On Stage at Cherry Lane Theater: A Proposal that felt Straight out of a Dream

An elaborate surprise proposal moves from street to stage—where dreams and reality blur at a Greenwich Village theater

The moments after Jeff proposed to Chelsea- rain still falling, engagement ring catching the light

I was nervous for this one. Proposals always have a unique kind of pressure. I would argue (perhaps controversially) it’s the hardest assignment for a wedding photographer. A lot of hurry-up-and-wait-energy and then everything unfolds super quickly. Jeff messaged me the Friday before Thanksgiving. He and his girlfriend Chelsea would be in New York to visit family for the holiday and he decided this would be the perfect time to propose. It was a bit last minute for everyone, but he had an epic vision. He’d picked a popular location in the West Village around the corner from where Chelsea’s parents live. He worked everything out with the theater to use their lobby, booked a guitarist to pretend to be a street musician to reel Chelsea in with her favorite song and he booked a table in the bar for after where her friends and family would further surprise her with a champagne toast.

I started having stress dreams about it two nights before. Twenty years in and this job still exhilarates me. I was worried I wouldn’t be in the right place, or that I would somehow give away the surprise or that I’d be set up to shoot outside and then have to quickly head inside and I’d miss Chelsea’s reaction.

Outside Cherry Lane Theater on a rainy night just before Thanksgiving

Jeff, perhaps more understandably, was nervous too. He and Chelsea live in Texas, but he planned this whole thing the weekend before from a boys’ trip in London. He flew back on the day of the proposal, rushed to pick up the ring from the jeweler, all while fielding concerned texts from Chelsea about why she couldn’t see his location and plotting with her friend on how to get her into place and getting her family and friends to the bar.

Chelsea and Jeff outside Cherry Lane Theater moments after the proposal - still in the dream

Of all the surprises lined up that night, the rain was probably the biggest one. It was the kind of dark, wet fall evening where you simply want to stay warm and cozy and safely inside. Yet I had to admit, the city felt a-buzz with holiday energy. I could feel a crackle in the air. And in so many ways, the rain turned into the hero of the story. What was supposed to happen outside moved inside. And Cherry Lane Theater graciously offered us something no one expected: the actual stage. Not a lobby or back room—the stage itself, in one of Greenwich Village's oldest continuously running Off-Broadway theaters.

Jess proposes to Chelsea on stage at Cherry Lane Theater.

I arrived a full thirty minutes early. I tested my flash I can’t even tell you how many times. Jeff kept running in and out to check on one thing or another. The guitarist was set up outside the door. Random strangers kept popping in causing false alarms and psyching me out. Text updates were alerting us to Chelsea’s impending arrival. I was waiting just behind a massive set of red doors anxiously checking my exposures. Jeff was positioned halfway down the theater steps anxiously checking his phone.

Just engaged on the stage where a century of stories have unfolded

First I heard the music, then I heard the voices. I heard a woman excitedly asking the guitarist how he knew this song. She was saying it’s her song with her boyfriend, but no one’s really heard of it. She said she wants it to be her wedding song but while the melody is beautiful the lyrics are a little melancholy. She asked if she could record him. The word Phosphorescent floated into my memory. I felt a smile at play on my lips. Jeff too had told me it was an obscure song, but somehow it didn’t surprise me that it lived in my heart too. This was “A song for Zula” by Phosphorescent and it had lured Chelsea into the drama of the moment exactly as Jeff had envisioned.

Pure joy - Chelsea shows off her ring outside the theater.

Then everything felt like it sped up again as the guitarist opened the doors and Chelsea burst into the theater.

Chelsea said afterward that she felt like she blacked out once she got inside that theater.  Mysterious things happen with camera gear sometimes that I will never be able to explain. What I will shyly tell you is that against all odds, despite having tested it profusely, my flash blacked out as well. All I know for sure is that the energy travels through my subject and then through me and then through the cameras, and that energy has its own signature. Despite having tested this flash countless times in the moments leading up to this, at the crucial moment, it had a mind of its own. Please don’t miss understand me. The photos came out beautifully. Just not in the way I planned. The surprise of the moment was too massive, too overpowering. The exposure blacked out too, but just for a moment. Chelsea’s shocked smile frozen in time, but the beautiful red door I had planned as a backdrop, totally disappeared into the darkness.

Chelsea's friends and family emerging from the theater bar after having a champagne toast inside.

As Jeff led Chelsea onto the stage, I felt hyper aware of the fact that I was the only other presence in the room. Chelsea had told Jeff she didn’t want an audience for her proposal, and I could tell that even just having me there made herself conscious. She was well and truly surprised. She kept piecing together tidbits of information, trying to reorder her present reality into something that made sense. ‘So that’s why your location was turned’ ‘What time did you get in’ ‘Is that how he knew our song?’ ‘I feel like I’m dreaming right now.’ The setting felt particularly surreal. Can you imagine stepping in from the rain, thinking your boyfriend is stuck in traffic and hours away and instead he's leading you onto a literal stage to propose? I imagine it felt like she stepped out of reality for a moment into the thin space between dream and reality.

Heading to Commerce Inn to celebrate - the dream continuing into the West Village night

She said yes. The ring, two sizes too big, was put on her finger. Misty rainy photos on the cobblestoned Commerce Street were taken. Champagne was had. Her family and friends poured outside for a group photo and then they all filed into Commerce Inn to keep going. I quietly, shakily packed up my gear. It was a quick little shoot, but what a jolt of love and joy that went through me. I called a friend to help me come down from the high of it all. I told her about the flash. I told her about how against all odds one of my batteries died too. I said ‘I’ll never understand why these proposals are so stressful.’ She replied, ‘yeah but would you do it again?’ ‘Of COURSE!’.

Waterfront Wedding at Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club, Long Beach Island

Alex and Mike on the water's edge at sunset with Golden hour fading into blue sea

Alex and Mike have always belonged to the water. When we first met for their engagement session on the Asbury Park jetty, they told me about how they'd both grown up loving the beach, how the ocean was woven into the fabric of their relationship. Alex's mother had orchestrated their first meeting - inviting Mike to a family dinner without mentioning Alex would be there - and sparks flew immediately. They were both beach people, both drawn to the water, both rooted in this particular stretch of New Jersey coastline. So when it came time to plan their wedding, there was never any question about the kind of place they wanted. It had to be on the water. View their complete engagement gallery here.

