The Beginner Photography Podcast

Pushing Creativity Boundaries in Wedding Photography with Ben Chrisman

• Raymond Hatfield

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#457 In today's episode of the podcast, I chat with Documentary Wedding Photographer Ben Chrisman who shares his approach to capturing authentic moments at weddings. He talks about his transition from newsroom photographer to shooting weddings and you'll learn to approach photography creatively, understand the challenges faced during weddings, and forge lifelong relationships with clients.

THE BIG IDEAS

  • Creativity comes from knowing what you like and subtracting what's unnecessary.
  • Challenging yourself is crucial. Safe shots are important, but creativity pushes your limits.
  • Build lifelong relationships with your clients. Understand and empathize with their challenges.
  • Push yourself to create photos that you like and find personal satisfaction in your work.

BEST PRACTICES

  1. Capture Authentic Moments: Focus on real emotions and personalities, rather than staged photos, to tell a unique and artistic story of the wedding day.
  2. Stay Creative: Challenge yourself to think outside the box, experiment with different angles, shadows, silhouettes, and abstract shots to create visually interesting and extraordinary photos.
  3. Understand and Empathize: Be sensitive to the challenges brides face, and show care and concern for the couple, especially in tense situations, to build lasting relationships and create a positive experience.
  4. Prioritize Comfort: When taking portraits, aim to make people feel at ease and forget the camera’s presence to capture genuine and natural expressions.
  5. Embrace Limitations: Using prime lenses and minimal gear can enhance creativity by forcing you to focus on what's important and subtracting the unnecessary.
  6. Strive for Personal Satisfaction: Judge your work based on your own sense of creative achievement and focus on creating photos that align with your personal style and preferences.

Resources:
Check out Ben Chrismans Website - https://www.chrismanstudios.com/
Follow Ben on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/chrismanstudios/

Sign up for your free CloudSpot Account today at www.DeliverPhotos.com

Connect with Raymond!


Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Ben Chrisman:

I want people to say like, how in the world did they get that picture? Or more importantly, I can't believe he got that look. We had a really amazing mom from a wedding we shot in Miami earlier this year. And she said, I want everything covered. I want every fight, every look, everything possibly that happens at that wedding. I want that filmed. And I just took that personally as I'm going to take a picture of everything. That happens. So that kind of document, the documentation of a wedding is really important to me and people want that documentation, but they want to elevate it in a creative artistic way. And I feel like that's what we do best is taking something normal and making it look, extraordinary, because that's our job as a photographer to take something that someone sees and make it better because otherwise why hire a photographer. If they can do it themselves.

Raymond Hatfield:

Hey, welcome to the Beginner Photography Podcast. I'm your host Raymond Hatfield, and in today's interview we are talking with documentary wedding photographer Ben Chrisman about how to be your most creative self while shooting. First, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Clouds Spot, the easiest way to deliver and even sell your photos online. Grab your free Forever Cloud spot account over@deliverphotos.com. Today we have an interview from the BPV vault. This is where we revisit our treasure trove of interviews to offer both new and longtime listeners a chance to uncover the powerful insights and practical tips to enhance your photography skills. Now, today's guest, Ben, has been called your favorite wedding photographer's favorite wedding photographer. He is consistently named one of the most creative wedding photographers in the world, and as you'll hear in this interview, he doesn't. Even consider himself a wedding photographer. So if you struggle with creativity or creating unique and meaningful work, then this episode is for you. You're gonna learn how to create authentic moments, how to embrace constraints, and how to find personal satisfaction in client work. So with that, let's go ahead and get on into today's interview with Ben Chrisman. Ben, my first question, super easy, when did you know that photography was going to play an important role in your life?

Ben Chrisman:

that started really young. I found in a book, when I was eight years old that, ask you all these different questions and ask you like, what do you want to be when you grow up? What's your career? And I wrote photographer when I was eight. And I didn't really remember that until, it was more of a teenager and I found the book. So something inside me, very young, drove me to be a photographer. I don't know where that came from. It's definitely probably influenced by my mom, who was an art teacher and very creative person. But honestly, I don't know why the photography chose me like it did.

Raymond Hatfield:

The photography chose me. I'm sure, of course, before that point, you had taken a few photos, right?

Ben Chrisman:

I started shooting with mom's camera. She had a Canon EOS Rebel film camera. This was, early nineties, I would guess late eighties. So I started shooting and then that transitioned into being the yearbook photographer, like so many of us started at. And then that went straight into photojournalism in college, and then straight into newspapers, and then newspapers

Raymond Hatfield:

into weddings. Wow, so we just went from 8 year old Ben who wrote down, I want to be a photographer, to now, obviously, to where you are today. So that's a huge amount right there. Everybody has, today, a camera. They can take a photo on their phone, but at some point you decided that the snapshot wasn't enough for you. And I'm guessing that this was high school where you decided to dive deeper into photography, or was it a little bit earlier than that?

Ben Chrisman:

it was definitely high schools where it kind of the love for it started working at the yearbook. I think it started more of like not being like the cool kid. I think, when you have a high school, if you have your little niches. I was a kid who really liked the old west and I liked, different things that didn't really make me cool. And so an aspect of being a photographer was I was able to hang around the cool kids and photograph them. And, and I was comfortable in that space. I didn't need to be the cool kid. I was just happy to be around everything. And actually in the yearbook, they would do pull quotes for people like, if you, blah, blah, blah. And why do you want to be a photographer? And I said, and it's still true today, I wanted to be close to the action. And that's pretty much my personality. I don't want to be the center point of anything. I just want to be around all the, everything that's going on. and that has never changed. and so I think that's kind of where it started. And then in college, I took a documentary class, by, uh, Sterling Trantham, and he just, Totally transformed how I see photography and the importance of photography really instilled documentary photography is like the groundwork for everything that I do. So every time I pick up a camera, it's very directed towards those early days of like this to me is what photography

Raymond Hatfield:

is. What do you think it was that you learned that transformed what photography could be for you?

