Geometry and the Father-Daughter Dance
It’s Thursday, so it’s time for my picture of the week. I usually wait a couple of weeks before blogging about a wedding. This gives me time to step back from the day’s emotions. As a photographer, it’s hard not to carry those feelings with you after a shoot, and sometimes they can cloud your judgment about which images are truly good. That’s why I take a little time before sharing.
This week’s photo comes from my last wedding in Houston at the historic Rice Hotel, inside the Crystal Ballroom. The image shows the father of the bride dancing with his daughter during their first dance. I enjoy creating photos with layers, structure, and geometry, and I wait for the perfect moment to capture the shot. My goal is to capture timeless moments. To do this, I keep my eye moving around the frame before I press the shutter. This helps me avoid tunnel vision and lets me remove distracting elements, especially at the edges, or any lens flare that can sneak into a photo. Most of my work—about 95%—is captured in real time, without any posing or direction from me. That’s a big part of why I love what I do.
Don’t be afraid to look beyond the usual, cliché images. Keep asking yourself, ‘What do we have here?’ Try to think outside the box, even when you don’t have a camera or phone with you. Notice the moments around you and capture them in your mind. I often use diagonals in my photos. Forget about the rule of thirds, or ROT as I call it. I find ROT pretty dull. Like many of you, I learned the basics of photography from books or online searches. But I prefer to use Dynamic Symmetry, which means imagining two diagonal lines and then adding lines at right angles through them. Master photographers like Annie Leibovitz and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as painters and architects since ancient Greece, have used this approach. It’s not a secret anymore—look it up if you’re curious.
This morning, I took a moment to appreciate how lucky I am to have my own business. I truly love my job and feel like one of the luckiest people around. For 25 years, I’ve been able to make a living with my camera and do what I enjoy most. I meet so many interesting people, from fellow photographers to clients and their families. I work from an office next to our home, and my wonderful daughter is homeschooled. I get to help her with her studies every day, spend time together at coffee shops, and strengthen our father-daughter bond. I also take my youngest daughter to school each day and have become a pretty good cook. I run long distances and stay in good shape. I have an amazing wife, and we all get along well. Life is really great.
