Mike + Megan! >> Glam Winter Wedding at The Capitol Room (St. Peter, MN)

Wedding

Mar 3

The last wedding of my shooting season always feels BIG. Moments feel extra weighty and I tend to wax poetic, getting it ready to deliver. And with Megan + Mike, those typical year-end feels ring true.

What’s on my mind today as I finished my work?
Art.
True, irreplaceable art.

Rewind 10 years.
Did you know I studied digital art + photography in college? That I earned a BFA?
The curriculum was slanted heavily towards fine art, and aspirations of being “just a wedding photographer” were looked down upon. It wasn’t artistic enough, and deemed unworthy of creative pursuit.

Well, I got that piece of paper in 2010 that said I was qualified to create + hang work on a gallery wall.
I’m happy I can confidently say in 2020 that I’d rather create + hang work on a living room wall.
That after a decade of experience that this is valuable, fulfilling, and personal.
That whoever said wedding photography wasn’t capable of achieving art status was absolutely incorrect.

Because aren’t weddings themselves a work of art?
Wasn’t it Van Gogh—a “proper” artist—who said “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people”?
How could you look at Mike + Megan and not see that reflected?
In those scrunched nose smiles, the palpable anticipation, the full range of expression as they promise themselves to each other during their ceremony?

What they are, what they make, and what they have in their love is art.
I’m just dong my best to live up to that through my imagery.

Congrats, M+M!