Profile: Brian Crain by Lou Jacobs Jr.
Fashionable Weddings

Like many photographers I’ve interviewed, Brian Crain’s first photographic influence was his father who had a small darkroom when Brian was in high school. “Dad did hobbyist portraits of family and friends,” he recalls. Later when he attended Louisiana State University (LSU) he took a couple of photography courses and “really started to get a feel for what photography is. I knew I wanted to get into it somewhere, but had no idea where that could lead,” Brian says.

After a year at LSU, Brian joined the Navy where a photography position was offered him and he jumped at it. “Later I found photography positions don’t come up very often,” he says. The Navy sent him to their renowned photography training facility at Pensacola, FL, in 1988. “I finally got a lot of the technical background,” Brian explains. “At LSU the emphasis was more artistic. The Navy approach was pretty regimented, but it wasn’t like we were training for combat.

“On my first ship, the USS Constellation, I did a little bit of everything: shooting, darkroom work, finishing, etc. We had a full studio and lab, and the photo crew ranged from 16 to 25 men.

“After a couple of years the Constellation went into dry-dock for an overhaul and most of the crew transferred to the USS Kitty Hawk where we had to build a lab from the ground up. We did get to travel to a lot of interesting places on three continents and we documented port visits, but had good chances to shoot for ourselves. When at sea, we did everything from portraits of the captain and department heads to shooting flight operations—it was an aircraft carrier. But there were no weddings.”

After five years in the Navy, Brian took a photography job as a photo lab job manager at a studio back home in Baton Rouge, LA.

“I was hired primarily to manage a small in-house lab,” he states, “but quickly found opportunities to shoot just about anything I chose to do. We photographed sports, senior portraits, schools events and a few weddings. At the time wedding photography was very traditional and wasn’t my favorite, but I did it. I was also learning a much different side of photography—the business side. It was a real contrast to the Navy that just insisted we stay within a specified budget.

“We used both medium-format Hasselblads and 35mm cameras. After a few years the studio purchased a digital printer, and it was then that my creativity began to expand past the point of doing just what was expected.

“When digital imaging began creeping into our area, I became fascinated and left the studio to start my own business, but during the transition, I managed the digital department at a regional lab. I had only limited knowledge of the digital process, but it was probably more than anybody else in town knew then.

“When I didn’t pick up a camera for several months, it became very clear to me that I should stay a photographer. Photoshop seemed complicated and the technical side of the digital process, though fascinating, quickly gave way to my more artistic side. Like a lot of other photographers, I taught myself as I went along, and was happy that I could pick up new things rather quickly. Today I wouldn’t know what to do without Photoshop.”

Once Brian was on his own, he concentrated on high school sports and seniors, and became a favorite in the local youth market because he used digital capture and was able to give his customers something new.

“But I didn’t want to shoot seniors full time,” he says. “I wanted my creativity to be more challenged. When my cash flow improved considerably, I really wanted to photograph fashion, but that market was very skimpy in this area. I was not drawn to shooting weddings at first because at the studio where I had worked, the experience was very ‘cookie-cutter.’ I was expected to take pretty much the same shots at every wedding. But in my own business I had freedom to experiment. I saw a growing trend in photographing weddings in a photojournalist style. Of course, I was fascinated by what Denis Reggie had begun, since he was from a small town only about an hour away.

“Actually, when I went on my own I had a hard time at first because I really liked photographing just about everything, and trying to market myself as a good all-around photographer was difficult. My resources and concentration were too spread out. But when I decided to develop weddings as a specialty, business began to be more stable. I was also learning that I can be very good at what I do, but unless you get your name in front of people, you won’t be doing it very long. So weddings became my specialty. I’d always liked doing bridal portraits, and the creative freedom I then enjoyed was stimulating. Now I love capturing the story of the actual wedding.

“I also wanted to do more fashion work, but I found that doing fashion within my weddings quickly set me apart from other photographers in my region. By combining a fashion approach in my bridal shoots I could satisfy my creative side, and get paid to do it rather than just shoot fashion for my portfolio. I now target brides who want a more stylish, trendy wedding with designer gowns rather than the standard fare at bridal shops. Those brides and weddings keep me motivated, and I find that couples choose me not only because I am easy to work with, but also because I’m different than most wedding photographers.

“After the journalistic style became popular, I found that a lot of photographers were looking for the same shots, only now they are getting the back of the bride’s dress instead of the bride and groom cutting the cake and smiling at the camera, for example. I think that leads to the average bride having a distorted sense of true documentary photography. She can’t distinguish between real photojournalism and images that have become somewhat trite in order to be trendy. Keeping the fashion influence on my journalistic style helps to set me apart from the competition. Showing samples of my work also indicates to prospective brides the type of clients I like to work with.” Brian says he went from about 10 to 15 weddings the first year to about 50 the second year, and he was able to increase his prices accordingly. His brides are more affluent now, compared to his early years.

Brian told me, “When you initially think about weddings, typical emotions such as love and joy come to mind. But brides also feel stressed and even sad in some ways. I think a feeling that is overlooked is that at the end of a wedding day brides want to feel sexy for their new husbands. I try to capture that inner urge in some of my bridal boudoir sessions, when the bride is interested. When I can capture feminine allure, my pictures preserve the memories the couple shared when the wedding was over. I feel that catching a woman’s appeal with a sense of fashion keeps me ‘edgy’ in the minds of brides. They may not have seen the same tasteful, classy qualities in their friends’ wedding pictures.”

Pursuing his urge to shoot fashion images, Brain realized his business wasn’t in an area that would help him reach his goals. Now he believes that the fashion style of his wedding pictures can help him get noticed by designers and publications within the wedding industry, and eventually in the fashion field. He currently works with a New Orleans designer (Ci Lee Collections) and an upcoming designer in New York (Dominique Daniela Custom Designs). He hopes these efforts will open more doors in the fashion world, and perhaps lead to editorial assignments.

Brian Crain studies fashion magazines to be aware of how their photographers pose, light, and situate their subjects.

“I want to stay fresh and innovative,” he says, “and some of the dynamic fashion pictures I see give my imagination a boost.”

Brian has a regional package price of about $3000 and a national price between $5000 and $6000. He feels his prices are appropriate and agrees with me that there can be a positive mystique to higher prices. His web address is www.bkcphoto.com.

Lou Jacobs Jr. is the author of 25 how-to photography books, the latest of which, Photographer’s Lighting Handbook (Amherst Media) was recently published. He has taught at UCLA and Brooks, is a longtime member of ASMP, and enjoys shooting stock during his travels in the U.S. and abroad.