Ben Chrisman:

I think all the greats, Eugene Smith and Kappa and Sally Mann and all those amazing photographers who really who showed real life, were way more interesting to me than someone who did a bunch of like high fashion or any other type of photography, honestly, there's nothing more interesting to me than a gritty black and white. And, I don't think that's ever going to change. And that's, even though I, at this point go in a lot of different directions with my photography, I am, I do that, to pay the bills and, feed Roxy and my wife or help do that. I always like come back to just wanting to take documentary pictures. And so when I shoot for myself, I have my little Fuji back there program to the grittiest black and white I can get out of a JPEG. And that's what I shoot. And so that's, that frame of mind is always the kind of the constant in my life every time I take a picture. Wow.

Raymond Hatfield:

I'm a very similar. I love also shoot Fuji. Just love how, I don't know how. I guess how dirty you can get it is like a bad reference, but like how, yeah, how dirty you can get it like straight out of the camera and it still looks absolutely amazing. So let's, let's go back to the photojournalism, right? So high school, yearbook photographer, go to school for photojournalism. This was, you said in college, right? Okay, so, photojournalism, you're learning about, like, photographing people in real world situations, photographing that action. from before this, were you very comfortable with your settings, or was everything essentially just a glorified snapshot?

Ben Chrisman:

No, I was really a late bloomer when it came to photography. I went to New Mexico State University, which isn't known as a journalism school to begin with. So the number of us photographers was very small and there was the art photographers and there was the journalism photographers and neither of us, none of us got along. Like we didn't like them. They didn't like us. It's cool. which is stupid, but that's way it was. So we were very like, nichey, there was about five or six of us that actually took it seriously. I was not one of the best photographers at all. Todd Mellor. A lot better than I was back then. And like, honestly, I didn't know how to expose. if I put someone up against a white wall, I didn't understand that the white wall was going to underexpose their skin. Like it took a meal. It took me a lot of practice. And that's generally how I learn is I have to do things over and over and over until my mistakes are beaten out of me. And that was true for college. And so I had to take a lot of pictures. So I was always the kid that always had the camera on them. I was always taking pictures of everything that happened all day long. I did it because I love the process of taking pictures more than I like the results of the pictures. I like the act of doing it. And so I was always doing it. And so through that repetition and through all those mistakes, I started to kind of learn what I liked in pictures and actually how to take a picture. And keep in mind, this is all film days, so there was not the instant kind of, gratification or knowing if you got it right. I had to go back and I had to soup the film and, it was a week later, and I don't really remember what the hell I was doing at that point. So it's like, your learning curve is like really slow because, you take a picture and then a week later you're in the lab, your dark room, and you're like, I don't really remember what I was up to back then because I wasn't taking notes on it like I should have. So it was like, it was just a very long learning curve. And then I went straight into newspapers where I was shooting, maybe 20, 20 rolls a day pretty easily. And so, I did that for so many years in a row that's when you really start growing. And then, after that, you go into leaving the newspaper, starting your own business. We can get to that later. But, that's where it

Raymond Hatfield:

came from. So when it came to, obviously the exposure side, right? Trying to figure out why did this photo work? Why did this not work? I took this photo a week ago. I have no idea what settings, you know, I was using. Was there anything, maybe from a technical standpoint that was, more challenging for you to learn than other things?

Ben Chrisman:

Well, back then, when we were shooting film, we had to keep things relatively, like, consistent. So, we exposed off our hands all the time. all day long, exposed, over a stop and a third, whatever my white hand was. And that's how I got exposure for everything on film. The harder part was definitely incorporating flash into it. So most of our portraits at newspapers, you would take them outside, you'd hit them, we'd shoot fuji neoprene film at F 100, F 8 at 250th with a flash. And almost every portrait I took was F 8, was that same exposure every time. And then you had to start using flash and gems. So that took a learning curve. So you did the same thing and you found out what worked and you stuck with it. It's like the old school wedding photographers who shot hossies with a hosselblads with a big frame out with a flash and they popped it and those guys nailed that exposure every single time because they knew exactly what to do and they know exactly how to get it right. And it's very inspiring. I love seeing those old pictures because they're just technically perfect because they knew exactly what they were doing all the time. You couldn't, maybe you couldn't be quite as creative, on a day to day basis. but you would choose your spots when you're going to, possibly make a mistake.

Raymond Hatfield:

Sure. When you would go into the gym and start using flash, would you still be shooting, that 100 speed film at f8? No.

Ben Chrisman:

you're shooting 2. 8, because those were the fastest lenses I had at the time. And you just you knew exactly like when the player got in front of you, what your flash power was going to be, whether you were bouncing it or whether you had strobes put up in the gym, which I was at a very small newspapers, we were shooting several different high school gyms. So we were basically just bouncing off the walls or doing direct. So,

Raymond Hatfield:

I heard on another podcast that you had your, New Mexico State, you didn't have a photo editor. Is that right?