Every detail thoughtfully considered - butterfly china, sea-green linens, and touches of whimsy throughout

Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club on Long Beach Island was the perfect answer. The venue sits right on the bay, with docks stretching out into the water and boats passing by throughout the day. Alex and Mike worked with planner Sarah Mastriano of A Lovely Universe to create what Sarah later called "not your average tristate area wedding" - every design detail was carefully considered, from the sea-green linens that matched the color of the bay to the pearl-dotted veil that echoed the texture of the water itself. The tent was positioned so that every table had a view of the water. Boats drifted past during dinner. The whole celebration felt like it was floating between land and sea.

That first look joy - the moment Alex and Mike saw each other on their wedding day

I understood their attachment to this place immediately. I grew up spending summers in Ocean City, just down the coast. My grandmother bought a beach house for our family when I was young, and the Jersey Shore became woven into the fabric of my childhood. There's a particular kind of belonging that comes from having a beach town that's yours - not the one you visit once on vacation, but the one where you know which ice cream shop opens earliest, where the best breakfast is, which stretch of beach is less crowded. Alex and Mike had that with Long Beach Island, the same way I had it with Ocean City. We spoke the same language of boardwalks and salt air and the way the ocean looks different every single day.

The tent on the bay - where land meets water and every table has an ocean view

Their wedding took place at the end of September, when summer crowds have thinned but the weather is still warm and the light turns golden earlier in the afternoon. We started the day with a first look on the yacht club docks, the bay stretching endlessly behind them. The joy on their faces when they saw each other was immediate and unguarded - all the camera-shyness Alex had worried about during the engagement session had evaporated completely. Before the ceremony, they shared private vows on the deck overlooking the water, just the two of them, an intimate moment before the public celebration began.

Sharing vows privately by the water before walking down the aisle.

The ceremony itself was brief - less than five minutes - but the emotion was palpable. They'd already said everything they needed to say to each other privately. This was the public declaration, the gathering of everyone they loved, the formal beginning of their marriage surrounded by family and friends under a tent with the bay as witness. Daybreak Flowers created arrangements that felt organic and slightly wild, and the butterfly-patterned china added an unexpected whimsy to the sea-green tablescape. The menu was inspired by their favorite NYC restaurants - thoughtful, personal, completely them.

The bay's texture mirrored in Alex's pearl-adorned veil - every detail echoing the water

As the sun began to set, we stole away for portraits. The light turned soft and blue, that brief perfect window when everything glows. There's something mythological about couples photographed by the sea - the ancient pull of water, the way humans have always been drawn to coastlines, the endless stories about what lives beneath the waves. Alex and Mike against the bay felt timeless, like they could have been standing there a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now. The ocean doesn't care about trends or aesthetics. It just is. And when you photograph people against it, they become part of that permanence.

First look on the Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club docks with the bay stretching behind them

The celebration continued long into the night - dancing under cafe lights, toasts that made everyone laugh and cry, the kind of joy that comes from bringing everyone you love to the place you love most. Alex and Mike had created exactly what they wanted: a wedding that felt like them, rooted in the water, surrounded by the people who matter most.

Alex dancing to Pink Pony Club - the dance floor erupting under cafe lights

View the complete gallery from Alex & Mike's Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club wedding

Planning & Design: Sarah Mastriano, A Lovely Universe

Floral Design: Daybreak Flowers | Videography: Margo Sees Stars | Venue: Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club | Band: Dart Collective | Paper Design: Charlie Whiskey Design, Minted Weddings | Hair & Makeup: Beauty on Location NJ

Fine Art Manhattan Wedding Photographer: Where Sophistication Meets Emotion

Hailing a cab from Central Park East to Restaurant Daniel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

I wasn’t the type of kid that dreamed of moving to New York. My older sister discovered musical theater at a young age. My mom would bring her up here from Philadelphia to see Broadway shows every so often. She dreamed of being on the stage and living in the big city. While I knew I wanted to be a photographer, New York never really factored into my imagination. I had a vague fantasy of exploring the world for National Geographic. I would pour over photographs from foreign lands and my consciousness would somehow be transported to exotic and mystical places. I couldn’t conceptualize what it would take to live that life, but I knew that photographs had power and I wanted to wield it. So until high school, Broadway was my only real exposure to the big apple. I hadn’t yet understood the myriad of dreams New York is capable of containing. She’s like a cosmic Russian doll with the dreams of multitudes nestled inside her.

Annie & Patrick sharing a special Champagne Toast at the iconic Chelsea Hotel in the Flatiron District shortly after it was remodeled.

Studying photography was absolutely a dream come true to me, I loved discovering its secrets and magic, but Philadelphia left me feeling lonely. I never really fit into the culture and I constantly had the feeling I was missing something. While New York wasn’t yet calling me, I felt an intense desire for my life to be something more. My professor sensed an innate talent in me and arranged for me to do my junior year internship at the prestigious Pace MacGill gallery on 57th and Madison streets. I was dazzled by the experience. It was like I was peeking through a door that was left cracked open to a world I never knew existed and I stood transfixed by the sights. It was the kind of classic internship that movies are made of: no pay and long hours doing all kinds of menial tasks. I would regularly spend all day running all over town dropping off prints or picking up frames or delivering expensive gifts to high end clients. I got to meet the inimitable Irving Penn on one such occasion. On another such errand I stood patiently in Duane Michals’ kitchen while he chatted amiably as he bent over his washing machine, which as it turned out, was his favorite place to sign his prints. Emmet Gowin and his wife Edith were regulars at the gallery, coming in to help catalog his archive. These were heroes, giants even to my young photographic heart. This was in the pre-iPhone era. I once spent the better part of an afternoon trying to find my way to a film lab on Little West 12th Street which all these years later still sounds like a fictional place to me. And every Monday it was my responsibility to pick up a dozen white roses at the same flower shop on Park Avenue and arrange them in a vase for reception. It felt decadent and luxurious and I wanted more of that level of excellence.

