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Rangefinder Magazine
February 2003

Profile: Joe Buissink by Peter Skinner
Wedding Photographer to the Stars

Celebrity wedding photographer Joe Buissink is a classic role model for any photographer who has ever had a dream. And by the same token, he is living proof that it’s never too late to change careers and to do so with great success.

Traditionally, photographers carve out their careers over time. The “dues-paying” process can be interminably long and even after that there is no guarantee of “arriving.” In other words, the Holy Grail of professional photography can be as elusive as the real thing. But every now and then, a star bursts on the scene as if from nowhere and in Joe Buissink’s case the leap from tyro wedding photographer to one of the most sought after on the planet was, if anything, quite astounding. If you want this Los Angeles, California, photographer to shoot your wedding, you’d be advised to get in touch a year or more in advance.

Occasionally a client can get lucky and book him a few months before the big day, but that doesn’t happen very often.

About seven years ago when in his mid-40s, having had an undergraduate degree in psychology and well into his third year in an eight-year PhD program in neuropsychology, Buissink made the courageous leap into the world of wedding photography. Up until that point he had been a landscape photographer, albeit an advanced amateur. Modestly, Buissink said he was a hobbyist who found that the occasional two or three-day outing shooting landscapes was a way of finding peace and relaxation. “Nothing serious,” he says,” and I did some half-way decent stuff.”

However, he found that as soon as he turned his camera on people, something very special was ignited. No doubt his training as a psychologist was an asset in the way he was able to get people to respond to the camera. For whatever reason, it soon became obvious that he had a special talent for— in Hollywood parlance—getting people to “work with him” and his camera. Additionally, his down-to-earth personality and easy-going manner are ideal traits when dealing with stressed out wedding groups—and let’s be honest, a wedding can be a highly stressful event. A desirable trait in any successful wedding photographer is to be a people person, and Joe Buissink certainly is that.

Having made the decision to enter wedding photography, even though he knew that many considered that field to be the bottom rung in the photographic food chain, Buissink had the burning desire to create work that was both a visual record of a happy event and art of which he would be proud and that his clients would be proud to hang on their walls. His unique style—distinctly photojournalistic, predominantly black and white, and inspired by the pioneer of the genre Denis Reggie—was accepted with enthusiasm.

Word of mouth—the bridal equivalent of the jungle telegraph, if you will—spread his reputation with amazing speed and in short order the wedding photographer of the moment was Joe Buissink.

In every successful photographer’s career there is invariably a defining moment, an event or circumstance, a name or date which is pivotal. In Buissink’s there are probably several but the one name which comes to mind is Annie Leibovitz, one of the most recognized of all contemporary photographers. How she came across Joe Buissink is one of those stories of coincidence with a happy outcome, and seemingly without an ending—not at this writing, anyway. Leibovitz was looking for a videographer to cover her sister’s wedding in Santa Barbara; she intended to handle the still photography herself, even though she was a principal in the wedding party. When she contacted Buissink, under the impression that he provided a video service, he suggested that rather than put herself through the extra stress of being the still photographer, why not hire him and enjoy the wedding. The suggestion appealed; one look at his portfolio sealed the deal. In fact, the images he sent her were, in Buissink’s words “just left of center.” In Joe Buissink, Annie Leibovitz had found a kindred spirit who produced the kind of images she loved. His coverage of the wedding was Annie’s gift to her sister, Barbara. So successful was that wedding shoot—and so happy were the clients (in fact, Annie applauded on seeing Barbara’s wedding photographs)—that he was hired to photograph Annie’s cousin’s wedding in upstate New York.

Admittedly, that Annie Leibovitz chanced upon Buissink—and that the match was perfect—was fortuitous, but it takes more than coincidence and serendipity to build up the flow of work that now comes through Joe Buissink’s studio. That word of his expertise was spreading like wildfire was a tribute to the impact his imagery was making and also to the consistency with which he produced those images.

Undoubtedly, his trend-setting blackand- white photojournalistic style is the key to his popularity but he is also enough of a realist to know that traditional wedding photographs need to be in the mix.

“Most of my clients hire me for the black-andwhite photojournalism but we do find that parents and grandparents want the traditional formal color photographs as well, so we try to accommodate everyone,” he said. “While I think out of the box, and would encourage other wedding photographers to do the same, I don’t just incorporate photojournalism into my work. I describe what I do as ‘portrait journalism’ and include elements of traditional wedding coverage into what I do.”

