I went on Facebook to look at abandoned buildings and somehow ended up buying a wedding dress. I love how weird my life can be.
I follow a few pages where people share interesting abandoned places, and someone posted a burned-out church in southern Indiana. The roof was gone, but the walls and broken windows were still there. It called my name. Unfortunately, the person posting it had neglected to include the one thing I needed: where the hell it was.
A little digging through the comments turned up someone who said they could see it from their house and lived right on the Ohio River. That was enough to send me into Google Maps, scanning satellite views for a few hours and, as if the heavens opened, there it was.
Now I just needed someone to put in it.
I’ve known Kaitlyn for a few years, and her style is impeccable. Every time I see her, she’s wearing something new, but not new new. She has a wonderful eye for retro style, and a knack for making older pieces feel entirely her own. A vintage dress and an unusual location felt like a very good reason to get together.
Burned church. Burned wedding dress. The concept wasn’t exactly hiding from me.
Back to my old-people Facebook, but this time for Marketplace. I found a wedding dress from the early ’90s and showed it to Kaitlyn. Immediately, she had ideas: coffee grounds to stain it, scissors to cut it up, and actual fire to distress it into perfection.
This is why I love working with her. I brought an idea and a dress. She figured out how to turn them into something we could photograph.
The woman selling the gown wanted to see pictures of the results, too. I rather liked that. This dress was about to have a very different sort of wedding day.
Somewhere between the internet detective work and acquiring clothing to set on fire, I realized I might enjoy putting a shoot together as much as I enjoy photographing it. Finding a place, finding a person, seeing what they bring to the idea. There’s a lot of fun before I ever pick up the camera.
We drove down on one of those beautiful days when late summer is starting to give way to fall. With the location finally in front of us, we spent the day exploring, trying ideas, climbing onto some questionable surfaces, and generally acting like kids.
The photographs look wonderfully dramatic. Making them was mostly a lovely day spent seeing what we could get away with creatively.
Kaitlyn can give a picture such a different feeling with a turn of her head or a change in expression. With the veil and black flowers, she could make that wedding dress feel solemn, strange, or quietly defiant. She gave the idea a person to belong to.
And yes, her skin in that light. My goodness.
The brown dress gave us another direction to play with. The same walls and shadows, but a completely different silhouette. I love seeing how much an outfit can change what you notice in a location you’ve already been photographing.
What I appreciate most is her willingness to explore an idea with me. The vintage style is hers. The work on the wedding dress is hers. The adventurous spirit that made a day in a ruined church so much fun is hers, too. I’m lucky to get to photograph all of it.
We finished the day at a restaurant on the Ohio River, eating fancy tacos. Hard to improve on that.
Our server was telling us about his children and asked about ours, apparently assuming we were a couple with kids. Kaitlyn deftly sidestepped the question while I sat there feeling rather flattered. With all due respect to my lovely wife, Krista, I took the mistaken assumption as a generous compliment.
It did seem fitting. We’d spent part of the day doing something that looked vaguely like a wedding. Apparently, we’d been convincing.
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