Ben Chrisman:

Well, when I went and got new newspapers, we didn't have a photo editor. Okay. Our editors were word editors. so. It started, I had did have the, my first newspaper job was Mark and he was my boss and he helped me along. But then when he went back to Arkansas, me and Brett started working together and Brett were our own bosses. Like we really drove each other to do is we wanted, we looked as high as we possibly could at the time for what photographers should be and that, you know, and that. Was back then as still as today, like Jim Knockway and Yokum Ladafoged and all the guys at Seven Agency and all the guys at Magnum and all the women at Magnum. and we looked to them as our standard of what we wanted photography to be and that's where we aimed. And because we didn't have anyone locally in Farmington to say, Hey, that photo sucks or that you need to do this better. All they wanted to make sure is, is it in focus? Is there a colorful, is it had color in it? And is there a cute kid in it? That was basically the requirements that we had. and so we wanted to do something more and we really drove ourselves to do that. So Brett was probably, one of my greatest teachers, because he was so, inspiring and drove me to. Always take a better picture every day. Where

Raymond Hatfield:

was that gap from where you were to the photos of all these, Magnum seven photographers where it was

Ben Chrisman:

and still is infinitely large. Um,

Raymond Hatfield:

but like in what ways is it lighting? Is it subject? Is it moment? where is it? It

Ben Chrisman:

was all of those things. You know, you try to, we would look at the different photographers and we would study the books, and we would figure out what we liked about the picture, like James Nogway's amazing compositions. I really loved Alex Webb's color. I liked David Allen Harvey's ability to get into a scene. I liked, Joachim Ladefoged's compositions a lot because they were a little bit more artsy than maybe Jim's were. and we started looking at different aspects. So I started looking at all the shadows they used all the silhouettes, all the reflections, all these types of things in photography that wasn't typical to a photographer, in my area, that really stood out. It was adding a little an element of art to documentary photojournalism. And that's what we latched on to. And then when I got into weddings, I went like hardcore into that route.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. Looking at your work today, there's no doubt. Nobody can argue otherwise. so staying here on the, on, photojournalism working in the newspaper, trying to be the best that you can. Was there ever this guess what I'm trying to figure out here is like, did you see photojournalism as a way for you to be able to take photos, or did you see photojournalism as, as, this is my job, I have to take a certain type of photo, or like, I love this job, I'm just gonna try to be the best that I can at it. Does that make a difference, or does that question make sense?

Ben Chrisman:

Yeah, yeah, totally. To me, journalism still is the end all be all. It's where I go for inspiration. It's my favorite type of photography. I absolutely adored being a photojournalist. I still miss it all the time. that life of being in the newsroom is amazing. I love, in general, I'm a big people person. So getting to go into, six or seven assignments a day and have to get something out of every single, group of people, whether those people wanted to be there or not, which was a lot of times the case for a photographer, at a newspaper, that challenge is like, Oh, is a big driving force in why I love photography in general, is that challenge of getting in there and figuring it out on the spot and coming out with something that not only that person would like to see. In a lot of cases, they didn't want to see it because they didn't want a story about them in the first place. But having the entire community of wherever the photo, the newspaper is, see that picture and say, hey, I need to read that story based off the picture. that to me is a great challenge of being a photographer.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah, I know oftentimes when I look at, newspapers or photojournalists, it seems like, and I could be wrong, maybe this is just a poor perception, but there's the group of photographers who love the environmental portraits, and then there's the group of photojournalists who love that, staged, I guess, portrait, you know, camera where they're looking at it. Would you say that's somewhat accurate? And if so, where would you say that you fall on, on that line?

Ben Chrisman:

I didn't like taking portraits at all. I hated it. unfortunately it was about half the job, about 50 percent of the time it was be a portrait. And so again, we usually take them outside and shoot them with direct flash. because I just didn't know how to do it any differently. I've learned to like portraits a lot. that was definitely not instilled in me in the beginning. Cause like it comes back to Sterling's class. It was all documentary. My love has always been documentary photographing people when they are not looking in the camera, not camera aware and I can try to go as invisible as possible. And of course, that's not possible most of the time, because anytime you're around with a camera, you're going to influence the situation in some way. and I know that it's just my job to make them feel as comfortable about themselves, to forget the presence of the camera as much as possible. And to do that, it starts within the photographer can't go in there with a lot of insecurities or fear because the people are going to feel that and that's going to influence it even worse. So you've got to go in with the mindset of, Hey, I'm comfortable in my own skin. I deserve to be here because most photographers don't feel like they deserve to be in that situation, which is really what holds them back and say, I have a job to do, but to me, the job is not a job. It's like so fun and so amazing that I, get to be in that situation. It's like a privilege to be in front of those people, especially when I'm doing documentary work. less so much, you know, I take a lot of portraits now. and so it's more on me to say, Hey, I've got to think of something creative all the time. I would much better there rather be in a situation where I don't have to take portraits at all. Unfortunately, that doesn't pay the bills very well. So I have to go into portrait mode. I kind of thought I probably would have to. That's a fair

Raymond Hatfield:

trade off. I believe so photojournalism, right? You're working in a newspaper. Did you say to yourself, you know what? Screw this. I'm shooting weddings or what was that transition like for you?