Joe Buissink’s style is to photograph a wedding as it unfolds; he goes in without too many preconceptions but, and obviously enough, has a game plan based on pre-wedding discussions with the client. Rapport with the client is a vital ingredient and in this area Joe’s “salt of the earth” personality shines through from the moment of the initial meeting. That, in turn, leads to a mutual trust, which ultimately results in Joe’s being given complete freedom. To a large extent clients trust him to capture the event as he sees it. Perhaps Annie Leibovitz sums it up best: “Joe sees the wedding as a rite of passage, and approaches the subject with great love and respect.” That Joe Buissink is now one of the most sought after celebrity wedding photographers probably can be attributed to his coverage of actor Kelsey Grammer’s wedding, the first TV star to hire him. The images that Buissink created at that wedding literally started a buzz in the film industry. Before long other celebrities started to beat a path to his studio door. The impact he made soon had magazines and other media talking about him. Asian Art News commented: “One of the emerging stars in photography in Los Angeles is Joe Buissink, whose contemporary works are imbued with a lyrical and romantic nostalgia.” The Wall Street Journal ran an article, which included this observation: “In Los Angeles, photographer Joe Buissink, who photographed the weddings of celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz’s sister and cousin, works entirely with 35mm cameras producing images that defy tradition.”

The majority of Buissink’s work is shot on either Kodak T-Max 400 or T-MZ 3200 for black and white; Portra 400 or 800 for color with additional color shot in digital. His equipment comprises Nikon F5s and D1Xs with a full array of Nikon lenses ranging from the 16mm f/2.8D AF fisheye through to the 80–20mm f/2.8D ED-IF AF-S zoom. Invariably he will use ambient light. Buissink’s black-and-white processing is done specially by Richard Photo Lab in Los Angeles and Robert Cavalli handles much of his custom printing. Buissink said he is impressed with technological advances in digital photography but he shoots mainly with film. “I got here shooting film and while there is something to be said about keeping up with new technology I still like shooting with film,” he said.

And how does he produce those images that defy tradition? In a Nikon World feature Buissink responded to a similar question: “I hate sounding like I’m coming from this Zen place when I try to explain it, but it’s all about being in the moment. And it’s an exhausting effort—it’s seven or eight hours of focusing in the moment and reacting instantly to what I see. I use my equipment as an extension of my eyes, my hands and my heart, and I trust the equipment implicitly, so all I have to do really is react. I have to see the moment. And often I intuitively guess and anticipate and I’ll be one split second ahead of it.”

During a relatively short career, Buissink has compiled an impressive portfolio of celebrity weddings including those of Hilary Swank and Chad Lowe, Kevin Sorbo, Lucy Lawless, Brendan Fraser, Jenny McCarthy, Stacy Dash, Christian Slater, Leila Roshen, Christopher Lambert, Jennie Garth and Peter Facinelli, Angie Harmon and Jason Sehorn, Lauren Holly, L.A. Reid, T-Boz, Jennifer Lopez, Christina Applegate, Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men, Jonathan Davis of Korn, Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Joel Silver, and Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey.

Several years ago Buissink achieved a notable goal—the $100,000 wedding. Action-adventure producer Joel Silver (of Lethal Weapon and other films of that genre) hired Buissink to cover his wedding in Venice, Italy. Obviously, there was a substantial fee, in the vicinity of $30,000, and Buissink made the most of the exotic setting to photograph the couple at numerous locations throughout Venice. And Joel and Karen liked what they saw in the resulting images. So much so that they ordered 1000 8x10 prints and 11 complete albums, which totaled about $70,000. Shooting outside the U.S. is not unusual for Buissink and by his estimation each year he does between six and eight weddings in other countries, so at any given time he’s likely to be in Mexico, Italy or Monaco or some other exotic place on the globe.

In addition, he has distinguished himself in many photographic fields, including advertising (Lancôme), portraiture (Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, Frank Gehry), album covers, (Daniel Lanois, Bonnie Hayes, The Droogs) and film, shooting the stills for the 1998 Academy Award-nominated documentary, Colors Straight Up.

While photographing celebrities might seem a daunting prospect—especially of such an important event as their wedding —Buissink is quick to point out that when it comes to being in front of a camera, these people know exactly what to do and are a joy to work with. After all, who better to interact with a photographer and not to be afraid of showing emotion than a TV or film star? The fact that he has such an amazing collection of intimate and personal images of celebrities raises the issue of copyright, privacy and media usage. Of copyright there is no question—Buissink knows full well the value of retaining all copyrights to intellectual property and the potential value therein. The privacy matter is one of trust—Buissink does not abuse the privilege of access. And when magazines seek usage—either from Buissink or from the client—images are released only with mutual consent.

Not surprisingly, his images are in demand by many publications and he is a regular contributor to In Style magazine. His work also appears in People, American Photo, Gourmet, LA Times, LA Weekly ,and Los Angeles Magazine and several other magazines have featured Buissink’s work as cover stories. He has also been profiled by Entertainment Tonight, E!, Extra, In Style Celebrity Weddings, First Edition on Good Morning New York, and by Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America.

As a great example of someone who had a dream and made it come true, Joe Buissink has no hesitation in advising aspiring photographers to do the same. “Follow your dream and make it come true. I did,” he said. “What I do is my passion and I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.” To see his work, or book him for a wedding, call the studio at (310) 360-0198 or log on his web site joebuissink.com.

Peter Skinner is communications director for the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) and is a writer/photographer living in Anacortes, Washington.