Marriage wows

At a wedding, Denis Reggie rarely asks the couple to pose for pictures. In fact, they often do not even know that he is shooting photographs which will make it to their wedding album. Then why are clients willing to pay upwards of $25,000 for their wedding pictures? Ritu Raizada finds out.

Denis Reggie is a truly lucky guy and one whom celebrity spotters would give their, um, camera to be with.

Imagine getting invited to the weddings of crooner Mariah Carey, finance giant Alan Greenspan, author Tom Clancy, ABC news anchor Peter Jennings, designer Kenneth Cole, journalist Maria Shriver and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, personalities of the Kennedy family ...

And if you are wondering why he gets invited to such high-profile weddings, it's because Reggie is one of the best wedding photographers on the planet.

But what is it that sets him apart from the millions of wedding shutterbugs?

"I'm a photographer who [works] in a reactive mode, not a proactive mode. That way, I make every wedding very different and exciting,'' says Reggie, who was in Dubai recently to explore business possibilities.

According to him most photographers are proactive – "They are forever busy arranging, staging, posing and prompting people as they click. This makes all their photographs look much the same.

"But if you're a photojournalist, you become an observer who works quietly, uses the telescopic lens from the sidelines and gets to document all that you see.''

A wedding is an occasion to capture a million things, he believes. "Life in itself is filled with nuances and different things have to be discovered. It is always a mission of discovery and innovation, not of preconceived moments that will be repeated every week."

Reggie's interest in photography started in a fairly unusual place – the football field.

Born in Crowley, Louisiana, in 1955, Reggie dreamt of becoming a footballer. His athletic career, however, received a setback when at the age of 16 he suffered a series of injuries playing basketball and football. This meant he had to stay off the football team.

But so passionate was he about his game that he begged the coach to allow him to "just hang out'' with the team while it was practising, playing, relaxing ...

"Over time, my injuries healed completely but the ligaments could not take the strain of playing the game,'' he says. Instead of whiling away his time doing pretty much nothing, he decided to put it to use with the team. "So I used to take along my camera and shoot pictures of the team playing. This also meant I could be with the team and accompany them on various trips."

Reggie followed the team through an entire football season and pretty soon realised that photography was his calling and that it could be his profession.

Initially, in the early '70s, Reggie borrowed his school roommate's photography equipment (the friend's father had some good cameras and lenses).

"I used his camera till I got my own.''

By the time he entered college he was fairly well known for his images and soon began to contribute pictures to a newspaper in New Orleans.

Reggie's move from the sports field to the wedding arena also occurred by sheer chance. It happened when he went to attend his friend's wedding. "There I noticed a very pushy photographer who kept insisting that people smile and pose every time he clicked.

"I found it odd that he made the bride pose every time he began to shoot.'' Reggie was sure that techniques he learnt while shooting sporting events could be put to good use when photographing a wedding. "I felt that positioning myself on the sidelines anticipating what might happen and then photographing people would be a better idea than asking them to pose,'' he says. "It would all depend on being at the right place at the right time.''

Reporting as it is Reggie is widely acknowledged for having coined the term 'photojournalism'.

"A journalist's job is to report news, and a photographer is around to anticipate, sense, find and capture the moments as reality occurs," he says.

"To be a photojournalist, one of the most important things is to be someone who has that ability to be quiet and to be motivated by the details. You've got to notice nuances that are otherwise 'simple occurrences' in others' eyes.

"I'm not sure whether this instinct can be taught (to someone). You have to learn to use your left and right brain's proficiencies in tandem – to have the heart, mind and consciousness to be a kind of art director who is not in control of the setting ... a person who sees things in an artistic way and knows what will end up becoming a great picture.

"So it is essentially knowing not only how to photograph but also what to photograph. You need to learn to rely on reflective metering and act upon things that are occurring rapidly because speed is of the greatest essence in terms of success in wedding photojournalism," he says.

Reggie's eye for just such details may be the reason why he is in great demand by celebrities when they decide to tie the knot. It is also a reason why his images have made it to publications such as Life, Paris Match, W, The New York Times Magazine, InStyle, Vogue, Elle, Newsweek and Harper's Bazaar.

Reggie has shot close to 1,800 weddings over the last 35 years. No wonder Oprah Winfrey called Reggie "the world's best wedding photographer" and Harper's Bazaar said he was "the best of the best".

First come, first served!

Reggie believes in fixing appointments for shoots not by how famous the person is but strictly on a first come, first served basis.

"Every bride to me is a celebrity in her own right, and to be chosen as the man to record it all gives me the honour of being part photojournalist and part historian,'' he says.

"All brides and grooms I have shot have a common denominator – it is a special day for them and they want it to be recorded so they can remember it and share it with their children and grandchildren."

This passion combined with his signature style have made him a much-sought-after camera chronicler. "There are a lot of aspects that are the same in all weddings," he says.

