Well, sadly, the Jets lost last week, the day after the wedding of Geoff Foster and Meg Sylvester. And given just how much Geoff loves his team, so much so that even the New York Times wedding announcement couldn't resist poking fun, it certainly would have been a nice coda on the weekend. I grew up on Long Island surrounded by Giants and Jets fans, though our household leaned decidedly towards the latter. That is, until Joe Pisarcik committed one of the most famous fumbles in football history back in 1978--The Fumble, as it's still known--and my interest started to wane.

Still, I know how long Jets fans have been waiting for someone to lead them to greatness (and past the legacy of Joe "I Wanna Kiss You" Namath). This certainly felt like the year. But Geoff's a smart guy--an editor at the Wall Street Journal--and as he and Meg lay on a beach in Hawaii right now, having traded football for margaritas, snow for sun, and courtship for marriage, I'm pretty confident he has no regrets. Like the song goes, "When you're a Jet, if the spit hits the fan, you got brothers around, you're a family man."

(Family man. We all laughed after I asked Geoff to stand next to "your wife" during picture time at Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown. No matter how many times I've said that to couples over the years, I always get a double take. As in, whose wife? Oh, right. My wife.)

But let's go back a bit.

Last Saturday began at the Sylvester home in Spring Valley, D.C., Meg's wonderful mom humorously apologizing for the state of calamity and chaos she perceived. But there was no calamity, only laughter from the upstairs bedroom as Meg helped one of her bridesmaids fix what could only be called a hairdressing malfunction. Not quite Cameron Diaz in There's Something About Mary, but a malfunction nonetheless. As I poked my head into the room I started laughing myself. Who knew mousse could provide so much entertainment?

A few minutes later, sitting on the bed in her brother's room (which, incidentally, looked like every boy's room since the beginning of time, American flag and sports posters galore), Meg and her mom, both still in curlers, shared a beautiful moment as they practiced putting on her ring. Hotels are great for some things but there's something very special about getting ready for one's wedding in the house you grew up in--the stuffed animals, the sports trophies, the family photos, all preserved like the Smithsonian. Twent minutes later, both Meg and mom were out of curlers and into gorgeous dresses, this time mother proudly beaming at her daughter in the mirror.

I always have great time at my weddings, as you've probably figured out through these dispatches over the years, but Meg and Geoff's wedding proved to be Old Home Week for me. Meg and her mom came to me because I had photographed the weddings of four of her high school friends: Carroll Kilty, Mari McDonald, Emily Macht and Shana Madigan. Seeing Carroll, Mari and Emily all sitting in the same pew was a wonderful deja vu. It reminded me of how close I stay in touch with all my couples, and how fun it is to follow them in their post wedding lives.

Later in the evening, as people danced like crazy at Columbia Country Club, I had my assistant take a photo of me and my brides, current and past. I'm sure someday, a few years down the line, I'll be at another wedding and Geoff and Meg will come up to me, little one in tow, and the cycle will repeat itself yet again.

To see a mini gallery of pictures from Geoff and Meg's wedding, click here.

Matt

p.s. Speaking of families, some fun news in the greater Mendelsohn family this week. My brother Daniel has a very long piece in The New Yorker about the origin of memoirs, and, specifically, the beginnings of the fake memoir trend. And perhaps even more exciting, my brother Eric was named best director at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday night for his feature film 3 Backyards. The film stars Eric's best friend, Edie Falco, as well as Law and Order's Kathryn Erbe, Elias Koteas and Embeth Davidtz. If you want to see my crazy brother's acceptance speech, click here. (Eric comes in around the 1:46 mark.)

Back in 1991, I was standing in the middle of the desert in Saudi Arabia waiting for a C-130 to refuel. I was covering the Gulf War and the particular landing strip we had been deposited into had been dubbed M.O.N. AFB by the troops. As in Middle of Nowhere. We're talking Lawrence of Arabia sand. As I waited for our plane to get the thumbs up, an Air Force physician came ambling over to me. "Did you go to SUNY-Binghamton?" he asked, and to this day I still laugh at the small world-ness of it all. (The answer, by the way, is yes.)

So, okay, how's this for small world? My assistant Cliff, with whom who I used to work at United Press International some twenty years ago, around the time of that first Gulf War, was having some chest pains back in February of 2008. In intense pain, Cliff got himself over to Reston Hospital Center, where a nurse immediately began taking care of him. She administered an IV, though his memory is understandably sketchy from that point on. Eventually a doctor came by and told Cliff that he was having a pulmonary embolism and was being admitted to the hospital immediately.

"I remember telling them that I had a meeting over at National Geographic," Cliff told me a few minutes ago. The doctor seemed unimpressed. "Mr. Owen, if you leave now to go to your meeting, you might not make it out of the parking lot alive."

Well, it's a good thing Cliff stuck around. After ten days in the hospital he recovered, and despite a tendency towards wearing skirts now, he's pretty much all recovered. (Okay, I'm exaggerating.) And it's only natural that he would have shared this story with the groom at the last wedding we shot together because Dr. Nelsson Becerra is an emergency medicine physician at Prince William Hospital. "I can't remember, but he must have mentioned at that point that his bride was an emergency room nurse at Reston," Cliff said.

You thinking what I'm thinking? Yup, it's true. As the trolley carrying the bridal party arrived at St. Theresa's Catholic Church in Ashburn, Virginia, Cliff looked aboard and saw that our bride that day, Shana Drascovic, was the very nurse that cared for him almost two years earlier.

