The Santa Cruz Sentinel
Choosing a wedding photographer may be the most important decision of your life -- well, aside from choosing who to marry
Long after the cake becomes stale and the roses have dropped their petals, after the tuxedo is returned and the moths have begun to nibble at your gown, there's one thing that will outlast "till death do you part." It is, of course, your wedding photographs. With this in mind, finding a photographer to document your wedding is most important. Not only do they provide the visual evidence of "I do," they reaffirm the memories for what every bride says goes by in one big, beautiful blur.
But choosing a photographer is rife with possibility and peril. Nightmares abound of the errant shutterbugs smashed on champagne or negatives sucked into a post-nuptial black hole. And then there's the matter of aesthetics. Wedding photographers are a strange bunch in the photography world. Many consider themselves purveyors of the art form - on their way to bigger and better things like aspiring to be another Ansel Adams - but they are just trying to make a living doing the thing they love. The literary equivalent of, say, a GOOD TIMES writer who would rather be writing a book, but has to eat.
The trick is finding one who is both professional and artistic, one that complements your vision of how you want your wedding to look and feel. After all, spend all you want on a perfect dress and a bouquet of flowers that make strong men weep, but without good pictures it's a fading memory tainted by photographs that make your beautiful day bland.
Rabinowitz on how to choose a wedding photographer: Look at the photographer's portfolio carefully to see if there is emotional content in the photographs.
Leafing through one of the wedding albums that make up her portfolio, it's clear that Rabinowitz brings her lyrical sensibilities to her work. Half color and half black and white (and sepia tones) with a blend of the formal and candid, the photographs avoid the obvious matrimonial clich's like a badly tossed garter, capturing instead the spontaneous moments for the long-term. "A wedding is a big chance to make art of your family,' she says. "I'm their eyes, their memory, and good photographs keep it alive."
Rabinowitz has a degree in fine art photography from UC Santa Cruz and has been doing weddings for the last 12 years. Her style is informed by photo-journalism, citing such influences as Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Annie Leibowitz, to name a few. "Wedding photography is telling a story," she says. "When I put together the finished wedding album I think of them as heirlooms, something that may be passed on for generations. That gives me a lot of pride and the sense that my time is worth something."