I’m writing this from Castellammare, a town in Naples, Italy. I’m here to photograph a wedding with one of my favorite wedding planners, and have spent the past 48 hours getting over jet lag and soaking up the beauty of the area before events begin this evening. We had a quiet afternoon yesterday, which gave me the chance to work on creative direction for a commercial shoot I have next week, and between prepping for this wedding and next week’s editorial work, my head is full of inspiration.
Every corner of this property is beautiful. Every aspect of next week’s shoot will also be beautiful. And I am so excited for what I will create for both.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that word lately—Create.
As someone who has spent nearly two decades earning my living in a creative field, you would think that creating would be at the core of my work. But that hasn’t always been true, because I think there’s a difference between being a generally “creative person” and someone who actually does the work of creating.
I think of a creative people as those with a deep appreciation for beautiful spaces, objects, people, and experiences, and a unique ability to curate them into something interesting. But their primary function is to respond to and collect beauty, not necessarily to create it. As a wedding photographer, so much of my career has been spent doing exactly that—I step into a beautiful story in a beautiful setting, and I capture what already exists there in an interesting way. Sure, I have a distinct point of view, and that certainly makes my work unique, but one can build a very strong body of work, and a financially prosperous business being a generally creative person who responds to beauty around them. And that’s not wrong or bad!
But I think a creator (or an artist) is in a different category. A creator doesn’t merely observe and respond to the beauty around them, they generate that beauty. They have a distinct point of view that is the result of intentional cultivation and pursuit, and that point of view is clearly communicated in their body of work. To put it in sports terms, creatives are on defense, creators are on offense.
A few years ago, I noticed that my work was beginning to feel predictable, and I started to wonder if there was a different way to approach things. While every wedding is unique because of the people involved, they tend to follow a similar pattern. I’ve been doing this long enough that I could follow that pattern in my sleep, and that scared me. I knew I was a risk of turning into someone who might “phone it in” on a wedding day… and get away with it. I always said I thought of myself as a “creative person,” not an artist, and I realized that was the root of my problem.
So I decided to change things up. What if I approached each wedding from the role of an art director? What if I got even more intentional with how I prepare myself and my team? What if I made storyboards and creative decks to help me photograph a unique story with intention instead of simply responding to beauty around me? What if I let my own voice come through in what I create?
And so I did.
I began by getting more selective with what I allowed myself to consume—I unfollowed all of my peers on IG, I started following people worlds above me, going to more art museums and learning from the masters, I figured out what inspires me and how I define beauty. And then I curated a Pinterest board with all of that at the beginning of each year as way to predetermine where I wanted to take my work. A kind of “here’s the goal, work toward” visual benchmark.
And then I did that on a smaller scale for each client project—I sat with their story, I took a deep dive into the planner’s creative deck, and started to think intentionally about what I wanted to create for that specific client. I now build out a full creative deck for every project, a way of deciding ahead of time how I want to approach each couple and their unique love story.
When I say that it has completely changed my work, I mean it. No exaggeration. Of course what I think I’m going to create and what I actually end up creating are rarely the same thing. Weddings are live events, after all, and much of the day is out of my control. But deciding ahead of time how I want to approach each portion of a wedding day has allowed me to stay true to my point of view. And deciding ahead of time what I want my body of work to communicate keeps my heart and my artistry aligned. Both keep my work fresh, keep me interested and growth-oriented, and keep me from falling into the “let’s follow this trend for no reason” camp.
At the end of the day, I think it all comes down to intentionality, but if you’ve followed my work for any amount of time, you already know I’m a broken record on this point. Doing something with meaning gives meaning.
PS— I now call myself an artist. Isn’t that something.