Detail of a waiter at Bemelman’s Bar the historic Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

By the time I got back to Philadelphia for my senior year I had fully caught the bug. I started reaching out to wedding photographers immediately to see if they needed an assistant or second shooter. It was another year after I graduated before I landed a job for the semi-famous photo world darlings and identical twins Doug & Mike Starn. I moved up to Brooklyn immediately and used to ride my bike from Williamsburg to their warehouse studio in Red Hook. It was a version of New York that seems like it’s all but disappeared now. Patti Smith’s memoir ‘Just Kids’ came out just three years after I moved to Brooklyn and somehow coincided with the moment when the bottom fell out of the photography industry. It was incredibly romantic and inspiring to me to imagine Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe experiencing the New York of the 70s, true artist-bohemians living the dream. My sister never ended up singing on Broadway. Instead, she stayed in Philadelphia and pursued a career in opera. Meanwhile, I discovered a version of New York that young Carey never could have dreamed of. I found mine in the galleries, the artist studios and the warehouse spaces. I’ve lived in New York eighteen years now and I’ve still never once gone to a Broadway musical. Instead, I’ve danced till dawn at warehouses in Bushwick. I’ve partied in countless lofts and watched symphonies from skyscrapers. I’ve worked in art galleries and for photo agents and assisted on photo sets. So many doors have opened for me over the years and still, every time I get to a new one, I feel the magic. Sometimes I even close my eyes in anticipation of what otherworldly scene awaits me. Am I dreaming?

In the elevator at The Plaza Hotel on 5th Avenue on our way to the first look.

Looking back on it now, I realize what a thoroughly perfect introduction I had to this city. New York is a city that is constantly changing, a whirling vortex of energy that’s nearly impossible to keep up with. Every door you open is a window into a secret world. A dream unfolding just for you. Yet there’s also this timeless iconic style imbued throughout everything that is somehow indestructible. The layers of history are steeped into the walls. My favorite thing about Manhattan weddings is still the mysterious feeling that every room I enter holds a surprise gift. A New York story waiting to be told. I once had the distinct pleasure of photographing Andra Day while she serenaded a couple at Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle Hotel. The next day the couple had a baby grand piano wheeled into their penthouse room and brought in a pianist to lead guests in an after-party sing along. Another time I was photographing a wedding at The Grill. I felt a buzz of energy behind me and turned around to realize the Clintons (even Chelsea) had all arrived. I hadn’t even been told they were coming. But I remember the more quotidian occurrences just as strongly, the park employee who turned a blind eye when I took portraits in Central Park’s conservatory garden without a permit. The strangers shouting congratulations whenever they see a bride on the sidewalk.

Jazz Musician playing Trumpet at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in Manhattan’s Lower East Side

Most of my couples proudly claim they aren’t traditional, that they’re doing their wedding their own way (if you listen closely you can almost hear Frank Sinatra crooning). But after so many years of photographing here in my beloved city, I’ve started to pushback. New York has its own flavor of tradition. It might not look like the weddings our friends hold in our home towns. It might not have a huge bridal party or be in the church we grew up attending, instead it looks like dinner at a glamorous New York restaurant or historic venue, a yellow taxi cab hailed between venues, a quick walk through Central Park, or maybe a champagne toast in a SoHo loft, vows at City Hall followed by oysters at Grand Central. Even as I write this I can hear Alicia Keys anthem blaring in my head, “… concrete jungle where dreams are made of.” My job now is to document your dreams.

Metropolitan Museum Engagement Photography NYC: An Urban Love Story

Pure joy on the Met steps - the Upper East Side energy is contagious

Technically, you are not allowed to take photographs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. I arrive with my smallest camera and a prayer that the docents will turn a blind eye. Katie has brought not one, not two but three outfit changes and an effervescence that is contagious. Max is as a patient as they come. He has brought no outfit changes.

We are going for a timeless NYC gritty aesthetic, something that feels straight out of an editorial magazine spread from the 90s. Somehow we manage to keep a low enough profile inside the art museum despite Katie’s showstopping strapless dress with a bow adorned on the back. It’s such a joy to walk through all these magnificent galleries. The necessity to be inconspicuous somehow lends itself to a carefree, candid joie de vivre. Outside, we quickly stop at a food truck before popping into Central Park then make our way down to Tribeca and over to Brooklyn. A thoroughly New York experience.

A spontaneous dip in the Temple of Dendur wing while museum-goers pass by

Katie and Max in the Met's modern wing - Katie showing off her unique style with her signature bow drawing every eye

The Metropolitan Museum of Art doesn't technically allow photography without a permit, and they certainly don't allow what amounts to an impromptu engagement session in their galleries. But there's something irresistible about the challenge. The Met is one of the most iconic cultural institutions in the world, sitting regally on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park. For couples who want their engagement photos to feel like they're part of something larger than themselves - part of the cultural fabric of New York - there's no better backdrop. The risk is part of the appeal. Katie and Max weren't interested in playing it safe. They wanted their photos to feel a little dangerous, a little rebellious, very New York. So we showed up with my smallest, most discreet camera, dressed to blend in as much as possible (though Katie's showstopping dress made that nearly impossible), and moved through the museum like we belonged there. The key to pulling this off is confidence and speed. Act like a couple who just happens to be visiting the museum, move quickly, don't draw attention. The docents are looking for tripods and professional lighting setups, not a photographer with a small camera capturing candid moments.

