CLIENT: BEANCA & BRANDON // ROLE: PHOTOGRAPHER
THE NEED
Can you bring an editorial approach to a small, family only, wedding ceremony?
The Approach
I don’t shoot weddings. But I do value Black love, Black stories, and disrupting the status quo. So when Beanca & Brandon approached me to bring my editorial photography style and approach to their unique approach to a wedding celebration, I was all in.
In the morning, they had a small ceremony with their family, then wanted 3-5 strong portraits of them afterward, before heading to an evening Block Party with their friends and extended family to celebrate their wedding.
My role was to create those editorial portraits and to document the small ceremony.
DIRECTION
With this direction on hand, I began to explore visual identity through a series of meetings and crafted a pitch deck that exemplified our ideal look, It referenced Black love, editorials with Black subjects, and intimate weddings shot on film. They were hooked and I was ready to rock.
They were drawn to my film emulative approaches to editing, so I honed in on that for all imagery.
For the ceremony, I aimed for a point and shoot camera feeling with the quirks and imperfections that make it endearing. I kept the editorial portraiture more polished, as if it was photographed on a medium format film camera.
They emphasized a documentary approach that didn’t feel posed at all, which I specialize in artistically. We as image-makers are curating the world’s definition of beauty. We cannot take that lightly. With that in mind, I focus on elevating the authentic, the day to day, and the real. People are hungering for authenticity and I aim to deliver that with every project. This one is another example of that.
The Process
For the editorial portraits, we wanted to mix natural greenery with a canvas backdrop, so I scouted for areas near the church and landed on a shallow wooded area at a nearby park that would be accessible for the elderly family members while adding visual contrast and depth.
I maximized their family colour palette with image direction and took advantage of additional strobe lighting to pop the subjects out from the background and solve for any midday lighting challenges.
I kept my team small and nimble with one Second Shooter and a Production Assistant.
With this team, we set up the set the morning before, solved for the weather issues that presented themselves, and pivoted when we needed to most.
Deliverables
The couple was overwhelmingly pleased with the results, which embodied an authentic approach to who they are and what they envisioned that day to represent.