Reggie's unconventional approach of standing on the sidelines and shooting allows him to capture the freshness of moments many photographers may miss. But that does not mean he does not record for posterity the absolutely traditional moments in a wedding. "Of course I spend about half an hour taking those shots of the whole family getting together, the cutting of the cake, the dad seeing off his daughter ..." he says. "After all, those are the most memorable and gripping moments for any family. I do expect them to happen and finish in minimal time. And for tradition's sake, I do capture them." But even while doing all this, he also keeps an eye out for the unexpected.

What it will cost you

Reggie photographs about 50 weddings a year. That works out to about one a week and his fees are in the range of $25,000 and upwards.

"My fee is an all-inclusive package of my time and the pictures. When I cover a wedding, I meet the bride and the groom for the first or second time. I believe it is best to approach [the event] as a photojournalist. I really don't want to be a close friend or know the details of all the family members. All I need is 10 minutes for the family pictures.''

Reggie makes it a point to arrive at the venue at least half an hour before the bride begins preparing for the wedding. "Yes I make it a point to reach early. I like to shoot some behind-the-scenes preparations. Then I go and check on the venue and see what it is like. My job is usually until the very end, so a day for me can be anything between 8 and 12 hours. Depending upon the arrangement between the bride or the groom's side and how many albums they want, we print the pictures by hand, design their albums and bind them in leather or fine fabric.

"We actually shoot everything in 100 per cent full RAW mode. We started when Canon introduced the EOS-1D.

"As a photojournalist, I don't want to change reality, but at the same time, I'm hired by clients who want my attention to, and are owed my attention to, detail.''

Reggie uses a lab called Pictage, an online company. "They allow the viewer to preview the images in black and white or sepia or to leave them in colour. In our world, our albums are delivered with a healthy percentage of black and white in them, say 25 per cent. The specific determination of which images will be rendered in black and white for the album is actually made first in the design phase in our Atlanta facility."

According to Reggie, a wedding album is a storyboard for the two families and their future generations, and there is nothing like seeing special pictures in the black and white medium.

Reggie shoots an average of 3,000 pictures at every wedding. "The client then chooses the ones for the albums and then we do the layout and the design. I don't believe in going to a wedding where you take photographs, hold the negatives hostage and then sell prints later.''

The pace of work can be really hectic, says Reggie. "There have been instances when I have had to cover two or three weddings in a weekend's time.

I [ended up flying in and out of countries almost the same day] to complete the assignments."

But it's all worth it when you see the reactions of the bride and groom and their parents to my pictures, he says. "There is no reward bigger than the realisation that I witnessed an event for people to see and cherish down memory lane. It's a great profession and I love what I do."

Breaking the mould

"I have witnessed wedding photography from the earlier days when it was very typical, a bit kitsch and predictable and at that time I have wondered what it would be like if I took a sports photographer's mindset to a wedding," he says.

So was it easy operating in this unconventional mode of wedding photography?

"Initially there was some resistance from families that had been accustomed to having portraits of their previous daughters' weddings shot the usual way,'' he says. But once they saw the work he had done, they were convinced.

"One of the things about photography is to learn the technical aspects of it. You must learn how to do things so that the end product is just the way you want it to be.

"But once you have learnt and mastered these rules, you should put it on the backburner and allow your mind to experiment.''

Reggie has some advice for budding photojournalists: "I would say, dare to be different, but don't do that until you know the basics and have an understanding of all the fundamentals of photography."

Reggie is a staunch believer in the philosophy of not trying to be in control of the situation when shooting an event. "To some folks not being in control is a huge challenge. I like not being in control. I realise that if I was in charge it would be a different mission and quite honestly, probably an easier one.

"My philosophy comes from my sports photography background – to not be a leader, to not even be in control of the situation, but to rather document the event as a witness, as a historian, as a documentary photographer would."

He says people find it surprising that he doesn't use a lot of lights.

"I believe less is more. I've always believed that opening the aperture and using the light that is available is much better than creating light that is not there. I tend to use a lower powered light so that more of the natural light is present in the image."

What does he look for when shooting weddings?

"I like to watch the eyes and expressions of people ... their reactions following an action,'' he says. "In my opinion, an action is important but maybe the reaction is even more important. One should be aware of the minute details because those are the things that are so telling.

"One of the things I often suggest to fellow photographers is that they should diversify their intake of information. Rather than concentrate on the purely technical, people should gather right brain knowledge (about artistry and sensitivity to the moment and its ethereal qualities) that make much of art so interesting," says this photographer.

Destination Next

Reggie has captured weddings almost all over the world – from the Fiji Islands and Singapore to Japan, China .... "I have even photographed a few Indian marriages (in the US) ... I am now looking to taking assignments here in the UAE,'' says Reggie, adding that he would like to shoot maybe three weddings at the most in a year.

For more information: www.denisreggie.com; www.denisreggie.net. E-mail: info@denisreggie.com