A quintessential New York moment - stopping at a street food cart between locations

Katie arrived with a garment bag that could have clothed a small bridal party. Three complete outfit changes: the strapless white dress with the dramatic bow on the back for the Met, a chic teddy coat and sunglasses for the Upper East Side and Central Park, and a sharp white blazer with a plunging neckline for downtown. Each look had a distinct energy - editorial elegance at the museum, uptown sophistication in the park, downtown cool in Tribeca and Brooklyn. We were going for a 90s editorial aesthetic, the kind of effortless glamour you'd find in vintage Vogue or Harper's Bazaar spreads. Think Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista walking through the city like they owned it. Max, bless him, brought zero outfit changes. He wore a perfectly tailored suit and let Katie be the star. His patience was remarkable - waiting while she changed in museum bathrooms and back seats of cars, never once looking annoyed. Their dynamic was playful and easy. Katie's effervescence was contagious. She moved through the day with the energy of someone who genuinely loved being photographed, who understood that we were making something special together. Max grounded her, patient and steady, smiling at her antics, game for whatever came next.

Max flagging down a taxi on the cobblestones of Tribeca - effortless New York sophistication

Max on the streets of Tribeca - classic New York cool

After we'd pushed our luck at the Met as far as we dared, we spilled out onto Fifth Avenue and made our way to Central Park. A quick stop for outfit change number two, then we wandered through the park capturing that uptown elegance. From there, we headed downtown to Tribeca - Katie in her third look, both of them ready for the grittier, more industrial aesthetic of lower Manhattan. Tribeca gave us cobblestone streets, cast-iron architecture, and that perfect late afternoon light that makes everything look cinematic. We stopped at a food truck (because that's what you do in New York), Max hailed a cab with the ease of someone who's done it a thousand times, and then we drove across the Brooklyn Bridge as the sun started to set. There's something about moving through multiple neighborhoods in a single session that captures the full breadth of what New York is. It's not just one thing - it's elegant museums and street food, uptown sophistication and downtown grit, Manhattan and Brooklyn, monuments and everyday moments all woven together. That's what makes it New York.

Walking the cobblestone streets of Tribeca in Katie's second look

There's a particular energy that comes from shooting in places where you're not entirely sure you're allowed to be. Everything becomes more urgent, more alive. You move faster, you're more present, you take risks you wouldn't otherwise take. Katie and Max embraced this completely. The need to be inconspicuous at the Met somehow made them more natural, more themselves. When you can't pose for long, when you have to keep moving, the photos end up feeling less staged and more documentary. It's the opposite of a controlled studio environment, and for the right couple, that chaos creates magic. This approach isn't for everyone. It requires couples who are game for adventure, who don't need everything to be perfectly planned, who can laugh when things go sideways. But for Katie and Max, the guerrilla style of moving through the city, changing locations and looks, shooting quickly and quietly when necessary and more boldly when we could - it all added up to something that felt authentically them and authentically New York.

A quiet moment in the back of the car between neighborhoods

Driving across the Brooklyn Bridge - Manhattan to Brooklyn in minutes

Winter Engagement Session in Central Park: Timeless Romance in January

Maggie and Tyler at the Lake in Central Park, with The San Remo towers on the Upper West Side skyline

For good reason, the budding flowers of spring, the lush green of summer and the vibrant foliage of fall are more popular engagement photography backdrops than a blustery winter day. But Maggie & Tyler were excited to be newly engaged and didn’t want to wait. They were also planning a New Year’s Eve wedding, so taking engagement photos in January wasn’t at all that intimidating for these two. First we went to the iconic Bethesda Terrace where they bravely shed their coats for a few shots, then we walked over to Bow Bridge and documented some romance with coats on. We finished up at Tavern on The Green where we didn’t really take photos so much as down some libations to get us warm. The timeless styling of their looks reminded me of scenes of Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford in front of The Plaza in The Way We Were. The soft gray winter light truly brought out something beautiful in these two.

Maggie and Tyler in the warmth of Bethesda Terrace Arcade, Central Park - those iconic Minton tiles providing shelter from the January cold

There's something about winter engagement sessions that most couples overlook in their rush to wait for better weather. The light in winter has a quality I can only describe as forgiving - soft and even, with none of summer's harsh shadows or the unpredictability of spring. Central Park in January empties out in a way it never does the rest of the year. The crowds thin, the tourists retreat indoors, and suddenly you have Bow Bridge nearly to yourselves. There's an intimacy that emerges when you're cold together, when you're huddled close not for the camera but because you need each other's warmth. The bare trees reveal the bones of the landscape - the architecture of the park itself becomes visible in ways the lush foliage obscures. And there's something romantic about choosing to be outside in the cold, about the deliberate decision to mark this moment rather than wait for convenience. Winter asks something of you, and couples who say yes to that tend to show up differently. More present. More willing to be vulnerable. More themselves.

A kiss on the Bethesda Terrace steps - where the architecture is as romantic as the moment

Warmth and light in the Bethesda Terrace Arcade - Maggie and Tyler finding shelter from the winter cold

Bethesda Terrace is one of my favorite spots in Central Park any time of year, but in winter it reveals itself differently. The ornate stonework and carved details that get obscured by summer foliage stand out against bare branches and gray sky. The arcade underneath provides not just architectural beauty with those famous Minton tiles, but actual refuge from the wind. We started there because I knew we could duck in and out of the cold, warming up between shots while still getting that grand, romantic Central Park feeling. From there, Bow Bridge was inevitable - it's perhaps the most iconic spot in the entire park, and in winter, with the mist rising off the lake and the Central Park South skyline soft in the distance, it feels like stepping into an old film. The cast iron railings, the gentle arch of the bridge, the way it frames the city behind you - it's pure magic. We finished at Tavern on the Green not so much for photos as for survival. By that point we'd been outside for over an hour and the cold had seeped into our bones. Hot toddies and laughter in a warm room felt like the only logical conclusion to our winter adventure.

A stolen kiss on Bow Bridge with the Central Park South skyline disappearing into the winter mist

What struck me most about Maggie and Tyler was how effortlessly elegant they were. Maggie's white pleated dress with the dramatic bell sleeves, Tyler's classic camel and navy - they looked like they'd stepped out of a 1970s film. There was something about the soft neutrals and clean lines that felt both completely contemporary and utterly timeless. When I watched them together on Bow Bridge, I kept thinking of Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford in The Way We Were - that same kind of classic, understated romance. They were planning a New Year's Eve wedding, which made perfect sense for them. There's something about couples who choose threshold moments like New Year's Eve - they understand symbolism, they're drawn to beginnings and transformations. They weren't interested in a big production or an over-the-top celebration. They wanted intimacy, meaning, and a party with their closest people as one year became another. That sensibility showed up in everything, including their willingness to brave January in Central Park for engagement photos. They trusted the process, trusted the aesthetic, and showed up fully even when it meant being cold.