"What are the odds?" Cliff says. "I should have bought a lottery ticket that day."

Well, as far as Nelsson and Shana are concerned, they did win the lottery. And I can tell because in every picture of Shana that day, there's nothing but excitement and happiness written all over her face. These guys were just meant to be. (Not to mention that having a doctor and nurse in the house at all times is gravy, don't you think?)

Her excitement started with her very first email to me: "Matt: Meeting with you today was such a highlight for me during this whole fast paced planning extravaganza!! Your work is such an inspiration to me and I'm honored to have you a part of my big day!!! I can really tell that you love what you do and still after many years have a deep passion for photographing weddings!!" What photographer wouldn't want exclamation point like that?!?

And the excitement continued, even with some hiccups that might have sent another couple over the edge. You see, St. Theresa's is a brand new church. And when I say brand new, I'm talking brand spanking new. Shana's wedding was set to be the first official anything in the church and as of Thursday before the big day not all the construction permits had been closed out. So Shana and family had to start contemplating the unthinkable, moving the ceremony the day before the wedding! As luck would have it, and as seems fitting for a couple that do so much good for so many people, my assistant Cliff included, the church was declared fit for occupancy with just hours to spare.

I like stories like that, don't you?

To see a mini gallery of pictures from Shana and Nelsson's wedding, click here.

Take care,

Matt

You would think that after photographing as many weddings as I have in the past twelve years, there wouldn't be too many things that could make me tear up in the middle of a hotel ballroom. I've seen emotional toasts, I've seen touching relationships play out, and I've heard many a story of absent friends and relatives. So I must admit to being surprised that I cried--not once but twice--at the wedding of Geoff Embler and Besty Andres.

And as far as marriage bellwethers go, that's probably a good thing.

Betsy and Geoff got married on a beautiful November Saturday in Georgetown, the kind of day where the trees in nearby Rose Park are alive with color and the streets are full of pre-holiday shoppers. Though it had rained pretty heavily in the days preceding, I knew we'd be okay on this particular afternoon. I could just feel it. Then again, you don't need a Bob Ryan five-day forecast to know how a day will go after you walk into a bridal suite and there's a huge bouquet of flowers sitting on a desk bearing a one-line inscription: "I can't wait to marry you today." That's a no-brainer.

I tease him now (which is okay because everyone, it seems, teases him) but the Romeo who wrote that one-line note is not your typical leading man. He's not boastful or cocky but quiet and exceedingly polite. His South Carolina manners are ever-present. Wonderfully unassuming, Geoff ("Bean," as all his friends call him, a college nickname that stuck) is simply one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.

I tend to wear my liberalism on my sleeve and Geoff hails from that other party, but he's such a gentleman that we could talk for days and never realize that we had different views. In fact, he told me the day of his wedding, "You know, I really like all the stuff you post on your Facebook profile. it's always interesting to read." As he said this, I began frantically racking my brain, thinking of all the quasi-partisan (okay, maybe not quasi) things I've probably written there. But Geoff doesn't care. He loves an intellectual or political conversation--I won't use the word debate because he's too mild-mannered--and doesn't care which side of the aisle you happen to be on.

I know Geoff himself thinks of himself as pretty mild-mannered, too--a "good Episcopalian," he joked during his toast--and maybe that's why he surprised himself so much when he started to break down during that very speech. It was a few days after Veteran's Day and Geoff was simply trying to acknowledge his father's service to our country. But darnit, the words just wouldn't come out of his mouth. And with each passing attempt, Geoff got more choked up. And so did everyone else in the room, yours truly included. When you think of how proud any family is to claim a veteran in its DNA, it's no surprise that Geoff got so emotional. But something about the way Geoff delivered the line made it special. It was a moment I'll remember for a long time.

Which brings me to Crying Episode #2.

Before anyone got to enter the gorgeous Four Seasons ballroom that night, guests mingled in the cocktail areas outside, serenaded by strolling musicians. (As an aside, if you've never seen what event planner Marylin Bradley can do with a ballroom, you really should try crashing a function. Wait. On second thought...) I spied Betsy's grandmother in a corner. She's had some health issues of late which have hampered her speech. But words can be overrated. When her granddaughter knelt down next to her and two heads locked together as one, you could sense an entire lifetime of memories and love passing between. And as the moment went on, and grandma was overcome and Betsy was overcome and pretty much everyone in that little corner was overcome, I surrendered and joined in. It was as good a cry as I've had in years.

Which leads me to a digression. The week before Geoff and Betsy's wedding, I was teaching at a workshop in Dallas. The goal of this particular workshop is to teach wedding photographers who don't have a journalism background how to see (and feel) genuine moments. Since a lot of traditional wedding photography is based upon set-up pictures and contrived situations, The Foundation Conference teaches these non-photojournalists how to wait out the real moments during the course of a wedding day.

With my two decades in journalism, I consider myself a good teacher in this arena. But I have to admit to being blown away by the energy of my students. And as I sat on that plane ride home, I resolved to try even harder myself to seek out those split-seconds during the course of a wedding that end up lasting for decades and more. Sometimes a teacher needs a push from his students.

I don't need to say much more after that. Geoff and Betsy have been exceedingly patient during these past two weeks, our busiest time of the year. I know they want a little peek at their pictures but they're just too polite to bug me about it. In return for that kindness, I've posted a slightly larger than usual gallery of pictures from their wedding.

To see a mini gallery of pictures from Besty and Geoff's wedding, click here.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and wish you nothing but happiness as we enter the holiday season.

