Quote:
Originally Posted by JSTpt1022 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I'm not that narcissistic and you all don't know me that well, the fiance and I are planning a wedding. We are torn on the issue of a photographer and I was hoping to enlist your collective opinions.
We are torn between two photographers:
Cousins Photography
Joe Sanfilippo
This isn't one of those he said/she said type of indecisive moments. Both of us are equally torn. Thank you all in advance for your help.
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Like others here, I could qualify my opinion with a meta-narrative....
Only, I wonder why you are limited to these two photographers? Surely there are others?
Of the two, Sanfilippo's work portrayed through the internet/digital display comes out worse for contrast and tonal rendition. The skin tones of his brides on my screen (Gretag Macbeth calibrated) look very unnatural and unflattering. Equally, it's unforgiveable to having a lop-sided tilting wedding cake, and a church sacristy which looks like it's in midst of subsiding and toppling over. Within the genre of documentary style weddings, there is nothing compelling in reviewing his body of work, to make me wonder why New York has no other photographers at your disposal? His work looks digital, and it looks like he has too much digital noise in some of the images, without possessing the finesse nor refined and visceral feel of traditional film emulsion. I hope he doesn't read this - but I'd recommend you pass by his work, unless you see his hard prints (proper prints) and his work looks more compelling than what he has presented on the internet.
Cousins' work is more interesting, at least if anything, he uses depth of field (selective focus) to control the interest in the couple/subjects, and shows a technical ability, to focus on the subject (rather than losing the subject within the background of the church etc), and explore the fixed repertoire of fixed poses. There is nothing exotic nor original about his work, although it is competent, if not a little clichéd, however that tends to be the genre of wedding photography, unless you can hire Annabel Williams or Stu Williamson
).
Cousins is the more advanced internet website presenter. Although I find the square format more attractive, his music sound clip marketing overcompensates for the browsing experience of his site, over and above Sanfilippo's and he offers a multi-media presentation, rather than letting the viewer concentrate on the images, or letting his images speak for themselves. I find this a dubious marketing ploy, however that is why I am not a wedding photographer lol. His contrast and tones look better controlled, however the merits stands or falls on the hard copies of the prints, and not on digitally shrunk web .jpgs. The tonal range is a function of latitude of the capture media; film emulsion based photographers have that advantage, since film's latitude compared to the digital DMax of the digital sensor is richer and more natural, instead of getting a binary 1 or 0 reading for dark and high values, which then register with no detail at all.
The prints will be your guage as to whether either photographer is worth employing. Unless like some who are happy in virtual space, to abandon vinyl, cassette, or CD physical media, you're happy with digital files on your hard drive for souvenirs instead of tangible prints.
Bottom line: look elsewhere. I'd be amazed if you couldn't find anything else in that big large Apple