Mini Gallery #1

Since this blog will be our home for the next moth or so, I though I would start to post some mini-galleries. Those of you who are looking to see my work can come here, to The Dark Slide, for the time being. Every day or so I'll post some more pictures, at least until we reach some sort of critical mass.

We'll start today with some wedding images, since it's likely that's the reason you guys are visiting this site in the first place.

Rather than starting at the beginning, we'll begin with the end. I recently shot my 400th wedding, a milestone aptly celebrated with the ceremonial midnight Yoo-hoo from the Key Bridge Exxon. This fine establishment--serving the drunk students of Georgetown University and tired wedding photographers alike--is a real treat at 1:00 in the morning. It's the last business before I get onto the Clara Barton Parkway, so I usually end up stopping here. You know you're a total geek when even the guy behind the bullet-proof glass says, "Are you sure you don't want beer? Most people don't buy Yoo-hoo at this hour." Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure where the Yoo-hoo thing started--probably Long Island, circa 1974--but it's a tradition of sorts to end every wedding with a gulp of the synthetic chocolate drink. If they can chug milk after the Indy 500, then, by God, I can chug some Yoo-hoo. Even my buddy Greg Gibson has come around to it.

How did I get to 400 weddings? Well, many, many moons ago I was a photographer working for United Press International and, later, USA Today. People kept asking me to shoot their weddings and I kept saying no. It was
was all very simple. Photojournalists didn't shoot weddings, at least that's what the Official Guide of Seasoned (and Serious) Photojournalists told me. But the guide book never told me that serious news photography would become increasingly less fun, as the publicists and lawyers and security guards and hecklers all kept chipping away at our access. The more weddings I shot, the more I realized that they represented a last frontier of photography--a place where there was no yellow tape, no security, no publicists, and lots of crab cakes.

400 weddings later, here I am. I've been fortunate to have photographed the weddings of some truly fun people over the last couple of years, people with whom I've become dear friends. Years ago, Julie Newell, one of my favorite brides, made me laugh as she described the horrors of planning a wedding these days. She referred to the entire apparatus as the Bridal Industrial Complex, a term that is beyond perfect. I think about the Bridal Industrial Complex a lot. I feel fortunate that the brides and grooms I've met over the years don't see me as part of that machinery. I've gone to Nats games with TK Gore, done charity fundraisers with Laura Gonzalez, and spent Christmas Eve with the Landaus. And, best of all, Diane Halpin, whose Dahlgren Chapel wedding I shot some five years ago or so, is now my daughter's beloved pediatrician (unless she's getting a shot.) I couldn't think of doing business any other way.

And lest this turn into a Hallmark card, I had better end things here.

See ya, Matt.