THE BLOG

He hasn’t turned around yet. His eyes have slid as far over his shoulder as they can go without moving his head, his mouth is pressed flat, and his hands hang loose at his sides. Behind him, a little out of focus, she’s already smiling. That frame is a good place to start explaining why […]

Ask a five-year-old to smile and watch what happens to their face. The eyes go flat. The mouth stretches sideways, and something that was alive two seconds earlier turns into a small polite mask. That reaction is the whole reason I photograph kids at weddings the way I do. After more than 30 years behind […]

The forecast turns on a Tuesday. You have spent eleven months picturing portraits on the lawn, light through the trees, that spot near the water, and now a small rain icon is sitting on your date. I have been a professional photographer for more than 30 years, and I have photographed over 800 weddings across […]

Most couples ask me about the first look in the same breath as the timeline, which tells you something. They think they are asking a photography question. They are actually asking how they want the hours around their ceremony to feel. First look wedding photos went from unusual to ordinary over the thirty years I […]

Most of the winter proposal ideas in NJ that couples bring me start with an apology. They tell me the trees are bare, the light disappears by five, and their partner hates the cold. After thirty years photographing proposals across Northern New Jersey and New York City, I think winter is the most underrated season […]

Summer engagement photos in NJ come with a problem nobody warns couples about: the light you want and the weather you can stand rarely show up in the same hour. By July, midday sun sits almost directly overhead, and it does unkind things to faces. The hour you actually want is the one most couples […]

Two wedding photographs in my portfolio show how quickly light can change a picture. In the first, a bride and groom stand on a stone staircase with the sun behind bare autumn trees. Her veil lifts into the backlight, and the lace holds its texture. In the second, a couple becomes a clean silhouette against […]

Most people who call me about a proposal describe their plan, and then they apologize for it. They have spent a week looking at surprise proposal ideas NJ couples post online, and somewhere between the rented marquee letters and the drone footage, their own idea started to feel small. It usually is not small. It […]

Couples searching for Van Vleck House & Gardens wedding photos are usually trying to answer something more personal than what the venue looks like. They want to know whether their photographs will still feel like them. Allison and Pascal’s portraits show that balance well. The photographs move from the stone entrance of the house to […]