Ben Chrisman:

Brett and I got to a point, where we realized we weren't learning anything anymore at the newspaper. We had been there for several years and we're like, okay, it's time for us to see what else is out there. And so we both, you know, it was just a coincidence. we were best friends and we were working together every day. He usually had the day shift and I had the night shift. but we decided together we needed to move on. So we quit the same week he ended up going, he had a kid right away. So he kind of went into being, taken care of, being a stay at home dad. Whereas I ended up starting my own business right away. So I always had, like, I started shooting weddings about six months earlier than Brett did on a full time basis. And in the interim. I thought, Hey, I'm going to half of my life is going to be documentary work. I'll travel the world and shoot doc stories. The other half will be shooting weddings where I'll make my money. And I was planning on going to Iraq. my friend, Max, Max Whitaker had already been there. So he was working with me to try to figure out how to get out there. I was researching flak jackets, all that kind of stuff. And, I was. wasn't married. I was just like, I'm just going to do this. And then the tsunami hit in Asia in, 2004. And so, I was 26 years old, I think. And I was like, it didn't really click to me how important that was. And all my journalism friends, said, Hey, forget about Iraq. Asia. And I did. And so I went to Indonesia by a town called Banda Aceh, Northern Indonesia, where the main wave hit and killed most of the majority of the people. And it's been a month there, like picking it. And by the time I had gotten there, most of the journalists, actually all of the photojournalists had left. I was the only Western journalist still in Banda Aceh. So everyone really liked that. I was there still taking photos. This was about three weeks after the wave hit. And, what I did was I got on a truck one day and this truck of guys were picking up all the dead bodies. So we spent a long time, well, every day it was like a full time job. We would go and we would try to find the dead bodies hidden underneath the rubble or in the water. And it was very gruesome. but I learned a lot about everything. Honestly, and that and how resilient humans can be and I spent a month there actually, I take that back. The first place I went with Sri Lanka and getting things mixed up. And so it's been so long now, but I went to Sri Lanka, spent a month in Sri Lanka and I didn't know what the hell I was doing there, like zero, like no, no skills at all. It's like, I'd never taken pictures before. And then after Sri Lanka, I found a workshop that James Knockway and Gary Knight and Anthony Rocheville were teaching in Cambodia, and I flew there for that workshop and I spent a week with them and they kicked my ass so hard. They made me question whether I should even be a photographer or not because my photos were so bad. It made me snap out of it. And it really, in that week taught me how to tell a story infinitely better than all the years being a newspaper photographer had. And from that workshop in Cambodia, that's when I went to Indonesia and did the dead project where it was like picking up all the dead bodies. And that month, like my photography went, you know, you could see the accelerate acceleration point at that. So I really owe it to those three guys really kicking my ass and making me work harder. For instance, like I was doing a story on the monks in Cambodia, which is the most cliche thing you could possibly do. And Gary and Anthony and we're like that's okay, fine, that's the best you can think of and all the other students were doing like kids snipping glue and like, prostitution, all this much more interesting topics. And they're like, okay, shoot it all in black and white and do your thing. And I didn't do that. I shot it in color still because I like the color of the robes. But what I did was I started waking up at three 30 in the morning, getting to the monks, quarters before they even woke up. And I stayed with them all day till they went to bed at 11 o'clock at night or so. And then got up and did this for so many days. And I finally was able to pull a story out of it. And, but it really Those two guys, cause knock way. I'd ended up leaving, a couple of days into the workshop. Gary and Antonine really busted me to the point of submission to where I felt like I really learned how to be a photographer so much better that week.

Raymond Hatfield:

What do you think it was? After going through high school, after going through, photo journalism school, after working at a newspaper, what was it about this workshop? What did you learn that taught you how to tell a

Ben Chrisman:

better story? I was being too literal, too obvious. And so they forced me into breaking things down, into smaller compartments to where, like, you're not saying, you don't need to say everything in one picture. It's almost like detail shots at a wedding. You can little bitty like vignettes tell the whole story. And also Antonin, was a refugee. He lived in refugee camps. So when I would show him photos, that I had taken in Sri Lanka in the refugee camps, he's like, man, you did, he says that for it, every other word. And he's like, you didn't effing get it. You didn't get it. I know what it's like to live in a refugee camp. This has no feeling of a refugee camp. You got to dig deeper. And again, like, so you have to always say, like, what's this photo about? What do I want people to feel when they see that? That thought process really got ingrained in me. So you can't pick up a camera and go back to taking bad pictures after someone really teaches you how to do that. and if you do go back to taking bad pictures, you're just being lazy. and I'm not lazy. I might not be a good photographer, but I'm not lazy. So, that week they really instilled, that thought process of how to tell a story with several different photos, and also show a scene with more feeling and emotion and less literal and more abstract and those, and because we're visual storytellers. We don't, we can't say a story with words. We can't explain it in a paragraph. We have to make sure that the photos are interesting enough for someone to look at it and say, Hey, I want to check

Raymond Hatfield:

it out. Yeah. Now, Well, I guess I got a question about, that related to weddings. But I guess let's get into weddings first before I get to the question. After that project, you go to see the tsunami wave and you see all of the death and the devastation was the thought right then. I gotta photograph something nicer than this. Like, was that

Ben Chrisman:

the thought was I need money because I went over there. I probably spent five grand of my own money, and I ended up I was selling the photos of that project to the L. A. Times, and I think they paid me like 250 bucks. So I was basically out five grand. And so I fly back to Santa Fe, and I'm like, man, I need to, figure out how to make money as a photographer. So I was like, I can start shooting weddings. And at that point, Brett and I had seen, we'd gone, there's this, a website called sportsshooter. com. And I think it's still up, but back in the day, that was the big deal. And we went to a conference in L. A. one time, and we saw a guy named Matt Mendelsohn speak. And Matt is an amazing photographer. He's based in D. C. photojournalist for 20 years or so. He's a couple years older than I am. And he got up there and he's like, I charge 5, 000 a wedding and Brett and I looked at each other and we're like, we're becoming wedding photographers. And I think we quit the newspaper shortly after that conference. And so I always had in the back of my mind, well, I can shoot weddings for money, to make a living. And so that's. It's where it started and I was like, well, I'll divide half my life into dock and half my life into weddings and another one, my friends who had been in the business a little bit longer, I said, you're out of your mind, weddings are way more work than that, because at the time I had never run my own business before. So I didn't understand how much work it actually took to run a business. And I didn't understand that 90 percent of your life as a photographer is not taking pictures at all. It's doing all the other things that associated with that. And so once I started shooting weddings and this was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, it took over my life. This was 2005 and I started running with it it really just. Snowballed into, being my main existence. It's not how I thought it'd be

Raymond Hatfield:

though. Well, yeah, it rarely ever is. If you look back at those first photos, like, did you approach that first wedding as I'm going to shoot this as a wedding photographer, or I'm going to shoot this using all of my photojournalism skills?