Maggie and Tyler on Bow Bridge as the sun begins to set over Central Park South

There's a particular rhythm to shooting in winter that I've come to love. You have to work quickly, but not frantically. You need to read your couple's comfort level constantly - watching for the moment when cold shifts from invigorating to miserable. I've learned to find the warm pockets: the arcade at Bethesda, the sheltered side of Bow Bridge, anywhere the wind can't quite reach you. I keep sessions shorter and more focused. There's no lingering, no endless wandering. We move with intention from spot to spot, and somehow that urgency brings out something beautiful. Couples are more present when they're cold together. There's less self-consciousness, more genuine closeness. They hold each other because they need to, not because I've asked them to. And there's something about knowing you'll warm up together afterward - that shared reward of hot drinks and the glow of having done something slightly challenging - that bonds people. Winter engagement sessions aren't for everyone. But for couples like Maggie and Tyler who are willing to say yes to the cold, who trust that the soft gray light and bare trees will be worth it, the results are always more intimate and honest than I could have orchestrated any other way.

Lost in each other by the Lake - the kind of moment that makes you forget about the cold

Maggie and Tyler returned to celebrate their New Year's Eve wedding at the Garden City Hotel. View the complete wedding gallery here.

Dream Weaving and how it Inspires Your Wedding Photography

It was sometime late in 2019, we didn’t know it yet, but lockdown loomed right around the corner. I had been practicing yoga for almost a decade, and teaching for about half that. I had gone deep down the rabbit hole of trying to crack the elusive secrets of enlightenment. I had not succeeded. I knew it had something to do with heightened consciousness. I was reading various mystical texts and comparing notes to see where there was overlap and what it could possibly all mean. At the time I had my own studio on the outskirts of Ridgewood. I lived with the most curious view out my window there, in fact it was what sold me on the space: an iridescent gray wall, slightly lower than my eye-line, covered in ivy for half the year with a strip of sky above. Sometimes the sky was a bright blue and the wall a deep green, other times the leaves were gone and gray wall bled into gray sky. It was like a living Rothko. Sitting thus, staring out the window, a thought shot into my head like a rocket: I need to know more about lucid dreaming.

I quickly searched for a podcast or something to keep me company while I edited a wedding. Lucid dreaming is the experience and practice of being consciously aware that you are having a dream and so lucid to make choices about what to do and what experiences to have in the dream. Anyone can lucid dream. In fact we’re pretty sure everyone does, especially when we’re children. Some lucky dreamers, like my sisters, latch on to the experience and learn quite young how to walk in the dream lands. Others of us, myself included, become briefly aware before slipping immediately back into normal dreaming. Not being a natural lucid dreaming, I applied my obsessive hyper focus to the task. All of this obsession coincided quite beautifully with the start of quarantine. In the deep quiet of lockdown, while my weddings were indefinitely on hiatus, I spent my quarantine learning to fly.

The foundation of all dreamwork is intention paired with a journal. One intends to become lucid then takes obsequious notes. Intention can come in many forms: mantra, writing, repetition. Sometimes it’s as simple as a whispered prayer before bed. For me it meant hours of focused meditation and lots and lots of sleep. Prior to finding lucid dreaming I had spent some time listening to Abraham Hicks (iykyk) whose teachings on manifestation and intention I found seductive, yet questionable. She did drill into me that intention is linked to vibration, to a feeling. Dreamwork, lucid dreaming in particular, will humble you. You quickly learn the difference between saying ‘tonight I will fly in my dreams’ vs ‘tonight I will try to fly’. One has you soaring, the other has you jumping up and down repeatedly on a roof, unable to stay a loft. But more than that, your subconscious is like an ocean, and in order to swim there you need to be able to navigate the waters.

My photography, especially my personal work, has always lived in the realm of magical realism, dreaming & memory, but it wasn’t until I dove into the realm of my dreams that I realized I didn't have firm footing in the language of the subconscious. I would set an intention, and lucid or not, my dreams would respond to me, only none of it made any sense. And worse, as I intended (and often succeeded) more and more to become lucid, I started having nightmares. It became clear that there was material in my subconscious that needed to be examined and excavated before I could fly freely. I realized I needed a new approach.

I read some books on how to interpret dreams and I listened to many more podcasts. Eventually I found my teacher. A woman based on the west coast who teaches a form of dream work with roots in animism and bee shamanism. She taught a technique in which we gather in a circle, close our eyes and in the darkness, allow each other’s dreams to unfold in our mind’s eye. Your dream becomes my dream. I feel it, see it, hear it and then I mirror it back to you. It’s a form of embodied knowing that can only be taught through experience, but once known is yours forever.

I spent hours receiving and mirroring dreams, and having my own mirrored back. It’s deep and profound work that has healed me in ways I’m deeply grateful for. I also started to think about how memory, dreams and ultimately photography are really very similar. Catching dreams is like catching fish, it takes time and patience and they’re easily scared away. When you wake from a dream, you’re lucky to bring back a few complete scenes, more often you come back with fragments of images you can’t fully grasp. We think of photographs as complete memories. A good photograph has the ability to take you immediately back to a place and time, it’s like a key that unlocks door in your mind and the feeling come flood back in. But photographs are recorded in fractions of seconds. When I photograph a scene, no matter how many photos I take, all I’m able to bring back is mere slivers of what was and if I’m lucky I can try to make a little of sense of where I felt called to point the camera.

The goal of lucid dreaming is become more conscious, or perhaps we could say, more present. One of the practices given to beginners, but really to all lucid dreamers is to walk around your waking life and be curious if you’re awake or if you’re dreaming. How do you know? It’s a question that calls you into the present moment, that calls you to feel into your felt body and senses with rapt curiosity. One technique I learned was to take a meditation walk and for the duration of that walk pretend that you’re dreaming and take note of anything unusual. The idea is that when you’re dreaming later that night you might find yourself similarly questioning your environment and find yourself lucidly aware. It’s in this way that we start to walk with one foot in the conscious realm and one foot in the unconscious. A way of bridging the gap between worlds.

