My Love Song To One Love Photo

You guys. It was inevitable that I was going to write a love song to One Love Photo (husband and wife team Heather & Jon), because when people are that awesome to you, you are awesome to them in return (which is *not* a way of saying I’m a blogger so I got my photography for free, I don’t roll that way. Though they *do* advertise on APW.). Except accidentally, I wrote an EPIC love song. And epic love song with arty cameras and how we went about picking awesome wedding elves, and sneaky pictures of our wedding:
I would describe Heather and John (that’s Heather, in the pink, at her best friends wedding) as the artists photographers—The funky, hip, you wanna have a drink with them artists photographers. First off, they still shoot with film, which is rare, and magical. But it’s more mind-boggling than that. They shoot with (get this) SEVEN DIFFERENT CAMERAS. I told this to one of my amazingly talented photographer friends, and she said, “Oh my God, I’d never know what camera to pick up! Panic!” and Heathers said, “You can’t think. You just grab.” Which is just how you always do art right? Scary but simple at once. So let me walk you through the cameras (I’m such a nerd, because this is super fun for me. Glee!)

First, Heathers favorite is the Hasselbald medium format camera. It shoots really cool square images. Heather says, “It is fully manual from exposure to focus. It slows me down a bit which I think is actually a really good thing at weddings.” It’s philosophical but true. There was something different about Heather crouching down and looking through her view finderand then the click whirr. And it captured some of my favorite pictures of the wedding, which fittingly were quiet moments: (this is the same balcony and the same seats where we had mimosas and watched the sunset later that night. PS: I told you my hair rocked):Second, they shoot with a Holga. I’m pretty sure all you blog readers know about the Holga and it’s low-fidelity aesthetic, so let me just get down to it and show you my favorite of One Love’s Holga pictures.I know, right? I don’t really have words for that.

Third, they use something I’ve never heard of, a toy camera called The Blackbird. They sometimes pass this and the Holga out to guests, just to let them play and get another perspective. Here is a guest shooting on The Blackbird:And here is a double exposure of us leaving our wedding shot on it by one of our guests:Cooool. Sigh.

Fourth, they just got a new camera Diana F+. No images from that yet, but yum.

And finally, because they are modern photographers, they shoot with three digital cameras, with a multitude of lenses. That way there are no, “Oh god did the film turn out??” moments. Heather sent me two of her favorite digital images, which apparently (adorably) she likes so much because *Jon* shot them:And then there are the crazy blurry shots shot on digital with old lenses. This has an emotional intensity that melts me:And finally, I want to say something personal about Heather and Jon, why we pick
ed them, and how to think about hiring elves. We hired them *without ever meeting them* partially because we talked to Heather quite a bit on the phone, and we trusted her. She told me their prices up front (not a lot of hidden back end nonsense), they were willing to work with us on things that were important to us (we wanted to buy our jpg’s and have them right away), and she kept saying things like, “well I could do such and such, but I don’t want to. It makes me feel funny. It makes me feel like I’m ripping people off.” We paid good money for them (their prices have gone up since, but they are still worth way, way more than they charge) but I was happy to support working artists. The first email I sent Heather was, “Hi, I love your work, but I know I can’t afford you.” and her response was, “Well, actually, I try to keep a simple package because I love working with creative brides.” Yay!!! And for all the times mid-planning I wondered if I was being silly paying for artists, I wasn’t. It was right for us. Photography is my art form of choice (don’t get me started about how an Alfred Stieglitz on Georgia O’Keeffe show changed my life when I was 14). Long story short, our pictures are worth it to us, many times over.They made me feel grounded when I wasn’t (two minutes before they shot the photo above I was going to gnaw my way through a tree with frustration), I could ask them for advice “Is my eye makeup too heavy?”, and they were like flies-on-the-wall at the wedding (have you been to weddings with yelly intrusive photographers? It sucks.) When I freaked out about not wanting super traditional shots and kept telling Heather “Like Ember and Ben’s wedding!” she listened and then really DID exactly the spirit of what we wanted. And our photos are so good that people keep telling us they are ‘art’ and that ‘they’ve never seen wedding pictures like them.’ And if you can believe it, I haven’t showed you most of the really really great ones, because I’m keeping those just for us.

Finally, I suppose I should close with what we didn’t like right? Well. I’m pretty sure they never ate our amazing delicious food, even though I cornered Jon and described the curried lentil salad in detail, and I think David chased Heather around with Falafal or something… But hey, they sure photographed the sh*t out of it:All photos by One Love Photo. Obviously.

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