Take care,

Matt

In a region where spring lasts about three days, summer can be brutal and winter is generally a snowless bust, it's no surprise that fall is the most beloved time of year here in the nation's capital. Lots of couples dream about an outdoor wedding amidst the fall foliage, though last week's Halloween wedding of Whitney Dangefield and Mark Sparrough proves that the romance of a great marriage comes not from intense color, goofy masks and wigs or even the occasional raindrop, but from the couple themselves.

You see, an odd thing happened late in the afternoon two Saturdays ago, something that might drive fear and loathing into the heart of a different bride. It rained. It rained, beginning with a light drizzle five minutes before ceremony time and slowly morphing into a steady downpour. The kind of weather that ties your brain into a knot. Do we continue outside? Move things inside? Are we tough? Are we wimps? And before I tell you what happened in the end, let me back up just a bit.

I liked Whitney and Mark for two silly reasons when they came in to book me. Mark is a steadicam operator in the New York television industry, and anyone who knows how heavy those things are can appreciate how tough his job is. And that's before he even begins shooting! Mark does work for shows like America's Most Wanted, a place I hope to never find myself. Whitney works for the New York Times, but it gets even better than that. Her boss is actually my old college newspaper buddy, Gerry Mullany. Gerry and I spent countless overnights together at Pipe Dream, our little newspaper with the ridiculous name, me processing film in the darkroom and Mullany hovering over the paste-up boards, X-Acto knife in hand. (Yes, back in the ancient days of 1984, there were no computers in dorm rooms, no iPhones or iPods, and no internet. Copy was pasted up with hot wax, some of which is still stuck under my fingernails.)

After school, I ended up at USA Today, Gerry went to the New York Times, photo editor Ken Brown went to The Wall Street Journal, sports editor Ron Klempner went to the NBA Player's Association, and someone, whose name I will spare, ended up at Hustler. We were all living our dreams, especially, it would seem, that last individual. To think that one of my brides now works for Gerry makes me feel less nostalgic and more, well, old.

But I digress. Back to Leesburg, Virginia on a vibrant Halloween day. Whitney was having her hair done by her sister and Mark was secluded in his room, practicing the hip-hop dance moves he and his mom would surprise guests with later that night. Whitney's dad, who would perform the ceremony, was lying on his hotel room bed, thinking about all the things one must think about when their daughter gets married. And all of us would occasionally glance outside at the weather.

It was threatening, that's for sure. But by the time the ceremony rolled around, the rain had still held off. I considered it a  minor miracle. As we arrived at Raspberry Plain, there was plenty of gorgeous light to take some family pictures. But as the ceremony began in the garden a light drizzle began falling. The groomsmen made their way to the front. The bridesmaids walked down the aisle, followed by the flower girls. The rain began falling a bit heavier with each individual, and just a tad colder to boot.

And then came a voice: "Whitney would like to move things indoors because of the rain." Since I was locked in my position, I could only wonder what was going through her mind. I knew she was probably unsure of what the right call was and whether she did the right thing.

The answer is absolutely yes.

Not a person complained. Not a person cared. Within three minutes everyone was safely indoors and the wedding resumed. End of story. The right decision was whatever decision Whitney would have made that afternoon, because she alone needed to know that her guests were comfortable and happy. And they were, in spades.

By the end of a beautiful ceremony--the "beautiful" part is never reliant on indoors or out anyway-- the drizzle had ended and everyone got to enjoy the beautiful Virginia countryside anyway. And I was able to walk out to the fence line with Whitney and Mark, laughing as the three of us dodged goat poop the whole way, and take some beautiful portraits. After that, Halloween fun, as guests donned silly wigs, ugly masks and posed for pictures in a photo booth. I even got to have hair back after a two-decade absence.

So here's to Fall, here's to drizzle, here's to costumes, and here's to photo booths at weddings. 'Cause if I could get moments like this one every week, I'd be a happy man.

To see a mini gallery of pictures from Mark and Whitney's wedding, click HERE.

Take care,

Matt

p.s. I titled this post Falling Slowly, after the name of a song from the low-budget film Once and because I was looking for a play on the word "fall." The two incredibly talented musicians from that film, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, have a new album out this week and they're playing in Washington tonight at the 9:30 Club. And speaking of falling slowly, for extra credit, take a sec to read how I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall these twenty years later. It's called "Door Number One," below.

Two old women—sisters, I imagined—hugging each other after years of separation, the crumbling wall in the background; young Berliners screaming as they took turns swigging from a champagne bottle; and, finally, a confused East German soldier looking on, not knowing whether to throw off his uniform and join in the celebration or skulk backwards into a dark alley. This last one seemed a stretch perhaps, a bit too nuanced for a photograph that was still just pure fantasy, but as my brain tried to process these unfolding historic developments, I was swept up in the possibilities.

This is the way a photojournalist’s mind works. Like Babe Ruth pointing towards the outfield bleachers, we go into a story envisioning the photos we want to take first, and only after that do we begin the series of negotiations and compromises that lead to the photos we do take. The Berlin Wall! Fallen!! The champagne photo would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country; it was simply a matter of who got it on the wire first.

I could be in Germany in no time, hours before the older and more seasoned news photographers in Washington and New York could get their acts together. I’d have at least a day’s head start on them if I hopped a train for London immediately. In my mind, I could already see Larry DeSantis, the foul-mouthed, cigar-chomping photo boss at United Press International’s New York bureau, the legendary and decrepit wire service where I worked, the guy who had a hand in cropping the famous picture of John John saluting the casket, shot when I was not even a year old, finally learning my name and telling me I had “done good, kid,” the highest praise his Brooklynese vocabulary was capable of.