Weddings are liminal spaces where time feels like it stands still and for me as the photographer, the invitation is to be fully present to all of it. I’ve bring this meditation practice into my work. I walk around a wedding playfully imagining all of it might be a dream, which in many way, it is. I feel into the surreal and the symbolic from an embodied place and felt space, a deepening of my sense of knowing that goes beyond words. This is an active practice of mine. I faithfully record my dreams every morning and reflect on them throughout the day, and I walk in the waking world with one foot in the dream.

Read more about how dreamwork led me to Turkey for a Sufi ceremony where I photographed an unexpected wedding and shaped the origins of my approach to wedding photography. The winter solstice is another liminal time for deep dreamwork and reflection.

Editorial vs DocumentaryWedding Photography and why you can have both…

One of the things that makes wedding photography so fulfilling as a career is that it requires so much of me. It’s not enough just to make a great picture. I have to a be a master of documentary style moments, still life & detail, well-lit and composed portraits, not to mention perfecting the art of the group portrait (but here again the level of difficulty is raised to the extreme, it’s not one group photo perfectly composed and lit, but twenty, shot in quick succession). Everything is moving so quickly, including the light which tends to shift with every scene.

It took time to develop my skills and not all of them were photographic in nature. When I was younger and more exquisitely shy, I was content to sit back and watch the day unfold around me like a movie. I rarely wanted to interject myself. I liked to watch my couples, especially their gestures and body language. I would direct as quietly and simply as possible. Wall-flower-esque, clad in all black, I would slip between guests doing my best to disappear entirely, to become merely a set of eyes, a ninja wielding a camera instead of a sword. Directing the formal portraiture was quietly, intensely humbling. I promised my couples that once the portraits were over the schedule would be down hill. It occurs to me now, it was myself that needed reassurance. I would photograph all day in a frenzy, and then later, at home where I had more time to think, I would edit everything down, slowly watching the story coalesce.

Eventually, as my experience increased, my insecurities dropped away. I honed my photographic muscles until I didn’t have to overthink my choice of where to stand to get the best perspective, or what to say to get an awkward feeling groom to feel at ease. My yoga practice spilled over into my wedding practice. I started setting aside an hour before each wedding to meditate. I would repeat a mantra over and over again, “Spirit, move me in the direction of the bride and groom today. Move my feet, move my body, move my heart, move my mind.” It was an experiment in surrender. I gave myself over to the flow, and, trusting that the experience was part of the fabric of my being now, I let my intuition lead the way. Miracles followed. I began to find myself exactly where I was needed at the exact perfect moment, and my brain, previously awash with questions and doubts became blessedly quiet. I began to write the story of the day more clearly, and in present time.

As my focus became sharper and quicker, what began to fill in the silence were ideas. I became less of a silent observer and more of an editorial storyteller with a clear point of view: What if I tell the story from this angle? What if this part of the day is seen through the guests’ eyes? What if we shoot on this side of the room where the light is so magical? What would happen if you went and stood in front of those columns and danced for me? Maybe I could slow the traffic down behind you so it looks like you’re frozen in time? Let’s wait for a yellow cab to pass behind you to capture the ambiance of the city.

My meditations grew beyond the mantras. In the days leading up to each wedding, instead of merely fretting over the schedule and portraits lists, I began to daydream about the couple and the venue. I let ideas float around in my consciousness, envisioning how the day might unfold. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to walk the grounds of the venue in person, often I find myself walking in my imagination, feeling into what’s coming.

I grew into the role of director of grand cinematic moments when called for while easily donning my documentary, ninja mask in the quieter moments. What results is a weave, a dance between editorial and reportage styles of photography, woven out of my many years of experience and your love, then channeled via an ever mysterious alchemy through my lens.

Origins, or, the making of a fine art wedding photographer

Grandma peeling an orange, taken while I was in high school circa 2002

I’m around twelve years when my dad first hands me his camera. I had taken pictures before this, of course, but I have no memory of those. On this day, standing in the back driveway, looking through his viewfinder, I feel something essential shift inside of myself. A feeling I can only describe as ‘ah, let me just show you.’ A feeling that I could finally be understood in a way that prior to this, I didn’t know I had been missing. I had found my instrument.

I remember telling my mother immediately that I was to be a photographer. I can’t say she fully believed how monumental a moment this was for me, but she did enroll me in the first darkroom class that she could find. And, to my complete and utter frustration, art classes followed. Because in my mother’s house if I was going to do something, I was going to do it well. I spent the better part of my free time over the next ten years in the dim red glow of a darkroom.

How can I describe the miracle, witnessed over and over again, of an image emerging from nothingness onto a of piece of paper floating impatiently in a pool of developer?

I was (am) obsessed with photography. When not in the darkroom I spent hours on the floor of the library pouring over photography books. My need to understand how to see was insatiable. I thought about nothing else. These were my college years when I had that luxury, an early exposure to a life dedicated to art and light. Internships in prestigious photography galleries and lowly assistantships in the studios of my idols followed. I took on my first wedding before I even graduated with my photography degree. Can you really capture a memory in light? I needed to know.

Marlee, from my senior thesis circa 2006

I heard the siren song calling to me. Weddings were magic and they were terrifying, each one an epic playground of chaos and joy. They required me to learn how to play my instrument to the best of my ability. I needed an arsenal of techniques to rely on. I needed speed. I needed to be able to feel my way through the music of the day. It was a grueling learning process but I thrived under the onslaught of intensity. The photos were my sweet reward.

And then it all caught up to me. Because while I knew to the tip of my soul how to take a great picture, serving brides, meeting all their expectations as a young woman with no business sense, well that really took it out of me. It would be many more years before I gathered all the skills to handle the emotional weight of a wedding.

