John Michael Cooper

Wedding photography has seen a bit of a renaissance in the last several years. The trend of "not your mother's wedding photographer" caught on, quickly grew and effectively changed the industry as we know it. Things like "trash the dress" sessions and injecting elements of photojournalism and high style fashion photography into the wedding arena are now commonplace. Thinking outside the box is expected.

Regardless of your particular tastes in photography or what you hope your photographer will achieve (or did achieve) with your wedding pictures, I hope you can draw some thoughts from this particular artist. John Michael Cooper is truly a pioneer in pushing the boundaries of wedding photography, hell photography in general. He breaks the rules every time out and does his own thing.

There are a couple of iconic images created by John (whose business name is altF and be warned the images on this site are not for everyone) that will soon be retired from public view, at least for a while. Well at least those of us that have been around this business for a while would certainly consider them "iconic" if such a term can be used within the confines if this specific line of work.

 

You can visit John's blog to learn more about Joan and Ophelia, and the images, and perhaps even buy prints if you are so inclined, before they are retired. There aren't many left.

And in the spirit of  professional courtesy and doing what is right, I am disclosing right here and now that I totally stole these directly from  John's blog and pasted them here. Honestly, I doubt he cares.

Thank you John for inspiring, pushing the limits, doing what you do, and especially for how much you give back to this business and to us as photographers. We are all waiting to see what trend you will start next.

-Bruce