Writings

With so much attention these days placed upon the wedding day itself as the be-all, end-all of a relationship (instead of, say, step one, which it actually is), I decided to take a look back at some former clients. My piece for Washingtonian, now the most downloaded in the magazine's history, can be found here.

Thank you, thank you very much. It’s a great honor to be here tonight. My fellow Americans, I stand here a proud but humbled public servant, ready to face the challenges and issues that weigh so heavily on this great land and ever mindful of the sage words of my hardworking father: “People drive like maniacs in parking lots.”

For the last twenty-five years, from the time I landed my first job out of college in 1986, the year Challenger went go at throttle up and then went no more, a small, bendable astronaut named Major Matt Mason has been perched atop my display.

We had just returned from a dusk climb up Solsbury Hill, that grassy lump of Peter Gabriel fame outside the ancient city of Bath, the song whose bum-bum-bum-balm-bomb-bum-balm-be-dum-bum always seems to pop into one’s brain at the oddest moments, when I heard the news about the Berlin Wall falling.

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, to steal a line from a Paul Simon song playing nonstop in the wake of Kodak’s bankruptcy filing, I’m always transported to the same place—Long Island, 1975, inside a large darkroom.

“Daddy, can you win me a Domo?” In her six years on this earth, the word Domo had never before left my daughter’s lips, not once, not ever, but that’s the nature of the beast. Silly Bandz and Uglydolls yesterday, Domos today, yet-uninvented fad tomorrow.

When I was a photojournalist, "wedding photographer" sounded like the punch line of a joke. Then I went soft and discovered that taking photographs of the most important moment in people's lives actually is funny. Also moving, sad, scary and profound.