Rangefinder Magazine
April 2006

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Profile: Greg Gibson Judith Bell
 

Two-time Pulitzer winner Greg Gibson is one of news journalism’s most successful and recognized photographers to make the move to wedding photojournalism. The real-time coverage of the organic flow of a wedding comes naturally to this Washington, D.C.-based photographer, whose assignments have included three Presidential campaigns, daily White House coverage, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Gulf War, natural disasters, and major sporting events such as the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Masters Golf Tournament. His images have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, Time, LIFE, Newsweek, People and Vanity Fair, among other prestigious publications

Gibson has been involved in photography and news since high school, when he began shooting high school and college sports for the Raleigh News & Observer. In 1984, at 22, he became the youngest state photo editor at United Press International (UPI). Gibson began working for the French news agency, Agence France-Presse, in Washington, D.C., in 1989. He moved to the Associated Press the following year and became a staff photographer in the Washington bureau who was called upon to cover breaking news stories.

Since 2000, with his direct approach and powerful images, Gibson has emerged as one of the mid-Atlantic region’s foremost documentary wedding photographers. I spoke to him recently about his extraordinary career and transition to shooting weddings.

Judith Bell: What was your Washington news experience like?

Greg Gibson: It was exciting work, everything involved an adrenaline rush. The work was competitive. It was like being an athlete in some ways, the challenge to see who made it to print and who didn’t.

JB: When did your first big break come?

GG: When I was 28, I had my first overseas trip with the press on Air Force One. I was in the motorcade pool, which meant I went everywhere President Bush did. We went to Eastern Europe right before the fall of Communism. In Budapest I made a picture of him running in the park surrounded by Hungarians, and he seemed to be flying through the crowd. I was with my boss the next morning when we were en route to Poland. He showed me faxed copies of the Washington Post and The New York Times, and both papers had run my picture. In Poland, we covered events with Lech Walesa. I took a picture of Walesa and Bush from the back of stage. Again I had the first page of both papers again on consecutive days.

JB: Is there a moment that stands out during this period as a high point for you?

GG: Probably 1996, visiting the Mississippi flooding damage with Clinton. A young girl broke down in tears and hugged the President; he hugged her back. I was at the right place, at the right angle. Every major paper carried the image on the front page the next day. I was given a standing ovation when I came into the briefing room at the White House that morning.

JB: When did you realize you wanted to leave this work?

GG:In 1999 with the Monica Lewinsky scandal—the press coverage became tabloid-like with its stakeouts. In my 12 years in Washington, there had never been a sex scandal. My epiphany came during a stakeout for Monica. She was staying at the Mayflower Hotel, her attorney’s office across the street. Outside waiting for her there were probably 60 press people, mostly camera, both TV and stills.

She came out with 12 bodyguards, and the biggest, ugliest scrum ensued. With this story people were trying to manipulate the images and the press. There was a private parking garage under the hotel and under the attorney’s office building. All she really had to do was go to the garage, get in a car, and drive around the block into another garage. And no one would have ever seen her. But her attorney wanted her to be viewed as a victim. What better way than to show them walking across the street in a media scrum? Halfway across Connecticut Avenue I stopped and asked myself what I was doing. I realized I wanted to find something else to do.

JB: What came next?

GG: I took a leave of absence for 24 months and worked with an Internet service provider for a year. The 2000 campaign was coming up, and I knew that would take me away from home for eight months or so. I had three young children who were at the age where they knew when I was gone. For two years I didn’t own a camera beyond the Nikon point and shoot for snaps of my kids.

JB: How did your move to wedding photography come about?

GG: The tech bubble burst, I was laid off. I knew I didn’t want to go back to journalism. I had worked with Matt Mendelsohn at UPI, he’d been a wedding photographer for five years. I happened to run into him. He told me about the documentary trend in weddings, showed me the great work he was doing, told me how much he enjoyed it.

Two days later he called asking if I was ready; he wanted to send me referrals for the days he was already booked for. I told him, “I guess I’m ready.” I had never shot a wedding. I found a few friends who were marrying and shot their weddings for free to get a book together and bought some equipment.

JB: This was the perfect moment to make this career move.

GG: Yes, it was the end of the perfectly lit, perfectly posed, immaculate wedding photograph. People didn’t want fabricated memories, they wanted to record mood and feelings and emotions of the day. The field that began with Denis Reggie has attracted many photojournalists who approach a wedding the same way they approach a news story. I would never have gone into this work if I was shooting the traditional approach. But this style was so natural to me, and I found real enjoyment in the work.

JB: How do you approach a wedding assignment?

GG: My clients are professional people, they want to enjoy their day and not be encumbered by posing for pictures. They want to record the day, the real feelings they share with their friends and family members. My experience gives my work instant credibility. I try to take advantage of the resources at a wedding. If a bride is getting dressed in an area with bad light I may say, “Can we come over here and do this?” But I don’t try to create moments, or impose something on their day by saying, “Let me get you and your mother hugging.” I try to let those things happen spontaneously and use my background and experience to put myself in the right position to anticipate those moments.

JB: How do you establish the rapport that lets the subjects become un-self-conscious?

GG: I’m not a true fly on the wall. I do interact with the client. There are two camps of photojournalists—ones who want to be totally invisible—they don’t talk or interact. I’m definitely in the other camp. I laugh and joke with the client, get them to relax with my presence. We’re going to spend a lot of time together, and I don’t want them to feel like there’s a stranger in the room. If I find myself constantly in conversations with the bride and family members, then I withdraw a bit. I don’t want to be talking and not taking photos.

JB: What about the adrenaline in documentary photography? Does that come into play here?

