Slowness helps me find the exact moment where people are calm and at ease with themselves and their love. When I slow down, I'm forced to focus on critical elements of composition that are easy to overlook in a digital photoshoot - the structure, the orientation, just the right laugh. I use the time in between each shot to get a sense of how people feel and to make them at ease with the process. It's not something that should ever feel rushed.
More often than not, the first smile I get is one people have practiced a thousand times before. It's a "photo smile" but sadly not their honest smile. It's kind and sweet. Yet, underneath there's something much more. So I wait. I lower the camera, we talk, something gets said that's a little funny, and there's a half-second afterwards where the practised smile falls away and the real one arrives. That half-second is what I'm there for.
Film forces this patience on me, which I'm grateful for. With twelve frames to a roll I can't spray and pray; I have to watch, and the waiting becomes the craft. The best images I make are almost never the moment I asked for — they're the breath just after, when everyone has forgotten I'm holding anything at all.
The process is so slow that most couple don't know when I actually take the photo, and that's the whole point. So I have learned that in a world of speed, it pays to be slow. I hope this is a quality that shows up in my work.