my job better but more importantly things that I feel allow me to create better work.It's the opportunity I take to establish everything firmly and in my opinion the part of the day that is filled with some of the most powerful moments.
Usually this all happens at the brides family home, a rented property, a salon or a fancy hotel room.The make up artists, the mimosas, and everything else.No matter where this part of the day begins I hold this location or often times locations to be very sacred.I spend this time with both The Bride and The Groom.Every aspect of wedding photography is and every location throughout the day is sacred & spefcial.This is just how I feel about it.
Getting back to my first post.Love is the greatest and the most magical feeling in the world.It must be sacred.
You can read that post by clicking HERE.
I try my absolute best to make the creative process as easy, comfortable & relaxed as humanly possible. This is absolutely vital to those that hire me, my approach,my work & how I feel it all should be like.I as a professional want to take the sometimes heavy burden of creating unique and powerful images off my clients shoulders. Let's face it I know everyone doesn't like to have their photograph taken, or sometimes people get very uncomfortable around a camera. I am aware of this, I respect this,I respect people & I respect their space. There is a total zen and purpose to what I do as as a photographer on every single level & I feel the whole process should just be easy for all.
I am a witness. I am a director when I need to be,I am totally there and present.It's important that I blend in like a Bob Ross painting.I am soaked within the whole experience.I am a part of the experience. I've always felt that great images take a greater investment on my end. Sometimes I think I'm invested so much more then what people may think or even how it all appears to be on the outside.
At the end of the day it can all reflect in my work & that's all part of my skilled ability.
Every time I click my shutter I want it to be worth it.
Every time I click my shutter I want the moment to be bold and beautiful.
& Every time I click my shutter I know that I'm going to spend up to 30 minutes on that single image after the fact. Uploading it, color correcting it, editing it & brining the file to life in the magical process of my post production that is my philosophy and my highly trained skill in the darkroom.
When I'm behind my camera photographing my skill is based off of a few different things.
1.) My ability to see and feel a genuine moment.
2.) My ability to be precise in my timing and my ability to be in what I feel is the best place for that particular moment.I could be here I could be there,I could crouch down or shoot it from an elevated perspective. I could be close or I could be a lil farther away. It all matters and these are the types of decisions I have to make and they are all a part of my skill set. A skill set that is unique to my work and I.The slightest things go the farthest way in Photography.Perspective is Everything.
3.) My ability to know when a moment just should not be photographed out of respect to the magic of what is going on. That does happen a couple of times for me during every single wedding.
4.) Last but totally not the least, actually these two things are the two most important things to me when I am behind my camera for any reason at all.A wedding, a mountain top, a landscape, a city, anything. It all boils down to Emotion & Composition.
All of this makes up the structure of a sound image. From there I then add everything else by how I process the image in the darkroom.
The colors, the lack of color, the correction of tones and the life that I put into every single image.
It's a two step process but under that blanket a million things happen.
I capture and then I process what I capture.
It is a deep process which I'll explain in another post in the near future after I define the 3 parts of a wedding day.
This is where my education,my training,respect & my experience with a true "film" approach helps me to strive for photographic excellence for each and every single photographic frame that I create even if the image itself gets thrown out and nobody ever sees the light of it or maybe perhaps the light in it. Nobody ever sees every single image that I photograph but me and there is a great reason behind that. Because you don't want to. I'm an artist at the end of the day I want to create what I would like you to see. I hold things to a very high standard & a part of that standard means that things must be thrown away. It's all part of being a professional photographer. We only want to show & supply our best in only the best ways. The ways that only we know how to do.
People hire me to create something profound, they pay me to craft something amazing and at the end of the day this is all part of my job description.
When I say the word darkroom almost everyone will most likely imagine a place where film negatives, the smell of chemicals, timers, & terms like fixer & washing happen.Maybe even red lights, or if they are old enough they might think of their old high school photo 101 class. Maybe a movie scene where they saw it all go down.They might think of the photographic masters like Ansel Adams,Arbus & Lange.Avedon,Irving Penn,Edward Weston and so many more that I have a profound respect for.When you go to photography school you are taught about all of these masters.It's all taken very seriously. Even before I went to the great schools that I went to these masters had a part in inspiring me to even want to pick up a camera and devote myself to trying to be one myself one day.The Time Life guys you know all of them. The iconic images that we all know to be powerful,meaningful & worth it. For our world & for our country. For historical purposes, for our favorite old magazines and books, for our National Parks for everything that you can think of that was enlightened by a magical image. For our old family photo albums, for our personal history & our valued personal moments.
Photography is a magical medium. This is how I feel about it, this is how i've always felt about it and this is how I will always feel about it.
It's rooted in a deep respect. At all times, for every image and I simply live to try my best to respect every single moment that i feel is worth it and the time that I become a part of when I create for people.