But first, negotiations and the compromises. They come so fast that the original thought doesn’t even stand a chance. I had climbed Solsbury Hill, after all, not by myself but with Louise Waylett, pretty Louise with the flaming hair, a girl I had met a year earlier as she looked for a map in the Trover Shop on Capitol Hill. Pretty Louise, who drove a red vintage Citröen, straight off the set of Alfie. (No one I ever knew drove a Citröen, certainly not on Long Island in the 1960’s and 70’s, where most people drove Buicks and Chevy’s.) As the television cackled on about the rapidly unfolding events in East Germany, the sight of Louise’s flowing red locks was getting in the way of my freshly impending Berlin Wall triumph. This just how John Wayne got sidetracked in The Quiet Man, I thought.

No sidetrack. This was my moment, that once in a lifetime chance where fate or serendipity or some combination of the two comes sailing through the window on an arrowhead, complete with the boing! sound as it firmly implants itself in the wall. Grab your things, I’ve come to take your home—isn’t that what Peter Gabriel sings in that damn song?

A year earlier, helplessly smitten by her charm, I could only dream of actually being in Bath with Louise. When I first saw her in the bookstore on the Hill, I had just come from a bike ride around the Mall and was wearing ridiculously tight Lycra cycling shorts, so goofy, I’m sure, that I cringe at the thoughts of panic that must have been racing through this poor British tourist’s mind. But somehow she had managed to looked past the shorts and here I was, marching through cow pastures on Solsbury Hill as the daylight faded. Just what I wanted, and yet mind was now unexpectedly wandering east across Europe. Louise, not being in the news business, wouldn’t be quite as torn up about the obvious decision that lay ahead. And as she went on about her netball team and our impending trip to visit the Roman Baths, my brain raced with ways in which to let her down. Ich bin ein Berliner and all that.

Ich bin ein Berliner. O Lost! as Thomas Wolfe liked to say. I was only a baby when John F. Kennedy mangled those beautiful words and my Long Island childhood, a place teeming with equally mangled words and accents, was the furthest one could probably get from the life and death drama of barbed wire and guard towers and iron curtains. Back in those days I was just the kid with the platinum blond hair and the John John haircut, the very same saluting John John whom Larry DeSantis, my cigar chomping boss, had helped transform from a negative in an enlarger in a darkroom to an icon for the ages. I was the kid whom the kosher butchers called Khrushchev, because they didn’t believe I could be Jewish. That platinum blond hair! they would say. He can’t be Jewish! That’s what I did during the Cold War.

Now, walking with Louise so many years later, little Khrushchev was all grown up. Though I had flown across an ocean to make out with a redheaded girl from Bath, a higher calling had been revealed. I would tell her of the photographer’s code, whatever that was, and of my duty to photojournalism, whatever that was. But first, another negotiation: dinner with Louise’s family in their cottage home in Wiltshire. Her dad is showing me his collection of wine labels, the labels he carefully removes from each bottle by soaking them in water and then placing them into a scrapbook, an oenological collection of places he dreams of visiting. I think of the scene in Breaking Away, where the mother shows her son her passport and explains that even though she’s never been anywhere, it gives her comfort to at least know she has one. I smile at Mr. Waylett. My passport will not meet the same fate. In a day or so, it will bear a new German stamp.

But then I gaze over at Louise, a Cotswolds fantasy to a kid who grew up gawking at the girls waiting for the special bus to Our Lady of Mercy, and have to remind myself about the Wall falling. Berlin, remember??  Berlin. Berlin. Berlin. Berlin.

Eighteen years later, I’m wandering through an enormous mall in a city I despise, searching store after store for a pair of designer jeans. They’re not for me, these jeans, but for my friend Greg, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer. He wears a specific brand, Lucky Brand, and I have agreed to help him in his elusive quest.

Agreed is a lie. Greg has dragged me from my hotel room in Paris, Don Quixote now in the service of Sancho Panza, so that he might save me from myself, one photographer rescuing another. We have both come to Paris, you see, as refugees of a dying profession, photojournalists who have traded in decades of expertise to lecture wedding photographers in some nondescript ballroom.

This is not the Paris I thought I’d end up in, the city of Cartier-Bresson and Capa and Magnum but rather the hotel in Las Vegas of the same name, of slot machines and heavy couples in shorts drinking strawberry daiquiris out of enormous plastic Eiffel Towers. In this Paris, photographers don’t gather in small cafes to discuss existentialism and Satre. Here, folks talk about cornering the high school “senior” market and new and improved ways to alter a photograph in Photoshop—alter it so much, with so much texture and softening, and then some more texture to boot—that a picture of a blushing bride, say, no longer has any connection to the photographic world I once knew, not to mention the real world I still inhabit. A convention of wedding photographers, I laugh to myself. Dante was one circle short.

Knowing this makes me long for a drink, but the truth is I have never been drunk in my life. Maybe it’s the reason I didn’t survive in the news business. So, unable to drown my misery in a bottle of Captain Morgan’s, I sit in my hotel room and do the next best thing, repeating “What have I done? What have I done?” over and over in my underwear. Greg senses my predicament and, thinking he might distract me from my Paris nightmare, commands me to assist him in the search for those Lucky Brand jeans. And so here we are, one slightly overweight balding guy dragging his feet as he watches another slightly overweight balding guy try on denim.

