abeautifuldayphotography
abeautifuldayphotography
| Forum role | Member since | Last activity | Topics created | Replies created |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Member | Aug 5, 2008 (17 years) |
- | 1 | 0 |
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Aug 5, 2008 (17 years)
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Bio
I love to be present when a couple looks over my pictures of their day. It gives me joy to see my photographs make people so happy. Sometimes, a couple looking at photos from their wedding, will gasp with surprise, being bowled over by a wonderful moment captured in an instant and say "This is so great and we didn't even know you were there." For me, this is the highest compliment.
I started doing wedding photography by accident in 1997. For 10 years at New York Newsday, I covered the NY Giants & Jets, Yankees & Mets, fashion collections in Paris, Milan and London, and the bombing of the NY World Trade Center in 1993. In 1996, after covering wars in Haiti Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, and winning the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for local news with a team of colleagues, I moved to Seattle and began a quiet business shooting stories for magazines.
One day I got a call from a couple that was desperate to find a photographer. They were getting married on short notice and everyone they called was booked. I never considered shooting weddings while working as a photojournalist. At Newsday, it was not considered cool to shoot weddings. The couple was really nice, so I agreed to shoot their wedding if I could work the same way I would cover a news story, documenting their day with a photo essay. They agreed (I think they were out of options). The resulting photographs proved very satisfying for the wedding couple. For me it was something of a revelation. I actually enjoyed telling a joyful story for a change.
Since that day I have made the transition from covering hard news to weddings, documenting them in the same way as my editorial stories. Now instead of getting shot at in conflict zones, I get to photograph joyful celebrations of love, family and friends. (The food is always better too).
250+ nuptial celebrations later, photographing weddings has become my most gratifying work (highlights include Conan O'Brien's wedding in early 2002). I have won a number of awards from the Association of Wedding Photojournalists and was named an International Award Winning Photographer.
Jana Dorotkova Sheehan, my wife and partner, has been helping me with the backend of my business, the editing of photographs and producing the wedding albums since 2001. She has recently added web guru to her titles and did all of the heavy lifting in the development and design of this website, as well as caring for our 2 daughters Ema and Claire. Her new web development and design business is named neetnet.net.
Since 2007, I have been serving on the Board of Trustees of the Photographic Center Northwest (PCNW) offering guidance from the perspective of a working photojournalist. PCNW has a 20 year history of serving as the Northwest center for education, outreach, and exhibitions in the photographic arts. PCNW strives to enrich photographic artistry and appreciation through its quality courses and workshops, a gallery exhibiting internationally renowned artists, and outreach programs which serve photographers throughout the region.
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