D & J Studio

PART ONE:
Try to recall the most significant moments of your lifetime… the first time your parents set their gaze upon you… your first steps… you first day of school… your first date… your high school or college graduation… your favorite vacation… your wedding… your honeymoon… I suspect that these few examples are just a sampling of the countless moments of your life that live fondly deep within the recesses of your mind — events that you wish you could recall in vivid detail as if you were reliving them at this very moment. Unless you’re fortunate enough to have an eidetic memory, these events will eventually fade into the darkness and be lost among the sands of time… The only weapon that’s truly effective in countering Father Time’s memory-​stealing attack is photographic imagery.
Certain once-​in-​a-​lifetime events, such as your wedding, will make you want to hire a professional to take these very special photographs because…
A. you KNOW you can’t frame a picture to save your life.
B. you’re just plain lazy.
C. it’s difficult to gaze longingly into your life partner’s eyes, say «I DO», AND fire off a photograph while not appearing distracted — unless you’re part octopus. (My wife would have killed me if I’d tried to pull that off at our wedding.)
The simplest part of preserving your special event is choosing to hire a professional. After that you have to take into account the person’s level of experience, how long he or she has been photographing these particular types of events, you’ll meet the individual live and scour through portfolios containing his or her absolute best imagery, you’ll decide if the individual’s personality agrees with you, and very importantly you’ll decide if the individual’s fee schedule agrees with your budget. This is a very delicate process, and sadly the truth is that you truly won’t know if you have the right person until the entire event is over…
My wife and I went through all of the stages of the process that I just outlined, and I’m absolutely excited to share our experience from the moment of inception.
My wife and I had it in our minds that it was more important to us to spend less money on the actual wedding and photography so we could be selfish and go big on our honeymoon. We researched photographers… and then more photographers… and then we were introduced to John through the company from which my wife purchased her wedding dress. She contacted him, or he contacted her — I honestly don’t know, but the three of us decided to meet at a very well known coffee joint for the initial meet-​and-​greet. After the face time with John, my wife and I discussed the quality of John’s portfolios. She and I both agreed that John’s portfolios were not very impressive. I, being more photographically-​inclined than my wife, felt that the images were unusually poor — especially given the fact that in reality they SHOULD have been a representation his absolute best work. I felt that what we had witnessed was a heavily edited set of wedding images that had simply taken place at a fortunately beautiful venue. If a person takes enough photographs, eventually that person will get lucky with a few good images. I felt that was the case with John’s sample portfolios — and the venues helped greatly. As a matter of fact, the images from his portfolios are featured on this Unilocal site. Imagine that…
Anyhow… our planned honeymoon to the famed lagoon of Bora Bora, the ancient temples of Huahine, and beautiful Moorea weighed heavily on our choice of photographer. John’s price tag was certainly more appealing than the other wedding photographers that were asking 4 – 5 times more. All you have to do is take a couple hundred photographs right? How difficult is that? That made for an easy decision right? *sigh*… Obviously we chose to use John as our wedding photographer — based primarily on his price point.
First of all, at the initial meet-​and-​greet John stated that it was optional for us to order him a dinner plate at the wedding. My wife and I, being fairly decent humans (mostly her) decided we’d order John a dinner choice of his choosing… well, at the zero hour John showed up at our wedding with a partner — I can only assume it was his wife. My wife and I thought she would be shooting as well — after all, one can’t be in every location at once right? In retrospect we don’t even know if his partner even shot any images — although I’m certain she did not. Should we have ordered her a meal? Nobody knows…
Let’s skip to the chase…
John was clunky — meaning that he seemed to always be working extremely hard to get images framed up. He didn’t fade into the background as I would have expected. Also, during our reception afterwards he had a memory card failure — or so he stated. I’m assuming that being a professional photographer he would have brought at least one backup card right? One can only hope.
To be continued…