Stephanie, 2018

Somewhere in the midst of all this, my mother passed away. I was only twenty eight and I couldn’t make much sense of any of it. My life already felt a bit off track. Or rather, I had lost sight of the track entirely. I was working for an art handling company, trying to get my bearings, but mostly partying and dancing till dawn. I had sworn off weddings entirely. But when I returned to my desk after the funeral everything felt so wrong. I was overwhelmed with the knowing that I couldn’t sit at this desk any longer. There were wounds, old and new, that suddenly felt urgent to heal. With all of the energy and abandon I had previously poured into photography, I started obsessively studying spirituality. I had so many questions; I felt convinced the answers lay hidden in the secrets of enlightenment (grief dressed up as an existential crisis). It was my certification in yoga that brought me back to my calling. I wanted to dedicate my life to meditation and practice, but I needed a career that could support me. Sitting on the beach, staring out at the ocean, I thought to myself: I need to shoot weddings again. The following week I received an email from an old friend asking if I’d document her wedding. The universe was listening.

Self portrait, 2024

In the ten years since that moment on the beach I have received three yoga certifications before turning my attention to studying dreaming and archetypal symbolism such as the tarot. I don’t know what will grab my fixation next, but all of this learning and healing is fuel for my work. I’ve come to see myself as a sort of medium. I open myself to the experience of your wedding. I open myself to the feelings, to the sounds, to the music and rhythm. I open myself to the nerves and the excitement, the joy and the grief. I let myself feel all of it with you, and, through an alchemy I’ll never fully I understand, I channel those feelings into your photos. It is an honor, a blessing to serve as sacred witness for one of life’s most important rites of passage.

You can read more about how dreamwork informs my wedding photography and how it led me to photograph a wedding during a sacred Sufi ceremony in Turkey.

From bride to motherhood, and the photos that marked the way…

I first met Rachel and Ron in the heart of lockdown. They planned a tiny wedding on a terrace at the Bowery Hotel conducted over zoom as was the only way at the time. It was joyous and exuberant and oddly perfect for them. Lockdown gave a small handful of couples permission to truly lean into the unorthodox. Couples who could never have gotten away with small weddings of one or two guests truly shined. Rachel glowed.

A few years passed, Rachel was all aglow again, this time with the unmistakable beauty of a mother to be. The pregnancy path was not easy so it felt right to document the moment with photos. She and Ron came to my studio in Brooklyn. I got to hear about how their lives had changed since the wedding, how excited they were for the baby to join them. I got to witness Rachel, again, in all the glory of this rite of passage.

It was only a few months before I got to meeting baby Liv. We waited until she was out of the infancy stage when I could witness her personality start to take shape. A relationship with her mother already in bloom. My own mother passed away over a decade ago. I often think of her now. I’m in the middle of my life and it’s unclear if I too will be mother, but I wonder what her maternity time was like for her anyway. I wonder what she looked like and how she felt. I like to imagine Liv discovering these photos in twenty or thirty years. Imagining who her mother was before she knew her. Piecing together the story of herself and getting to experience this moment through her mother’s (and my) eyes.

So much about the work I do is about marking the important moments in your lives. It’s about witnessing your intimacy and allowing me to be in on the secret of it all, to live through it with you if only for a brief moment, a deep intimacy built in short bursts.

Alex and Mike's engagement session on Asbury Park's shores - where classical romance meets the timeless pull of the ocean

Alex & Mike during golden hour on the jetty rocks - Asbury Park's rugged coastline at its most romantic

I've always thought there's something mythological about couples photographed by the sea. Maybe it's the ancient pull of water, the way humans have always been drawn to coastlines, the way every culture has stories about what lives beneath the waves. Alex in her olive dress against those dark rocks, Mike's hand steady on her waist - there was something timeless about it, something that could have been photographed a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now. The ocean doesn't care about trends or aesthetics. It just is. And when you photograph people against it, they become part of that permanence.

Asbury Park's iconic Convention Hall overlooking the beach where Alex and Mike first met

There's something about the Jersey Shore that exists outside of reality television and summer tourist crowds. Asbury Park in particular holds a kind of magic - Bruce Springsteen magic, if you will - that belongs to the people who actually live here, who know the boardwalk in every season, who understand that the ocean isn't just a backdrop but a presence. Alex and Mike are those people. Alex's mother orchestrated it, inviting Mike without telling him Alex would be there. Sparks flew immediately. They were both beach lovers, both drawn to the water, both rooted in this particular stretch of New Jersey coastline. For their engagement session, there was nowhere else that made sense.

Barefoot on the rocks where the ocean meets the shore - pure Asbury Park magic

The afternoon light in Asbury Park has a particular quality in late summer. It's softer than you'd expect, filtered through ocean haze and the salt air. We started on the boardwalk where the iconic Convention Hall looms over the beach, that massive beaux-arts structure that's survived hurricanes and decades of changing tides. The boardwalk was alive with people - families eating ice cream, teenagers on bikes, couples strolling hand in hand. Alex and Mike moved through it all with ease, their nervous energy from earlier dissolving into something more natural. There's a comfort that comes from being photographed in a place you know intimately, where you don't have to perform being yourself because you already are.

Alex and Mike on the Asbury Park boardwalk - where the Jersey Shore meets timeless summer romance

But the real magic happened when we made our way down to the jetty. The rocks there are dark and volcanic-looking, creating this dramatic contrast against the pale sand and blue-green water. At low tide, tidal pools form in the crevices, little ecosystems of their own. Alex kicked off her shoes immediately - those rocks are treacherous in heels - and Mike followed suit. There's something about being barefoot on rocks by the ocean that strips away pretense. You have to pay attention to where you're stepping, you have to hold on to each other for balance, you have to be present. The camera-shyness Alex had worried about simply evaporated. She wasn't thinking about being photographed anymore; she was just navigating the rocks with Mike, laughing when the waves came in closer than expected, settling into the rhythm of the ocean.

