captivated by light || dallas, tx engagement & wedding photographer

"[You] ...must be captivated by the light. Always the light. Always."

Simon Wyler || The Lakehouse

Taken with the camera that goes everywhere with me, my iPhone4 :)

That's been one of my favorite "photography" quotes for a while now, because it encapsulates so well what photography is about.  Noticing light.  Being entranced by it.  Falling in love with the way it melts all over peoples faces, the grass, or even just a chair.  The way it dances in people's eyes, and makes their hair glow until it looks alive.

If you want to be a good photographer, notice light.  strike that.  Become obsessed, or captivated by light.  In every place, at every time of day, revel in the way the light is falling all around you and strive to learn how to use it to tell a story.  Light is emotional.  Think about it--when I wake up to cold gray skies I can be sure of the kind of statuses I'll find on FB that morning.  Everyone wants to stay home, read a book, sit by a fire.  And I'm right there with'em.  The light has affected how I feel about the day. Therefore if I want to evoke certain emotions with the pictures that I take I have to be sure that I'm thinking about what the light I'm using is saying.

It's a process that is never-ending I'm certain.  I will forever be delighting in new ways I find to use light to produce the right emotion in a picture.  It's a challenging process.  There are times when I want so badly to know how to transpose all of the yumminess that feels close enough to touch into mere megapixels.  But it can be done--most of the time ;)

You can have all the nicest equipment and know how to use it inside and out, you can have beautiful people to photograph, amazing locations to shoot at, and 100 Photoshop actions at your disposal, but if you don't know how to utilize light, all of your pictures will fall flat.  And no photographer wants that.

So go ahead, fall in love with light.

Much Love.

Jessica Shae