Stacey: When did you start as a wedding photographer?
David: As soon as someone saw that I had a camera, they asked me to shoot a wedding. I became more serious about it when I was in Chicago when I was a freelance assistant. I’d been in the Navy as a photographer; I had done a wedding or two when I was in, but I didn’t take it seriously. I hated weddings at first because of the post-production. The way my brain works… it cannot function when faced with a large, boring task. And editing is a long boring task. I never looked for weddings, but if they came my way, I’d take the film and hand it over. I didn’t want to deal with it after that day. I found the idea of shooting a wedding… I liked it. I like people.
So I started doing them in the Navy. And I liked the pictures that came back. They weren’t great, but I liked them. But the post-production would just cloud my eyes. So sometimes I would tell people, “No, I don’t shoot weddings.” And sometimes I’d say, “Yeah, I do.” Cause I liked the money!
S: Hahaha. When did you start really focusing on weddings?
I had been in commercial photography as an assistant in Chicago for 12 years. I did a lot of world travel, met some really good guys, and I met some jerks. But I would just charge them more money!
So I did that, and then I started to shift into doing my own commercial photography. Something happened; I just couldn’t get it going. I couldn’t figure out what it took to get a business going so that I could be an artist and raise a family. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. It’s just the way my brain works; I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 30. It’s a pretty severe thing.