When I say the the word darkroom almost everyone will most likely imagine a place of images that magically appear on different types and different sizes of papers. Where beams of light expose images onto paper and where photographic terms like "dodging" & "burning" take place.Where filters (The Original Darkroom Term used to describe filters for different levels of contrast) are used.
I used to shoot nothing but film. 35mm,Medium & Large Format & All of them were as unique as their names. There's a certain respect I have for my work. There's a certain respect I have for art and craft & at the end of the day it is all nothing but love and it is what drives my work's particular style, my talent as a creative individual and my ability to create the best work that I can each and every time.
In film school we were given assignments and we shot at least 2 rolls of film a week. We could have shot more rolls if we wanted to but that was certainly up to us as artists.You have to remember film it costs money so when that's the case you just want to try your best to make every single image worth it. You want to think about it before you press the shutter. Not to mention all of the countless things that true photographers think about before the do.
Now I shoot a roll of film in about the first 10 minutes. It's like that all day long. I don't want to miss anything. Everything gets refined. However if I miss something I miss something I can't go back.
I've always worked from a mass and narrowed it down to the final product. Just like how those two rolls of film a week for my assignments became 2 final processed, printed, and mounted photographs on museum board on a wall at the assignments final critique by my instructors and fellow classmates.
Even thought there could have been 15 images that could have been on the wall.
Lighting, composition, lens type, and all of the rest of the technical stuff that go into it. Everything that isn't technical that I feel truly make the image.
The Heart, The Passion. The Unique View and Respect for That Moment that comes from the depths of me and my soul.
I used to pretty much live in a darkroom. I'm thankful that it was on the top of a mountain in Montecito, California because when I did have to take a break I would sit on a bench and look out over the the beautiful & wild Pacific Ocean & just think while studying at the best film school in the world.Even when they still has some darkrooms open in Chicago I'd ride around on the L and gaze out the windows doing the same.What was a I doing right, what was I doing wrong, my next assignments or the one I was working on at that moment and how I wanted to craft it.
I used to spend up to 12 hours trying to perfect the most perfect image and print that I could.Just like Ansel Adams.
If you are now curious to know more feel free to watch a master at his craft. Click HERE to see Ansel in the darkroom.
"The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance."
Ansel Adams
It is very much about me being faithful to how I feel about an image.Any image. Every image.
There's something about knowing that you put you all into it at the end of the day you see it reflected in the image.It's like the scene from one of my favorite movies "A River Runs Through It."
You can watch an amazing scene that by clicking HERE.
(Side Note - I recently just went to the place in Montana where they filmed the movie.I sat there in the river with my camera.I'll write something about that great time and experience some other day)
Practice makes perfect and even if you think it's the best it could always be better. Get back up on the horse and practice some more. After a while what is instilled in you is the power that you possess when you truly become an artist.
It's rooted in knowledge, instinct , compassion , and an acute ability to perform at a very high level. After a while to appears to be almost effortless. As you get better and better you start to make up for the time you put into it. You get faster, stronger, and your everything about what you do gets heightened.
Here's a great video that explains a little more about exactly what that's like :)
Nobody Tells This to Beginners: For Creatives Just Starting Out
Click HERE to WATCH
Maybe this is why I have had a camera in my hands pretty much everyday fro the past 15 years.
Another reason I have created close to a million photographs.
I wasn't shit in the beginning. However I never gave up and now I know my work says that. My work can stand on its own.
I know what I have put into everything and every image.
This is why magazines and newspapers
call me things like
"Inspring"
"A World Class Photographer"
"A Top 25 Wedding Photographer"
"One of most sought after Wedding Photographers in The Area"
"The Best"
Yeah sure it's nice to get praise from strangers,clients,establish something worthy.It's nice to win the respect of the public. However I could care less about it. I just want to elevate everything everyday.
I just believe in putting my head down because all I want to do is create great work.
My art is not only my dream,my passion or my business.
It's a love affair that I have for it & a belief that it means much more then what is on the surface.
My approach to my work is no different from those beginning days even though I now shoot digital. A physical dark room where I was a bit of a chemist, kind of also like a brain surgeon during surgery.Where seconds mattered, where differences between degrees mattered, where the single results of one single image mattered.I had and have to be precise.Today nothing is different.To me there is a great benefit to that. It's def not easier, it's not faster, it's not instant & it is how I have rolled with all since the day I picked up a camera.
This is why I my business is a premium service & product.
I respect it and I wish for my clients to do that same because at the end of the day what I create for people will last longer then they will.
My skills are 1,000x more then what they were 10 years ago. This is the journey for any artist.Where it was once a manual world that was the root of my everything today technology has become the root of my everything. My cameras, my darkroom, my storage for all of my negatives. My film types, my formats, and everything else in between.
My Gallery,My Mission,My Purpose.
