Images of joy

Yesterday, over at A Los Angeles Love, Becca wrote an important piece on diversity in the wedding world. Her post was a plea to photographers to embrace the diversity of their clients and to focus their work on the transcendent joy of a wedding, rather than the joy we typically see in blogs and magazines and even on photographers' websites, the joy that is specific to thin, white, wealthy women. Becca writes:

This is part of the bullshit that subtly twists us into thinking brides all look like models and that therefore my plain-Jane face isn't really bridelike. Granted, it's not a photographer's responsibility to change the systemic issues that drive my self-esteem problems. However, it's a paid photographer's responsibility to respect all his damn clients, regardless of what they look like. If you take our money to capture our wedding photos, it's your responsibility to capture our joy and beauty, and our beauty-as-joy. And that requires that you see it, that you understand it, that you interact with it, and that you cherish the real heart of the wedding.

If you haven't already, go read it, and then stand up for it in the comments, where a number of anonymous commenters are attacking Becca's message.

In a few weeks, we're having our engagement photographs taken. Choosing a photographer was one of the first decisions we made in the whole wedding-planning process, and I couldn't be happier with our choice. It's been awesome to bond with Corinna over the past week as we've celebrated the court decision in California, and every week I look forward to seeing her blog about couples like these. To all those anonymous photographers who believe that joy only shines through photographs that feature blonde, white, size 2 clients sitting in fields with furniture from Anthropologie and chandeliers from God-knows-where, I give you this:







All photographs by Corinna Raznikov Photography.

And, yes, I am aware that we have hired the world's most incredible photographer... yay!