O Crap! Has it all come to this? The wars, the one-on-one shoots with Jennifer Aniston, the days spent covering important events on the South Lawn of the White House—all for a wedding photography convention? Those nights at the Los Angeles Forum, processing film from a Lakers’ playoff game in a converted employee lunchroom as Jack Nicholson noshed on a sandwich a foot away. I remember worrying I would drip stop bath on him and forever be known as the guy who burned a Hollywood legend. “Nice picture, boys,” he would tell us in that Jack Torrance voice, the crazy writer from the The Shining, and then retreat back to his chicken salad. Or the two months in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, driving around with another photographer so hardened with cabin fever that he would purposely drive up to a group of burqa-clad women and bellow, “Evening, ladies,” like he was Barry White or something. You’re going to get us all killed, Joe! I would squeal from the back seat and we’d all burst into hysterical laughter. So many assignments, so many moments. Crawling through a newly discovered Egyptian tomb (my claustrophobia going to eleven), hanging out of helicopters over earthquake-ravaged freeways (my fear of heights going to eleven), shooting that perfect game thrown against the Dodgers (not to worry, I love baseball). I remember the sadder times, too, the quiet church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania mourning an entire group of local students lost on TWA Flight 800, or the dazed residents of Oakland trying to understand the magnitude of the fire that had just ravaged their community.

These things once seemed important to me. But as I walk with Greg through this enormous mall, where people mill about the courtyards waiting for the fashion shows that are staged every half an hour for no real reason other than to dazzle folks with a fashion show, just like the people parked in front of the Bellagio with those Eiffel Tower daiquiris waiting for the fountain to come alive with Lee Greenwood’s Proud to be an American, I’m not sure what I’m doing anymore.

As we pass the Gap, the once hip clothing store chain, I can’t help but notice a gigantic advertisement dominating the store. There, towering above the Gap T’s and Gap cardigans and Gap polo’s, is an enormous photograph of young men and women screaming as they hold a champagne bottle atop a crumbling Berlin Wall.

I stare at the picture for a fleeting moment—Ralphie in A Christmas Story after he finds out that his Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring is nothing but a shill for Ovaltine—and smile. The fall of communism, chewed up and spit out as a pathetic advertisement for teens who weren’t even born. For a second, I’m back on Solsbury Hill with Louise and her fire-red hair.

“Did you ever do that presidential trip to Berl…,” Greg starts to ask and I cut him off mid-word. “Nope, I’ve never been to Berlin,” I say, and we continue on our quest for pants.

The last time I saw Erin Stocking was ten years ago, when I took the photo below of her and her siblings at the Eastern Shore wedding of her mom, Lynn. A lot of time has passed since then and it was neat to see her again, this time at her very own wedding on the western shore of Maryland.

Erin married Mason Clark on a stunningly beautiful day two weekends ago, the sun setting behind the couple as they said their vows at the edge of the Chesapeake Bay. What more could one ask for really?

It's got to be the water. My wife Maya grew up in Athens, Greece and she can't stand being away from the water for any great amount of time. It calls out to her, like the Sirens to Ulysses, and once she arrives at that majestic sea I can feel that all is well with the world.

I had a similar feeling as I got out of my car at Woodlawn Farm in Ridge, Maryland, way down at the southernmost tip of the peninsula. The water was absolutely calm, the chairs were set up under a big tree, and the sun was lazily making its way across the sky. It was so serene, so soothing, that for a moment I kind of wished I could shoot a wedding every week here.

While Mason and his buddies got dressed in a little cottage next door, Erin and her girlfriends took over the manor house, built in 1798. It's quite a beautiful place and the restoration of the home is impressive. Guests sipped lemonade outside as they waited for the procession to begin. Classical guitarist Chris Dunn, who I have the pleasure of bumping into every so often, played Canon in D. Erin was escorted by her father, Donley Stocking, from the house to the ceremony spot. And right then the golden hour of light began in earnest, as if on cue.

In fact, as usual, I made a spectacle of myself as I laid down in the grass, trying to make a portrait of Erin and Mason on the dock at sunset. You talk about nice light! Mama Mia! I was worried about Erin falling off the dock, heels and all, but now that I think about it, I was probably a more likely candidate, rolling around on the edge. But every photographer knows that kinds of light comes around only once a day, if that, and you don't have time to worry about getting your knees dirty.

Erin and Mason had a beautiful wedding, capped off at the end by a neat photo next to the little bonfire that was burning. It was a bright finish to a bright day.

And on that note, I'm about to fall asleep! I just got back yesterday from a week in Norway, where I had a photo exhibition of my Holocaust related photos, and the jet lag is starting to hit me like an anvil. So I'm going to quit while I'm ahead. To see a mini gallery of photos from Erin and Mason's wedding, click here.

Take care!

Matt

Last Saturday night, hours after I had the honor of photographing the wedding of perhaps the world’s most beloved Carmen, I had the honor of being seated at the same table as one of the world’s great Turandots. And I could only smile to myself at the irony, for had it not been for that icy Chinese princess of Puccini's last opera, I probably never would have been seated anywhere at all. To put it in the form of a riddle that Turandot herself would appreciate, “What begins in Peking, owes much to Paris, resides in Washington, but always leaves its heart in Sevilla?”