It's all a digital footprint that i have created and I use so many tools and things that help me live it.
We as artists must adapt to the times & for me I'll say that I welcomed the switch of film to digital from day one. I think that I was right on the edge of that transition. It was an incredibly smooth one for me however it's all still rooted in a true film approach & it's out of respect.
Every image is crafted.
Every image gets developed and processed.
Every image gets color corrected, edited, and every single image that you see from me gets my acute time and attention.
In the end what you see & what I give as a final product is the the final end result of this philosophy.What I give is exactly what I want you to see and I saw it before I even photographed it.
This is the mastery of any artist. It's a process that gets refined every single day however much of it is firmly already rooted and there's just no way around that for me. To be frank I don't want there to be a way around photographic excellence. The best isn't given. The best is earned and the best takes time,talent,& craft.
These three things have allowed me to create Art for a living.
It's my job to make any and everyone as comfortable as possible. This is where my gift of love and respect for all people in general comes in handy. I've always enjoyed people.I enjoy people if I'm a photographer or not.I'm totally comfortable around anyone & in totally comfortable in pretty much any situation whether I've known someone for 10 years of 10 seconds.This certainly helps me and it helps my work thrive.
When people tell me they hire me because they see a realness in my work. Or "OMG How did you do that!?" Or they say things like "I enjoy your style because I can feel it."
These are all compliments for sure, I do value these kinds of remarks but at the end of the day I take it as confirmation that my approach resonates with people.
What's the difference between me and every single other photographer out there?
The answer is simple. Me.It's my ethos, my skill set, my talent and how I uniquely feel,see, and think about world.
When I was 4 I knew I was an artist. It has taken my whole entire lifetime to truly translate that into my true talent as an artist.
It has taken me years and years to figure out the absolute best ways to incorporate myself into the work that I live so deeply to create & now it's like breathing. It's like playing jazz, it just all feels so right.
It's pure, it's authentic, it's real, and this is what my work stands for.
I don't walk in on a wedding day to cause or create a scene. I don't walk in to be loud or annoying.I don't walk in to be like "Hey I'm a Photographer Everybody LOOK AT ME." People hire me to conduct a service. People hire me to perform at a very high level no matter what.They hire me because they want my results.This is the same for an incredibly small gig and the same for something incredibly huge.I strive to provide a respected and honorable service that evolves around my ability to create the most amazing work that I can every single day.This is why I am there.It's my sole mission to create work that the bride and groom and everyone else involved will truly love for generations. Honestly I'm just trying to out do myself every single day. I strive to create work that is truly timeless.I'm there as an artist. At this point in my career I'll say that creating powerful and striking work is a guarantee no matter what.It absolutely must be. Wedding days only happen one time. Every second is critical. Part of my talent is understanding all of that in every aspect.
A great photographer establishes a tone from the very beginning. A great photographer can walk into a room and make sure that everyone is aware,comfortable,& that he or she is there & then he or she can vanish in a zone of creating powerful moments.Moments that when people see them they are like "Oh My God I didn't even realize you were there. I can feel this moment and it feels so amazing!" They can see and feel true emotion in the final work because it is real and it does speak to them in a very powerful and beautiful way.I am hired for my ability to craft that.This is what lives under the service of every image that you see from me.
This is what happens & this is how I feel long before anything ever has a chance to be right in front of me.
The beginning of a wedding day is my chance to set this tone. The put the bar very high and just enter my zone that I go into on wedding days or actually anytime a camera is in front of my eye.
It's like my cape. My bat suit, my supernatural power.
I am aware, I am available & I want to make it super easy,fun & all about creating outstanding photography.
I'm a very easy going,calm free spirit naturally.
I am a chameleon.
The hair, the dress, the intimate family and friend moments that happen during this time.
The rings, the shoes, the food and drink.
The make up, the flowers, the hugs and the "Oh My God's You Look So Nice & Beautiful."
The lil ones, the parents, the handshakes and cold beers or shots of whiskey,moonshine or tequila.
The opening of the others half's hand written letters.
The moments, the pure,honest and just real authentic moments that happen during every beginning of every single wedding.
The energy that I see. That energy that builds and becomes stronger as the day carries on.
The beauty that I see in people,objects,& momentos
I am aware, I am available & all I want to do is capture striking moments during this time and during every part of the whole entire day.
I'm there to record personal history, I'm there to document it in an original way.
I'm there to turn the ordinary into extraordinary.
From extraordinary I build.
I am an architect.
The lobby of a beautiful building is an introduction. It is what leads to the most amazing penthouse view from the top of the world.
This is Part 1
This is my method and my approach behind
The Beginning
It's the chapter from which all others of the day will grow.
Please Stay Tuned for Part 2
The Middle
Take it Easy & Take Care
Ryan J. Bolger