GG: I was an athlete growing up, so I sparked to the competitive element in journalism. There was no bigger thrill in journalism than to be doing an assignment with 10 other photographers. And you find that one angle, and you walk away with the picture no one else got.

In wedding photography it’s different. I am technically challenged throughout the day and situations and moments in a way that I wasn’t in journalism. Especially in Washington, where things are lit for television, you fall into a routine of doing things in a specific way, the exposures you shoot. With a wedding you really have to think about lighting, exposure, compositions. The rush comes from being able to pull off really nice pictures.

JB: What’s a challenge you’ve identified?

GG: I’m envious of the wedding photographers working in California who are shooting weddings on the beach with incredible nature as a backdrop. The reality for most photographers is shooting a wedding at the local Methodist Church, then photographing a reception at a hotel ballroom and making unique beautiful pictures out of that.

JB: How do you do that when it’s the ugliest room in the world?

GG: The wedding in its most basic terms is really a day of emotions. You want to try to focus on the interactions of the participants.

JB: Looking at your work, I do feel like I’m inside the relationships.

GG:That is the goal. Some of the nicest compliments I’ve received are that looking at my work people feel like they are a guest, like they know these people being married.

JB: Have you photographed people marrying in unusual ways?

GG:I wish I could say that, but they’re all very similar. That’s one of the challenges of doing weddings. All weddings are alike: There’s a man and a woman in love; they’re going to have this big party; there’s the anticipation, the preparation, the ceremony, the party. It’s like that movie Groundhog Day. But the challenge is to find the nuances in each one.

JB: Is that what keeps you going back to Groundhog Day?

GG: (laughter) Yes, it’s fun. When I go to a wedding, people are always glad to see me. I’m welcomed in. As a journalist that isn’t always the case. Monica wasn’t happy to see me when I showed up at the Mayflower Hotel.

JB: How many weddings do you shoot annually?

GG: Forty to 50, that’s a medium amount. I’ve been in this field three years. I like to shoot every week. It keeps my eye sharp. The more weddings I do, the more word of mouth I get. I don’t advertise. It’s networking through clients and with other photographers and trading referrals that brings the work.

JB: Has there been some exposure you received that was incredibly valuable?

GG: After my first year shooting, I was chosen by Washingtonian magazine’s Wedding Guide as one of their recommended photographers.

JB: Do you use assistants?

GG: I use one. Half the weddings I shoot by myself. I worked in journalism by myself for 20 years. I’m accustomed to setting up my own gear, doing it myself.

JB: And life is calmer now?

GG: Yes, calmer. It’s interesting. News photography has become more mass-produced, with Getty and Corvis getting involved, and in many ways it’s become marginalized, so photographers aren’t making much money anymore.

There’s been a shakeout in editorial over the last five years. I frequently get calls from news photographers looking for alternatives in photography. If you’d ask me five years ago whether I would be doing weddings, I would have laughed at you. Journalists put themselves up on this pedestal—we’re doing photography for the greater good. We see weddings somewhere on a lower rung. At first I would see other photographers and they would say, “I talked to Matt, and he says you’re going to be shooting weddings… is that true?” I would kind of grimace and say I wasn’t sure. Matt called me and said, “Are you doing this or not because I’m spreading the word to send you business.” It was hard to admit at first, but I love it now. I’m happy with the decision I made.

JB: Do you think this stigma you initially perceived has changed?

GG: I don’t think it’s changed, but I do think that barrier is coming down. There are a number of former photojournalists working in the field now. Matt Mendelsohn, of course (United Press International and USA Today), Amy Deputy (Baltimore Sun), Huy Nguyen (Dallas Morning News), Cliff Mautner (Philadelphia Inquirer), Mike O’Bryon (Miami Herald), and Alan Weiner (New York Times)—these are a few that come to mind. This is certainly not a comprehensive list.

JB: Since changing directions, are there photojournalistic assignments that have come your way that have tempted you?

GG: I was asked to cover the second Persian Gulf War, The inauguration, the Reagan funeral. All the additional security and the lead time you need to get a position now, post 9/11, makes something like the presidential funeral, even though it is history, an enormous effort. But I do regret not covering the second war. The access was so different. When I was covering the first one, the Pentagon and military wanted nothing to do with the media. The second time there was this great working relationship.

JB: Is there one overriding lesson you carry from your photojournalistic experience that continues to resonate for you?

GG: In journalism we focus on one best picture. With big stories, newspapers don’t run a lot of visuals. You knew if you didn’t make it, the guy next to you would, and you wouldn’t be in print, and your boss would be asking why.

On a day trip to Bosnia with President Clinton, we were visiting troops in four countries in one day—Italy, Bosnia, Croatia and Hungary. At a remote military outpost in Croatia, in back of a sandbagged building was a soldier with a .50 caliber machine gun. Clinton went into the building. We were all trying to get around to the other side, but we were surrounded by staff and security.

I got grabbed by a security guard and didn’t make it, but my competitor did. I thought I’d missed the picture of the trip, and I wasn’t letting it go. At the next event Clinton and General Wesley Clark walked into a scene with thousands of troops on each side. I shot him walking straight toward me. Next day all the pictures that ran were shot from the side of this ocean of troops. I’d missed that image because I was so mad about the former shot. You have to keep yourself open.

One of my first weddings, I was shooting a toast and the dad turned away from me when he raised the glass. I beat myself up because I was suddenly out of position and didn’t get the shot. I had to change my thinking and learn to focus on the story of the day. If you happen to miss a picture, don’t get bogged down in it, because something else is coming up and if you’re stuck and overly attached to the outcome, you’ll miss what’s next.

To see more of Greg’s photography, visit www.greggibson.com.