Navigating the jetty together - a perfect metaphor captured in black and white

I've always thought there's something mythological about couples photographed by the sea. Maybe it's the ancient pull of water, the way humans have always been drawn to coastlines, the way every culture has stories about what lives beneath the waves. Alex in her olive dress against those dark rocks reminded me equally of a mermaid and Botticelli's Birth of Venus - that same quality of emerging from the ocean, of belonging to it. Mike's hand steady on her waist, grounding her to the earth while she seemed to float between worlds. There was something timeless about it, something that could have been photographed a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now. The ocean doesn't care about trends or aesthetics. It just is. And when you photograph people against it, they become part of that permanence.

As the sun started its descent, the light turned golden and warm, that brief perfect window before sunset when everything glows. We moved from the jetty back to the open beach. Convention Hall rose behind them, that grand old building that's been watching over Asbury Park since 1930, through prohibition and rock and roll and revival. The beach was emptying out, just a few stragglers left. Alex and Mike walked along the water's edge, waves lapping at their feet, completely at ease now. This was their beach, their town, their story.

Walking into their future on the sands of Asbury Park

What makes Asbury Park such a perfect location for engagement photography isn't just the iconic architecture or the beautiful beaches - though those certainly help. It's that the place has soul. It's been through cycles of boom and decay and renaissance. It's gritty and beautiful at once. The boardwalk still has that old-school Jersey Shore charm, but it's mixed with new restaurants and music venues and an arts scene that draws creative people from all over. For couples like Alex and Mike who are rooted here, who built their relationship in this place, the photographs carry all of that history and texture. You're not just capturing two people in love; you're capturing them in their context, their landscape, their home.

By the time we finished, Alex wasn't nervous anymore. She'd forgotten to be. That's what happens when you photograph people in a place they love, doing something as simple as walking on a beach they've walked a thousand times before. The engagement session did exactly what it was meant to do - it built trust, it helped them understand how I work, it showed them they could be themselves in front of the camera. More importantly, it gave them images of this moment in their lives, newly engaged, standing at the edge of the ocean in the place where their story began. Little did we know that when their wedding day came, we'd return to the water again. But that's a story for another time.

Alex and Mike returned to the water for their wedding at Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club on Long Beach Island. View the complete wedding gallery here.

Kiss Your Cameras For Me.

It was the most unexpected surprise. I had traveled all the way to Turkey for a mystical dream come true - to dance five days with the Sufi dervishes. The journey there was one of those arduous treks where nothing flowed quite as smoothly as I wanted. For starters, while dragging my luggage between platforms I watched the A train pull off without me, sentencing me to a twenty minute wait in the five am sweltering heat of July, helplessly sweating into the clothes I would be forced to wear for the next twenty four hours.

I slept in fits and starts. Every time I fell asleep a baby or fellow passenger woke me violently. There was a layover in London, a train to a friend’s, a car back to the airport. Another flight. When I finally touched ground on Turkish soil, I expected relief. Friends of my host were to pick me up and drive me the last leg. I greeted them excitedly, they greeted me indifferently. I had imagined being welcomed with loving arms as an honored guest, sharing notes on how excited we were. Instead, they spoke to each other in Turkish, while I sat silently in the back so tired I could barely string a sentence together in English. Something had been lost in translation, something cultural and beyond my reach. I felt lonely and off center. As omens go, not the best of beginnings.

But of course the journey started long before that. It started two months earlier in a psilocybin ceremony in Brooklyn. It started four months before that at an ecstatic dance retreat in Brazil. It started five years ago when I dove into dreamwork and started letting my dreams be me guides. I guess it really it started ten years ago, still grieving the death of my mother, staring into the ocean on a beach in Ocean City. Where, having just completed a yoga teacher training, in a moment of absolute clarity, I decided the best way to dedicate myself to my spiritual practice was to go back to wedding photography.

What’s important to know is that this trip was not about weddings or wedding photography. I had traveled half way across the world to drop into ecstatic trance, to whirl for hours on end. I didn’t even bring a camera, not really. A friend had gifted me a little toy film camera to play with, so I brought that and two rolls of film. No one here even knew what I did for a living. No one cared. Here, your credentials were based in what kinds of healing art you study and it takes too long to explain how wedding photography qualifies.

The name we use for this ceremony is Sema. Our Sema was to last for five days and nights. The musicians would start playing, they would change every hour, but the music would never cease, and as long as two Semazans were circling, we went on. Sometimes we whirl, sometimes we walk the circle. And always there are people sitting around us in support. When we enter the space, we bow, then we kiss the ground. When we pass the musicians, we bow again.

Sema means many things, but mostly we say it means to listen. So I listened, and I did what I do best as a photographer, I watched. I can’t tell you all of what I witnessed. It’s too sacred. But one thing that caught my heart deeply: each time I watched the musicians pull their beloved instruments from their cases, and each time they put them away, they gave them a little kiss. A gesture of love, so small yet so mighty, imbuing the inanimate with life. As Semazans we bow to the musicians, as musicians we bow to our instruments.

It took me days to settle. Shedding the layers of travel and landing back into myself was a chore. Rather than the bliss I had experienced whirling in Brazil, each time I whirled, I found myself nauseous and shaky. I tried to surrender to the discomfort. I did surrender to it. Slowly I found my rhythm, I walked when I couldn’t whirl.

The energy was intense and indescribable. The music, otherworldly. I could sit and soak in it for hours. I did. Then I would retreat to my room, curl into my pajamas and gush with my roommate about how magical it all was. It was during one of these breaks that we heard a bit of a commotion. We could feel that there was something happening outside of the Sema, but it wasn’t clear what. A passerby asked if we were going to the wedding. What an odd collision of vocation and passion I felt. To be here, so far from the world I know, and suddenly feel compelled to grab my (toy) camera, kiss it and stand in sacred witness. Only in dreams have I photographed a wedding with so little notice. Only in dreams would I show up to a wedding with a toy for a camera. Only in dreams have I photographed a wedding with two brides, and two grooms. Here, where I can’t even understand the words. Yet, where nothing is lost is translation, where I know exactly what to do and where to stand. Here, photographing a wedding, I find myself completely centered and at home.

This journey started with my decision to return to wedding photography as spiritual practice and continues through my dreamwork practice.