The answer is simply this: my wonderful friendship with Denyce Graves. And if you didn't get it, fear not: you won’t lose your head. (That’s a Turandot joke.) Ours is a friendship that began innocently enough with a phone call years ago, and this past week it saw a definite high point as Denyce married Dr. Robert Montgomery at the Washington National Cathedral.

You see, many years ago, as I was retrieving answering machine messages one day in my Old Town Alexandria studio, I found myself doing an audio double take. “Maaaaatttttt," a deep, deep voice said, "this is Denyce Graves. I saw your pictures in a children’s store in Georgetown and I was wondering if you could come take some photographs of my baby girl.”

I played it back two or three times. Could it be? I didn't exactly do an on the spot calculation but I figured there couldn't be too many women with that name. And to understand why, in that very instant, I was even able to mumble to myself “the Denyce Graves??” you have to go all the way back to ancient China and Turandot.

I grew up with classical music. It’s hard to avoid, really, when your last name is Mendelsohn, even though he had an extra “s.” With the exception of the Beatles, we didn’t listen to a lot of popular stuff in my house. It was pretty much all Beethoven and Bach all the time, with some Modern Jazz Quartet for good measure. My father is a mathematician and that probably explains a lot of it--the Gödel, Escher, Bach thing.

And though I did desperately want to listen to The Police's Zenyatta Mondatta in high school, the fact is that I couldn't avoid classical music. I had a choir director in high school who was a New York legend. While a lot of choirs were singing "Corner of the Sky" from Pippin, we were tackling the Mozart Requiem with a full orchestra.

At home, the same thing. I can remember the cover of one record of Beethoven piano sonatas that featured a scary looking tree blowing in the nighttime wind. It gave me nightmares as a child. (To this day, when I hear the word “Pathetique,” I still think of that album cover and get goosebumps.) I had an older brother who would only listen to the King’s College Choir singing Once in Royal David’s City and Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. I had an even older brother who played pipe organ at a local church on Sundays, despite the fact that, last I checked, we were definitely Jewish. Across the street, our neighbors built a hovercraft in their garage, attracting much local curiosity.  But in our garage, at 10 Neil Drive, my father worked for weeks on something that didn’t require a lawn mower engine or a propeller: a beautiful harpsichord. (My mother famously, or infamously, painted it Delft blue, to match her china.)

So if you asked me where my deep love of the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony comes from, I’d probably say my upbringing. And if you ask me why I can still remember the words to Bach’s Ich lasse dich nicht, I’d probably say my crazy childhood. Le Sacre du Printemps? Yup, childhood.

But one of the few forms of classical music that didn’t come out of Old Bethpage, New York is my love of opera. That was all on my own, with a bizarre assist from Sid Vicious. In 1989, I began working at United Press International in Washington. I was the overnight photo editor, “moving” pictures from all over the world, like an oldtime telephone operator, to our client newspapers. It was exciting work, being involved in every major news story of the day, but by three of four in the morning, after the west coast papers had gone to bed, there wasn’t exactly a lot to do.

Except, that is, to watch the same movie over and over and over. The UPI bureau didn’t have cable TV, but for some reason, right around 3:00 a.m., the movie Sid and Nancy, about the short and violent life of the Sex Pistols star, would miraculously appear on channel 87 of the television in front of me. It was an odd occurrence, to be sure, and even odder was the fact that it was always--always!--accompanied by a commercial for some CD of opera greatest hits. It was like clockwork each night, this odd ritual of a movie about the Sex Pistols and a commercial featuring Pavarotti, but who was I to argue. At 3:00 a.m., there wasn't anything else on.

Over time, I began to know the commercial by heart. Ebben? Ne andrò lontana from La Wally, the flower duet from Lakmé, Un bel dì from Madama Butterfly. And, of course, good old Nessun Dorma. Keep in mind, in 1989 there were no Three Tenors recording yet, no English soccer anthems, no telephone ring tones. Just that gorgeous aria as it was meant to be. And I was hooked.

Needing to connect Nessun Dorma to a complete work, so that it wasn’t just a greatest hit, I began listening to the entire opera again and again. Because I was a novice, I figured I needed to get the guy in the commercial. So I went out and bought the Joan Sutherland/Lucianno Pavarotti/Montserrat Caballé
recording. Lucky me. As any lover of classical music will tell you, it’s always the first recording you hear of something that imprints itself on your brain. If you hear Rosotropovich’s Shostakovich Fifth, nothing else with ever do. Bernstein’s Beethoven’s Ninth before Van Karajan, you’ll end up with Bernstein. And so it was with Turandot.

I know you can’t really wear out a CD but I came close. I listened as the masses outside the palace sang O testa mozza! (Oh severed head!); as Calaf gently dissed the slave girl Liu with the gorgeous Non piangere, Liù (don’t cry, but don’t exactly wait up for me, either); and the incredible, show-stopping In questa reggia, Princess Turandot’s ode to her troubled childhood. (More opera humor.)

It was my introduction to opera and I’ll always be grateful to Turandot.

And that’s why, some fourteen years later, when I listened to that answering machine message in my studio, I knew exactly who Denyce Graves was. I had become an opera buff during those ensuing years, complete with way-too-expensive season subscriptions at the Washington National Opera and way-too-many three disc sets. By the time I had moved on from the obvious and started listening to John Adams Nixon in China, Maya was ready to throw me out of the house. (I even wrote a silly little piece a month or so ago, poking fun of the National Symphony's plan to Twitter a performance of Beethoven's Sixth symphony outside at Wolf Trap. I imagined what a Twitter stream of Turandot would sound like.)

