While there are many reasons to hate the never-ending traffic in NYC, I’ve grown quite accustomed to it over the years. It’s a small price to pay for the many great luxuries we get for living/working in the Big Apple, many of which revolves around our uncanny ability to score a [insert food item here] at ANY time of day (or night). Most of all, I can finally appreciate the torrent of brilliant billboard advertising that surrounds me, instead of my usual passing glimpse of yet another scantily clad 20-something doing something predictably naughty with a [insert product item here]. While most locals have learned to ignore all the blinking lights and shameless marketing that surrounds them every second of every day, I’m paying attention to every single image, word, and presentation. Why? Because out of all the many hats that I wear on a daily basis, the most important one requires me to understand why people buy things in the first place. What motivates a person to spend X amount on anything at all?
That answer is simple: value.
During these past few weeks, we’ve been able to earn the trust of over a dozen new clients; and every single one of them has bestowed upon us this great privilege of documenting one of the most important days in their lives. My default answer to explaining this phenomenon is that I’ve either finally become a legitimate wedding photographer in the court of public opinion, or that I’m simply not charging enough. [insert innocent smirk here] Whatever the case may be, these new clients, as have the many who’ve preceded them, all had many talented photographers of various varieties and flavors to choose from. And despite this vast pool of talented photographers, they chose us. Why? I can only hope it’s because they saw tremendous value in having us be a part of their day. We took the time to cultivate a meaningful client-photographer relationship, thus allowing us to capture those true emotions on their wedding day not only as their photographers, but also as their friends. And to be quite honest, this is an honor that we never take lightly and one that we treasure the most.
I realize that we’re only a half-dozen weddings into 2014, but I already know…it’s going to be a phenomenal year.
And we have all our amazing brides and grooms to thank for that.
* I’m pretty sure that my generous use of commas was grammatically questionable.