Ben Chrisman:

Well, the first wedding that I shot, I think I was 18, might have been 19. it was my friend, Greg and Jenny's wedding. And, I was so close to them that my parents attended the wedding. And I didn't really know what I was doing. I was shooting on film. I was so young and then I screwed up at one point when Jenny and Greg kissed. I was at the altar. I was behind them and I wasn't in front of them walking out with the processional. And after that ceremony, my mom grabbed me and said, you never miss the recessional ever. Like she yelled at me for, she got mad at me for missing a photo. She like, she, so I learned my lesson right there. I don't ever miss the bride and groom walking out. And there are a few photos that they're super important like that, that I've learned I needed to get. But I don't think I approached it as a photojournalist. Or anything, because I wasn't even a journalist then. I was, it was before even I was in college really, or taking photos, you know, photography courses. I just knew that I liked pictures at that

Raymond Hatfield:

point. Do you think that not being in that spot was just not understanding the cadence of a wedding? Or were you trying to? Yeah, totally. I was too young. Yeah. So then when the time came to, Hey, I'm actually going to turn this into a business, I'm going to go full time. At that point, you did have experience shooting, telling stories. did you think I have to change everything that I've learned about photography and, do this as a wedding photographer or

Ben Chrisman:

no, no, the exact opposite. I was like, I don't like wedding photography. I'm not going to do it like that. So like it was is a very conscious decision to say I'm going to shoot wedding like I want to shoot it and I realize I'm going to miss some photos that a lot of wedding photographers might get but I don't care. And again that goes back to what my mom yelled at me about like I knew there were like five or six photos that I had to get. After that, I gave myself free reign to do whatever I wanted. And that even came down the lens choice Like that, that's when I started using the 35mm and 85mm basically only. I don't shoot with a zoom. I still don't have it. I do have one zoom. I don't ever use it. So, that course of learning those two lenses forced me to be more creative a lot of times because I physically wasn't able to get as close to the subject as I maybe could. So I started having to use like different compositions. And so that's where part of my, the way I wanted to shoot kind of took place, you know, forms because I had to use, bigger spaces more often because if you only got an 85 millimeter lens, you can't zoom in that tight. Sure. So I started trying to figure out how to be more creative while still telling the story.

Raymond Hatfield:

Did you find that you got much pushback from, no, from brides? No, nothing.

Ben Chrisman:

Not at all. No, it was great because when I was in Santa Fe, most of the couples that were coming into Santa Fe to get married were from New York or San Francisco. And so those people are generally pretty visually literate. And so they're appreciated it not looking like typical wedding photography. And that's what we have always thrived on. It's like taking Wedding photography and hopefully trying to elevate it to a level of photography that anyone would want to, anyone would want to look at, even if you weren't at the wedding. So that mindset of like pushing things and being more abstract, less literal, you don't want it to look like a manual of how to shoot a wedding. Like my friend Craig Fritz talks about this all the time. Like, don't like, you know, photo one slash a. Photo one slash B, you don't want to be so obvious that it doesn't have any personality to it. So we truly try to photograph a wedding from the inside out to where we're photographing the people's personalities, their style, the, their relationship and how they apply that to the wedding, trying to tell stories within the kind of dynamics of the family. all that is what makes a wedding interesting to me. I don't really care about weddings innately. Like, I don't like the pageantry of it. I think people probably spend too much money on it. All that kind of thing are true. The reason why I like shooting weddings is because of the people in there, every single wedding is different.

Raymond Hatfield:

Oh, wow. So, for you to feel fulfillment at a wedding, you have to be really close to, the couple who are getting married or would you say that's right? Or do you show up trying to be totally blind and then just letting everything unfold in front of you? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ben Chrisman:

kind of shifts, sometimes we know the couple really well because we've seen them at other weddings or it's a past referral or in some way we've gotten close to them in the process of the wedding and some weddings I don't know them at all and so but it's still that kind of history of you know being a photojournalists where I'm not intimidated by that. If I know the people great, if I don't know the people great, I'm going to do the same thing every single time and I'm not going to change my personality or the way I approach things. because every time you're like, say, oh, well, this. This couple doesn't really care about the arty photos. Those are the couples that always come back and say, Oh, the photo I like most is when I'm this small in the picture and it's just a big blue sky. And I'm like, okay, all right, here we go. You got to do it again. And so we've just kind of learned that. So we do the same. We've try to, we blog every single wedding we take because we want people to see, Hey, the standard is this high, no matter whether you're getting married in your parents backyard, or you happen to be at a fancy resort really doesn't matter to me. All that doesn't matter to me. All I care about is like digging in deep and getting those, real pictures.

Raymond Hatfield:

You mentioned earlier that there's really like five photos that you need to take at every wedding. After that, it's just, let those creative juices flow. It's just cream, yeah. Yeah. What are those five photos that you have to capture at every wedding?