And so I met Denyce, I met her darling daughter Ella, I met her wonderful mother, Dorothy, and we all quickly bonded. Denyce is so generous, so talented and so, well, normal. We shared a wonderful week in Paris, Alexandra and Ella ate crêpes in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. We saw her sing Carmen at the Met while sitting in then-director Joesph Volpe’s box.(And while Alexandra and Ella played with the horses and costumes backstage.) And we stood and cheered after her groundbreaking performance in Margaret Garner, the operatic incarnation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. One time, I had a wedding in Chicago the same weekend Denyce was singing at the Lyric Opera. I took my aunt, a Chicago native, and we sat in the fifth row and beamed as Denyce received a fifteen-minute standing ovation.

Denyce is a true artist, someone who thinks deeply, feels deeply, expresses herself deeply. She is the embodiment of Floria Tosca’s famous aria: Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore. I lived for my art, I lived for love. (And, thankfully, Robert seems more Mario than Baron Scarpia.)

Early on in our friendship, I remember Denyce coming over to the house to pick up some prints and I started showing her a slideshow of the Holocaust project I was working on with my brother. As the presentation was running, I thought to myself, “Are you crazy? Why are you wasting this big star’s time?!?” But Denyce graciously watched the entire thing. She’s an artist who appreciates her fellow artists.

And boy, was that appreciation evident this past weekend. This was the third of three wedding celebrations for Denyce and Robert,who just happens to be one of the world’s leading transplant surgeons. (And one of the few people who can claim that they’re the inspiration for a Gray’s Anatomy episode.) Back in June, I photographed a small, private wedding for the two complete with surprise dinner at the Inn at Little Washington. Then, in July, they flew to Kenya for an authentic Maasai tribal wedding. Last Wednesday, a party at an aircraft hangar in Leesburg, including a private performance of the band Brazilian Girls. (A hangar, to celebrate the fact that Robert and Denyce met while sitting on a plane to Paris.) And this past Saturday, a regal wedding at the Washington National Cathedral and elegant reception at the Anderson House in Dupont Circle.

For the big picture, you can read Ellen McCarthy’s great Washington Post piece. I’ll give you some offbeat details instead:

• At the hangar rehearsal dinner, I almost opened the wood box on one of the tables, thinking it contained tea bags. It contained a six-foot python for the belly dancers. Whew. Also, the cake that night was in the shape of Robert's cherished Shelby Mustang, right down to the license plate. My assitant Cliff took a picture from an angle that makes it look like a real car in a showroom. And, finally, Denyce and Robert came dressed as they were for their African ceremony.
   
  The entertainment, by the way, was Robert's favorite group, Brazilian Girls, which, curiously, only contains one girl and a bunch of guys, but who's counting. They were fantastic, especially their Lazy Lover.
  
  
• My daughter Alexandra was one of the three flower girls, along with Denyce's Ella and Anaïs
  Killian. The three girls had a Disney princess sleepover at the hotel, and I feel sorry for guests in the room below.

• Robert and Denyce invited some of the kidney donors and recipients who have helped and benefited from his inspirational and groundbreaking work at Johns Hopkins. What a wonderful gesture.

• One of Robert’s dear friends gave the homily at the  National Cathedral. His name is Bill Fox and he happens to be the same man who married Maya and me twelve years ago at the Friends Meeting House. What a small world!

• Denyce’s longtime costume collaborator, designer Donna Langman, made all the dresses from scratch. Like, a week or so ago. To say this woman oozes talent and dry wit (“I said ‘Denyce, I don’t do weddings...’”) is a gross understatement. Meeting her was a treat.
• Denyce’s friends sang during the service. Roland Smith sang Far More, Richard Troxell sang My Eye Is On The Sparrow, Ridley Chauvin sang The Lord's Prayer and Anna Sorrano, the matron of honor, sang from Handel. For me, the highlight had to be soprano Alessandra Marc’s sublime Ave Maria. There are simply no words to describe this performance. I glanced over at a few of the tourists who were in the public section of the cathedral and even they were ready to start weeping. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. (Don’t laugh, but I’m so used to reunions of various grooms’ college a cappella groups at weddings--reunions that would be better left to memory--that I forgot what world class talent could sound like.)

• The day after all of this was over everyone gathered at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, where Denyce graduated high school, and played kickball and jumped rope double dutch style. Seeing Dorothy, Denyce's mom, skipping in and out might have been the funniest part of the whole week.

But it was at dinner, inside the gorgeous Anderson House, sitting at the same table as Alessandra Marc, that all those Turandot memories from the overnight shift at UPI came flooding back. She, after all, has received great acclaim for that role--like Denyce has for Carmen--and I could only smile at the full-circle-ness of it all.

That's it for me. This is where the photographer lays down his pen (the last Turandot joke) and the curtain comes down.

Because Denyce and Robert are friends, and because they gave my daughter the thrill of a lifetime by allowing her to be part of their special day, I've put together a larger-than-usual mini gallery. (That sounds a bit oxymoronic, eh?) To see a sampling of pictures from their rehearsal dinner and their marriage at the National Cathedral, click here.

See ya,

Matt

Somebody upstairs must really like Kate Burns and Joe Coleman.

When I arrived at Kate's house on the morning of her marriage to Joe, raindrops were falling on my car and the sky was looking ominous. Later in the day, when guests were safely inside for dinner, a monsoon let loose. And when I drove home late in the evening, the heavens were getting ready to start again. But here's the rub: everywhere in between, when it needed to be absolutely, faboulously gorgeous, it was.

