The person you meet with to plan your wedding photography will be the one actually taking pictures on the wedding day.









James Warden writes - "I remember very well when I first became interested in photography: my Auntie Murb gave her brother, my dad, the entire Time-Life Library of Photography. He had always enjoyed taking pictures, and as a youth, he had even moonlighted doing portraits.











"My father still had a lot of his old equipment in the basement including a Century Graphics 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 press camera. This mysterious machine, along with the strangely labeled bottles, lenses, cables, light meters and other denizens of the darkroom, made photography seem like an impossibly complex process that I would never even begin to understand.











"When I began to look at the images in the Time-Life books I finally saw the end result of having all this equipment and I was hooked! That was over 30 years ago and I am still hooked.











"My first camera was a 110 pocket camera (remember those?) My first real camera was a Canon Canonet GIII QL 17. I loved that camera and used it for many years. In the Canon catalog that came in the box, my GIII was listed as their simplest and least expensive model.











"The catalog also showed the top-of-the-line Canon F-1. For many years I dreamed of owning their flagship model, and then happily used four of them in my arsenal until I went digital. Now I am shooting with Canon's digital EOS system.











"My trusty F-1s and I worked together professionally after I graduated from the University of Chicago in 1990 (where I served as the Photo Editor of the student newspaper). I worked the late shift at United Parcel Service in order to spend my days behind the camera for The Center For Neighborhood Technology, The Chicago Defender and many other organizations. These assignments took me to every nook and cranny of Chicago, and I learned how to shoot creatively and quickly in chaotic situations.











"My next period of growth as a photographer was when I worked at a photo processing lab. Until this time I had been working mainly at black and white photojournalism. Now, I was immersed in the world of color wedding photography. By meeting many wedding photographers and helping them with their prints and enlargements, I was able to see countless examples of what did, and did not, succeed as wedding photography.