Ben Chrisman:

Well, you got to get the bride alone, the bride with mom, first kiss, the first dance, the recessional, and maybe an exit photo and a portrait of the bride and groom. For us, that's probably three or four portraits. We need to get a straight head to toe, the bride and groom looking at the camera. We need to get just so no one's mad at us and then like, that's the barrier. Like, do we have enough photos where no one's mad, going to be mad at us. And then we do our own thing and people pay us to do our own thing. They would be really mad at us if we just shot it like a wedding photographer. They know better. That's why they don't know when I tell people, if you just want a normal wedding photographer, please don't hire us. You don't need us. Go anywhere down the street. If you want something a little bit different, we're perfect for you.

Raymond Hatfield:

When you say, people pay us to do our own thing, in your own words, what is your own thing? What makes it your own?

Ben Chrisman:

Taking webbing photography and hopefully making it more interesting to everybody. I want people to say like, how in the world did they get that picture? Or, more importantly, I can't believe he got that look or that, that emotion or like that split second where something happened that the normal person with the iPhone couldn't get. That's definitely our goal is to be able to, we, we had a really amazing mom from a wedding and we shot in Miami earlier this year, and she hired blotter videography videographer to film the wedding. And she said, I want everything covered. I want every fight, every look, everything possibly that happens at that wedding. I want that filmed. And I just took that personally as I'm going to take a picture of everything That happens. And so that kind of document documentation of a wedding is really important to me and people want that documentation, but they want to elevate it in a creative artistic way. And I feel like that's what we do best is taking something normal and making it look extraordinary, even if it is, you know, because that's our job as a photographer to take something that someone sees and make it better because otherwise why hire a photographer

Raymond Hatfield:

if they can do it themselves? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I feel that exact same way. It's like, oftentimes I've said the same thing about, getting a unique composition or like, uncle, you know, whoever will be right up there at the front and I'll be. But using, I don't know, a doorframe or something to frame the couple. Yeah, I love those doorframes. Yeah, exactly. And then having like a family member be like, shouldn't you be up there, like taking that photo? And it's like, no, I like this photo right here. So when it comes to creating those everyday moments and then elevating them into something that is more visually interesting. You are the king of this, right? Like this is what you're known for. This is what you do. I've talked to many photographers who have said that you are arguably one of the most creative photographers who they know, whose work that, they've seen. So as many new photographers, like people who are listening right now, they're just trying to get to the point to where they can get a decent exposure, right? After that comes everything else. So for you, like, how do you get to that point? Like, what are some things that you could do to see more creatively, if that's the right term? The hardest part, I think, is just knowing what you like, and whittling that down. Art is about subtraction. It's not about how much you can add to it, it's how much that you can take away to only tell the story that you want to tell.

Ben Chrisman:

And I think especially in this age where, we have so many options in life, we have so many distractions, there's so many things to like at this point. And there's so many things to be interested in. But as photographers, we have to whittle that down a little bit to how we want to see the world. So, because otherwise you're trying to say too much and it's like taking a picture where, I remember taking this photo in Sri Lanka, which is why I changed my lens. It was like, I was, it was refugee camp. This mom was pumping water for her naked baby. And I was like, this is one of the most interesting scenes I've ever seen. Look at it. My Canon 20 D probably at the time. And I was like, that photo is so boring because I was showing too much. And so I literally got my 1635 and I went back to the tent. I got gaffer's tape and I taped it at 35 and I never went back from shooting that focal length. I've never shot a 16 millimeter lens since, that, that moment, because I was. You can say so much and you not say anything at all. And that's one of my great fears in photography is not saying anything at all. So know what you want to say and strip out everything else. So you're only saying that and do that in photo after photo after photo. And so every photo, it's like, it's own little time capsule of meaning. And then you add to it and then you put the story together and then, Hey. your storyteller.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. Again, I think one thing that a lot of, people struggle with, especially when shooting primes, I know that you love to shoot primes. You're 35 85. Why not choose zooms? Right. Because is it just one of those things like. That's just how your brain works. It's

Ben Chrisman:

not like a, I never, I've, I remember the last time I used a 7200, it was engagement session as like, I've never taken worse photos in my entire life. They're so boring, just so boring because what happens is I just rack it as close as I can. And then I don't have a composition. It's just about, it's just the people and there's nothing more to it than that. And sometimes that's okay. But for me, limitations make me more creative. That's the way I work. That's why I don't tell people they need to shoot primes. Or if you should, if you're good at shooting zoom, shoot zooms. I don't care. Just know what you're good at. Know what you're not good at. I know what I'm not good at, and that's using zooms because I try to do too much with them. And I lose my inspiration.

Raymond Hatfield:

And so I think that should be a t shirt. I know what I'm not good at. And I'm not going to shoot in zooms, that'd be perfect. When it comes to like a wedding day, right? I'm always interested in the mind of people like you just trying to get something new and unique. And I want to know, because I would say that arguably your photos are, they're very unique, they're not the traditional wedding photos. So when you show up on a wedding day, are you looking for certain elements or Yeah. Because essentially this could be the first time that you've ever been to this location. This could be the first time that you've ever seen these people. On top of getting, through that barrier right there, how do you open yourself up to be able to see things that maybe others don't see? Well,

Ben Chrisman:

the first mentally, the first thing I have to get over is taking all the safe photos that people are going to want. Like, usually Aaron and I start a wedding together, we go to the bride and groom, one of us shoots all the details and one of us shoots, the bride starting to get ready. And it's the same as everything like first dance. When a first dance, first thing I do after I generally take a really safe photo of, the bride and groom or the bride and her dad, and then I get weird with it as weird as possible. And I'm not naturally that creative or weird. I really have to force myself into being in those situations like put myself in that mindset, but you can't do that until I've checked all the boxes of, hey, am I going to make someone mad by not getting this picture. And it goes back to those few photos that you have to have. And then after that, you should let yourself be more free to take chances, take risks, make mistakes. If you're not screwing up, you're probably not doing a very good job at any situation when you're a photographer. so that's what I have to get over first mentally is take all the photos people expect and then I go back and then I go into the photos that I expect of myself.

