The Editorial
Process

Creative Brief

Every editorial begins with a brief. I send a 14-page intake document — not a questionnaire — covering the visual references that move you, the rooms you'll be in, the textures of your invitations, the typography of your stationery, and the photographs you cannot get out of your head. I am looking for the through-line. Without one, an editorial collapses into mere coverage.

I take that brief and build a mood board — usually 60 to 90 images — that I send back within ten days. It is the visual contract of our work together. If you don't recognize yourself in it, we re-shoot the brief. We do not move forward until you do.

Location Scout

I visit your venue in person whenever it is within a 90-minute radius of New York City. For destination weddings, I arrive 48 hours before the rehearsal dinner and spend a full afternoon walking the property with light meter in hand, finding the three or four pockets the rest of the day will be built around. I map the sun's arc across the property on the date of your wedding and identify exactly when each window of light will arrive. Nothing is left to weather. The editorial is built before the day exists.

Shot Architecture

I do not work from a shot list — I work from a shot architecture. It is a three-page document organizing the day into eleven movements, each with its lead image, its environmental context, its supporting frames, and its negative space. Fashion editorials open with the cover, then break to the layout — weddings are no different, they have simply never been treated that way.

The architecture also lists what I will not photograph. This is at least as important as what I will. A bold editorial wedding is defined by its restraint.

Capture

I arrive with a second photographer, a digital tech for high-pressure cycles, three Leica bodies, six prime lenses, and a portable Profoto B10 kit for portraits that demand the kind of light a window cannot provide. Coverage is twelve hours by default. The day moves through the eleven movements at the cadence we've already planned.

On the day itself I am precise but never invisible. An editorial photographer who hides is a documentary photographer. We are different disciplines.

First Edit

Within 72 hours I deliver a 24-image preview set — already color-graded, already laid out as a digital editorial spread. This is the cover and the opening sequence of your story. You see what your wedding looks like as a publication before you see the volume of it.

Color Grading

I grade every frame of every gallery by hand, in Capture One, on a calibrated NEC PA-Series monitor in a darkened room. There is no preset, no filter, no batch. Each image is treated the way a magazine cover is treated. This is the slow part. It is also the part that separates editorial work from everything else.

Final Delivery

The full gallery — 480 to 620 frames — arrives as a private digital editorial. Black-and-white companion edits of every key frame are included by default. We then move into album design, where we'll cut the final story down to the 38 images that earn a place on paper. The album is hand-bound, in linen or full-grain leather, and arrives twelve to fourteen weeks after the wedding.