This is the part where I tell you all about myself, but it isn’t the part where I tell you that I became a wedding photographer because I “love love”, or because I grew up with a camera constantly in my hand, simply because that wouldn’t be true.

I’ve always enjoyed putting words to the things I witness and experience, so I imagined for the longest time that I’d end up in a career doing just that. I spent my early twenties floating around in a journalism program and communications internships and a retail gig and going to grad school and teaching English, and in the midst of all that, I started doing photography sessions on the side as well. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I firmly believed wedding photography wasn’t for me – I wasn’t really into traditional romance or love stories, and the budding feminist in me wasn’t really sure I was into the idea of marriage in general. I eventually decided to shoot a few weddings here and there, and slowly, surely, I grew to love photographing these events for all of the elements I hadn’t known existed before experiencing them myself. Because while I hadn't been sure about the concept of marriage, I soon realized how much I loved watching and photographing humans being humans together, and then these humans showed me what the sincere, subtle parts of love between people could look like, and went ahead and turned me into a marriage believer after all.

I think love on a wedding day (and in life in general) is even bigger than just the love shared between the two people getting married – I think it’s also wrapped up in the hugs from the other people you love, and the looks on their faces when they see you, and how they cheer and sway and sip and embrace, and the ways in which you do these things with them, and the moments when the joy oozes out of you in the form of tears and laughs and words you say because you want them to know just how much you mean them.

There are a lot of things that make up who we are and what we do – I love a lot of things outside of wedding photography, like tending to my plants, and the light that fills up my apartment, and spending time with the people who make my heart and mind better, and seeing something new on a Chicago street I’ve walked down countless times, and writing and reading and listening to podcasts and seeing live shows and going for runs and any moment that reminds me of how good it feels to simply be present and in the midst of joy. And somewhere in there is how I found this job, I think. I meet new people every year who are choosing to spend their lives together, and who want to spend a day celebrating that choice, and ask me to document their joy and be present right alongside them and the people they love most, and I could not possibly ask for more than that.

 

 

LOCATED IN:

Chicago, IL

Documenting:

Weddings + Engagements + Life

Get ahold of me at:

brookerumbold@gmail.com

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