Raymond Hatfield:

So what does that look like? What are those elements? You take that safe shot and you think, okay, time to get weird. Are you looking around the room or

Ben Chrisman:

how does that work? Yeah, it's going back to those same elements that I learned when I was in college of what I like about pictures. I like photos with shadows. I like photos with silhouettes. I like photos through reflections. I like photos that are super abstract, people's body parts cut off, like all that kind of more like artsy looking type of photos is what I'm trying to instantly apply to weddings or anything that I shoot, whether I'm shooting my daughter, photographing my daughter or photographing a wedding or photographing a headshot. Like even when I photograph headshots and I do that a lot, I'm always trying to instead of taking headshots, I'm trying to take the most interesting portrait they've ever had of themselves, and I'll get that safe headshot, but then I go straight into, okay, how do I mess this up and challenge myself?

Raymond Hatfield:

That's another t shirt idea right there. Yeah. You could just have a whole line of t shirts from all these. So obviously you go to a wedding, you shoot it, you get the safe stuff, you get as weird as possible, you get those reflections, you get those abstract photos, you come home, how do you personally judge whether, you did a fine job, like technically you shot the wedding versus, wow, I knocked this one out of the

Ben Chrisman:

park. I never feel that or you will never, and you will never hear me say that. I feel like, I never know if it's any good or not until it's finally finished and we've got the slideshow or the album designed. I consciously don't edit myself in the process of shooting because I feel like if I'm critiquing myself, then I'm limiting what I can do. So I just free float the whole wedding. I, it's why I shoot a ton. I don't inhibit myself at all or as much as possible on a wedding day, because I feel like photography is very momentum based and I need that momentum to keep, to ride the whole 8 hours or 12 hours that I'm shooting. And to me, that's the fun process. That's a fun part of a wedding is just diving in and just going all in, Erin and I don't do as good of work when it's short. We like being very immersive in things. That's why weddings are a good fit for us. So I like mentally checking out of normal life and going into, Hey, my dream job is to be a documentary photographer. And that's what I feel like at a wedding. I'm a documentary photographer that's photographing a wedding. And I know I am a wedding photographer, but I don't think of it like that.

Raymond Hatfield:

What do you, you think of it as being a documentary photographer?

Ben Chrisman:

Yeah, yes, when I die, that's what I want to be remembered at, and that's one reason why I like weddings is because I feel like majority of my work is documentary, as whereas, what if I stay and had stayed in photo journals and most of the photos that I would have taken would have been forgotten completely, except for maybe a couple people that I took the picture of as a wedding photographer, I feel like kind of my legacy as a photographer will be will live for hundreds of years at this point, because every wedding gets an album. These albums are going to be last hundreds of years like people are in a way going to see my photos as a wedding photographer more than they would any other type of photography that I possibly could have done. And so I don't take that responsibility lightly. I feel like it's a very important job. It's one reason why I'm really proud to be able to photograph weddings is because that lineage that importance to a family. We'll carry on for forever, even if they get divorced. It's still a bunch of people that everyone cares about in one room. And those pictures are going to matter to somebody.

Raymond Hatfield:

That's always so fun. like to get back to my grandparents and sitting at their brown table, everything was brown. And just like that shoe box full of, uh, you know, old photos. And I just, I remember thinking at like, I don't know, eight. Like, man, if there was an accidental fire in this house, like, all of this would be lost, and we would never know who these people are, because at that point, maybe those photos were taken 40 years earlier. When it comes to, shooting that wedding, do you have any special I know that you're a Fuji shooter, but do you have any special tools that you use, just to make sure that you can continue to, stay at peak creative performance during a wedding day?

Ben Chrisman:

My gear basically hasn't changed in 20 years. I've gone through all the different brands, I shot a, Canon film and then Nikon film and then Canon digital and then Nikon digital. And then, and now Fuji, the Fuji stuff. brings me back to the film days because the cameras are just so small. The lenses are small. It makes me feel more like a photographer than having a big old DSLR again. That's probably key. I do, we do carry a bunch of lights now, Erin and I both have two, two strobes flashes and then a couple of B tens as well. As we've gotten older, we've been kind of incorporated more things like we, you know, bring light modifiers to a wedding now, but I could still go into a wedding with, a couple lenses, a couple cameras, a couple flashes, and feel like I could be okay now. But now we have triggers, for all camera flash, I'll bring a UV filter to put in front of the lens to kind of mess with things or a mirror or something like that. Use your phone. Sometimes I'll just grab things in a hotel room and shoot through that. And that's really for me, like, that's what I find interesting. And, if something's say if a scenes doesn't look that good, like the bride's not in good light, I don't think, well, the bride's not in good light. I guess I can't take a picture. I try to figure out how to make it good. And a lot of times that's just shooting through it filter or something because that brings in light that's not on her and like it shines through the camera and then you've got something that's more visually interesting and I don't care if no one likes it because I like it and I shoot for me a lot of times and I'm just fortunate that A lot of times our couples like what we like, because I'd be real trouble if they didn't. Right.

