This morning, a photographer friend from another state shared something someone had said to her recently. The person quipped that wedding photographers are so protective of their work, and the person couldn’t understand why. The words the person used were, “It’s not like it’s real art. I have yet to see a wedding image that wasn’t like everyone else’s.”

As a wedding photographer, my hackles could have gone up immediately at a comment like that. But they didn’t. Instead, it brought a little bit of a smile to my face. It simply made me think that this person doesn’t know about photography. And that’s okay. Not everyone has to understand photography; not everyone has to appreciate photography. At one time, I didn’t. But it also reminded me that, when someone isn’t well versed on a topic, they’re not very well equipped to comment on it, either.

Example: I don’t drink coffee. So whenever I do have a sip, it all tastes the same, whether it’s a cheap brew served up for free in a hotel lobby or a gourmet roast prepared from select beans gathered from a remote rain forest mountainside. Why can’t I tell the difference? Because I don’t have any real experience with coffee. Not because coffee is all the same. I also don’t recognize a great golf swing when I see one, don’t know why one abstract painter is considered superior to another, and couldn’t tell you if the dog that won the Westminster Dog Show really had the best conformation and turnout. My untrained eyes aren’t right when I assess all the dogs in a dog show to be equal. They are simply untrained.

The same goes with photography. To someone who doesn’t look closely at photography, it’s all the same thing — simply pointing the camera in a certain direction and pressing a button. To someone who has spent time learning about photography, two photographers’ work is as different as as Italian food and Chinese food: Both might involve some rice and some noodles, but the flavors are completely distinct.

So what is the practical application of all this? For me, it’s not trying to convince people that my work is unique, that it is worth the money I need to charge to sustain my business, or that photography is art. For me, it’s simply focusing my attention on clients who already believe that — clients who appreciate the work I produce, even if they can’t explain why they’re drawn to my work instead of another photographer’s. For me, it’s not worrying about converting people into photography connoisseurs, but finding clients who simply like my pictures. They might not know that it’s a wide open aperture that gives my photographs a dreamy, romantic feel, or what Danny and I do to set up and capture a spontaneous moment of a couple’s overflowing happiness. They just know that our photographs make them feel something. They just know they want pictures of their own that make them feel something remarkable, too.

And the practical application for people who think wedding photographers are all the same? For them, it’s finding a photographer who makes them happy, too, if they’re in the market for one. But I hope it’s also a slight paradigm shift: Just because one person doesn’t value something doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable.

My goal isn’t to convince anyone that I’m “worth it,” or that I’m better or dramatically different from every other wedding photographer. My goal is simply to state the fact that worth is subjective, and photography is not a commodity. It’s a memory, a family heirloom. Even if you think it looks like everyone else’s.

~ Laura