Travel, family, and wedding work
New Zealand is a world of impossible unions. A place where the vast emptiness of the Pacific Ocean is suddenly met with towering masses of earth. And up until ~700 years ago this world of epic landscapes was completely void of people. Against all odds, Polynesian sailors exploring in small boats found it and settled. Even more unlikely is that when Europeans re-discovered it 25o years later, the descendants of those original explorers established a treaty giving the Maori People the same rights as British citizens. And just like that two groups of people, as distinct as oil and water, suddenly became one.
One month in New Zealand
A journey that held more than one wedding.
We embarked on a month long adventure into this incredible destination, but this time things were different. For one, we were now a family, traveling with a Toddler, and so we took our time (a significant contrast from the wild pace of our motobike trip up the coast of Vietnam ). In past years we had kept our travel and wedding work totally separate, opting instead to work locally and take a big vacation during the off season. This time we were also there to shoot weddings.
What is is truly magical about weddings is watching two people transform a room of strangers into a family with the exchange of some words, a couple rings, and a kiss. It was sort of like the story of New Zealand: these two groups bound by words and magic, living and building a new world together. Especially given these strange times it's a much needed reminder that all families, countries, and cultures are just made up of people bound together by this very same magic spell -- love.
In that light, we'd like to introduce to you to a different type of adventure, one that is also a love story. But not just the story of one couple, or one wedding, or even one day -- this is about something much bigger. This is the story of love between the ocean and the land, the day and the night, the clouds and the mountains, and everything in between. This is the story of the many ways that love brings all these distinct, even polarizing, elements together and unifies them into something new.
The complete sequence
Land, family, travel, and the weddings photographed along the way.
This is not one couple’s wedding story. It follows a month of family travel through New Zealand and the wedding work made along the way. A separate complete wedding belongs in Love Stories once one specific celebration is selected.
Personal work and commissioned work can share a journey without becoming the same story.