Raymond Hatfield:

This whole conversation, I love how speaking with other wedding photographers, it seems like a lot of times they're very focused on obviously the client, which you have to be, to a certain degree. But for you, I can tell that there's like a real joy that you get out of the photography and that you want to make sure that you also get photos that you like. Now being at a wedding has there ever been a time where like, it just wasn't working. For some reason, something wasn't working.

Ben Chrisman:

You certainly have wedding days where things don't click as well as others. a a lot of times people at their wedding day are not who they really are because they, for instance, something's going on with the wedding. Something's going on with the family dynamic. Something's going on that doesn't make them feel like themselves. So you have to think about these people in two weeks after the wedding, 20 years after the wedding. And some of our clients that have been more challenging on the wedding days have been great, amazing people and clients and friends after the wedding. So when someone hires this. It's our natural assumption that we're going to be friends with them for the rest of our lives. And so when you think of a client like that, then your mindset changes on how you work with them. So you're always thinking about what's best for them. And when you do that, I feel like people can feel that. And so they kind of let their guard down and they are not going to think about like, Hey, what's this photographer trying, you know, are they trying to take too much money from me? Are they being lazy? Blah, blah, blah, all that goes away. And they know you're as committed as they are. But sometimes you're at a wedding and you're just like, I know this person is amazing and cool. It's just something's tweaked today where they're not feeling it. And, you know, we had our last wedding that we shot, wedding had been canceled three times because of COVID. Right after the wedding was supposed to happen, her father died. So her father wasn't able to attend the wedding. It was just mentally, it was very hard for them. And I know that bride is a super cool person, but it was a challenging wedding day for her because she was dealing with a lot of things that were out of her control. So as long as you put yourself in their shoes as saying goes things as a photographer get a whole lot better. And so I can't think of a wedding where like everything went wrong because eventually it turns out okay. As long as you, you try your best and you get those few photos that you really need and all the kind of complexities of being a human kind of work themselves out, and so maybe a bride could be upset about a certain element of her wedding. And usually she takes it out on the photographer because we're the only person left that she can complain to. But to give it a little bit of space, they usually come around and realize that it was, it worked out

Raymond Hatfield:

after all. So the approach is if, I don't know, bride and mom are having an argument or something, step back, get further back, get in that space, take those wide photos instead of trying to say, Hey, how can I help? What can I do? Because you're not part of that family. What are you going to do to fix that situation? Does that sound right?

Ben Chrisman:

Oh, sometimes we do try to help for sure. If we feel like we can, because at this point we're generally a little bit older than our bride and grooms, you know, it worked, it used to be where I was younger than them and now I'm like a few years older than them. So I have a little bit of experience in that regard and also just have gone to hundreds or thousands of weddings at this point. So yeah, if we feel like we can help, we do. Again, we go, we treat our clients like we are going to be friends with them for a long time. And we're building this kind of relationship because we don't want to just be their wedding photographer. We want to be their family photographer. I want to put, shoot their headshots when they get a new job. I want to shoot their 40th birthday parties or 50th birthday parties, all those types of things. And you don't do that by not caring. So we do definitely approach. We're not that standoffish. Like we're treated like documentary photographer, but when you're standing right beside someone all day long, you can't help, but get involved in some way.

Raymond Hatfield:

Sure. Sure. Ben, I don't know how to end it any better than that. That was a great sentiment, So before I let you go, I really want to be mindful of your time. I could ask you a million more questions, but I'm not going to. Before I let you go, can you let listeners know where they can find out more about you and your work online? Sure.

Ben Chrisman:

Yeah, our whole life is basically on our website, which is christianstudios. com. it's me and my wife, it's Mauricio lives in Italy, Ryan lives in San Francisco, Matt lives here with us and Vlad lives in Santa Fe. So we're a very tight little family. We put almost everything we do, on our blog and Aaron tries to do a really good job of kind of portraying people's personalities when she writes those stories about them. So yeah, we're very accessible. The phone numbers on the website ring straight to my cell phone, so we're very easy to find.

Raymond Hatfield:

Massive thanks to Ben for coming on the show. So awesome to share everything that you did. Ben, thank you so much. I have three big takeaways from this episode. The first one is to embrace limitations. When you have limited options, let's say a 35 mil and an 85 mil lens, you're going to have to get creative to make them work because you can't just, twist the zoom and get closer to the action. You have to get closer with your feet, and that changes the background. It changes your relationship with your subject. It changes your depth of field. It's going to stretch you. It's going to force you to be more creative. Takeaway number two is don't critique yourself mid shoot. When you focus on flow and staying in that shooting mode, if you do that rather than, looking at the back of the screen for every single shot, you're going to capture more authentic images because you just kind of follow whatever catches your eye. So try going on a photo walk, set a timer for an hour and don't look at any of the photos until you get back home and you can look at them on your computer. And then it's time to assess the job that you did. And takeaway number three is to judge your work on personal satisfaction. Awards may seem nice, but if you're always in it for the pursuit of that external validation, then how will you feel when you don't win? Is everything for nothing. Your unique vision is what makes your images stand out, so only focus on that and the awards will just simply kind of be that cherry on the top. It's not necessary, but it's nice for sure. I wanna invite you in to share your biggest takeaway in the free and private beginner photography podcast community where you can connect with others, along with share your ideas, and even ask questions. So come join us over@beginnerphotopod.com slash group. That is it today. Until next week, remember, the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you'll be tomorrow. Talk soon.