That's a pretty neat trick, if you ask me. Rain at the start, rain in the the middle and rain at the the end but not a single drop when it actually mattered.

I should have seen it coming. A month or two ago, I shot Joe and Kate at the Capitol for their engagement photos, and we literally took our last frame before the skies opened up. I'm not talking 15 minutes, I'm not talking five minutes. I'm talking six seconds after we had finished. We barely had time to get to the nearest tree for shelter. I'm not sure this constitutes a trend but it's the kind of luck I'd like to have going in my own life.

Kate deserves this kind of sunny luck because she's always smiling. She starts with a knowing smirk and a few seconds later erupts into a full blown howl. Those of you who have been reading these words for the last couple of years know, I have a thing for brides who like to laugh. Not fake laughs or nervous laughs, mind you. I'm talking the real McCoy. Kate giggled as she was getting her hair done, she laughed with her mom Nancy as she was about to don her dress, she laughed with her sister Jaime, and she laughed with her father as they sat side by side during the limo drive down to Washington.

In fact, about twenty minutes ago, I got an email from Kate asking if this blog post would be up soon. I told her "soon," and she replied: "Like today. :)" It's not easy to tell one smiley face from another. They're just characters, right? But with Kate, I can actually envision the smirk that went along with that smiley face.

Kate and Joe were married at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in downtown Washington. According to its website, St. Patrick's parish was created in 1794 "primarily to meet the needs of Irish immigrants at work on the White House and the Capitol building." That's pretty cool. About 90 years later, the current church was built and it's been there ever since. In a city like Washington, one that has regrettably torn down a lot of its own history with the the march of time, it's so great to be able to hold onto and experience a beautiful church like this one.

As Joe and Kate found faces in the pews of friends and family, making eye contact and smiling, I smiled to myself. There are so many emotions running through your brain  these moments--excitement, reverence, and just plain silliness. You could see all of them plainly.

After the ceremony, we made our way to Congressional Country Club for the reception. It was cute: Kate felt embarrassed asking me if it was alright if she and Joe took a limo without anyone else--namely me--in it. Silly Kate. Of course I didn't mind.

Outside at Congressional there were some big, lingering clouds from the rain earlier in the morning. But as soon as I picked up a camera to shoot Kate and Joe together, the sun popped out and we had gorgeous backlight, my favorite kind. We made use of all of the Adirondack chairs out in front on the club and took some fun group pictures. And is usually the case, the best one of those pictures came in between, when Kate rested her head on her husband. (What was even funnier was seeing all the empty beer cans behind the Adirodack chairs after eveyone left!)

What more is there to say? Gorgeous cake, fun dancing, particularly Kate and her dad, who didn't opt for the safety of the  typical father/daughter slow dance, and a great band that had everyone on the floor for hours.

Since I know for a fact that Kate is chomping at the bit for pictures, I won't stand in the way. To see a mini gallery of fun pics from the wedding of Kate and Joe, click here.

 As always, take care.

Matt

I couldn't resist.

Ever since a young woman named Ashley came to work for us here at Matt Mendelsohn World Headquarters, we've teased her mercilessly about her deep and abiding love for her hometown of Defiance, Ohio. Yes, Ashley says "pop" instead of soda. Yes, she once got me all excited about watching a blurry, streaming internet feed of the Tinora High School basketball team playing in the state championship, even though I still can't tell you where Tinora is. No, she never complains about walking to the Metro in the cold, despite repeated attempts to give her a ride. Yes, Ashley can rattle off facts and figures about the role that Fort Defiance played during the years after the French and Indian Wars and leading up to the War of 1812. And yes, it is true that pretty much the only thing you'll see on the couple of hour drive from Cleveland to Defiance is corn, more corn and soybeans.

But underneath all the teasing, I know it's very important to love the place where you grew up. I make a lot of jokes about the Long Island of my youth (how can you not laugh at a place that names a shopping mall after Walt Whitman? But of course!) but I still have fond and deep-rooted memories of my childhood. Perhaps it's a nostalgia for everything that Old Bethpage was before I was born: endless potato farms, a one-room schoolhouse, roads named after swamps. So we jumped at the chance to take a long drive to the Buckeye state for Ashley's marriage to Cory Hornish. There comes a time when you have to stop teasing and admit that maybe you're just a little jealous.

And so we hooked up the covered wag--er, car--and drove ten hours across Pennsylvania and Ohio. Like the early settlers, the Jetta was loaded down with bags of Sun Chips, coolers filled with Diet Dr. Pepper, and a GPS we refer to as Nuvi. (I'll say one thing for those pioneers: at least they never had to listen to a computer with a British accent constantly and annoyingly repeat the word "recalculating" every time they stopped for a bathroom break.) After some advice from a friend, we opted for a slightly longer drive on I-68, through Maryland and West Virginia, thereby bypassing the endless construction zones on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Enough with these stimulus funds already! The road was always interesting and curvy, not like driving I-95 down South, and there were hardly any trucks. It was much easier than I thought.

By the time we got back into Pennsylvania and onto I-79, we decided to stop for lunch in the little city of Washington. It reminded me a lot of the sweet-though-faded towns in upstate New York, where I went to school. Our iPhone told us that the most popular place to eat in Washington was a place called Shorty's Lunch, serving hot dogs the same way for over 75 years. Between you and me, after all those years I'd have thought they would have figured out a way to make those hot dogs taste a lot better than they do. But maybe I'm quibbling. Chili from a can is fine, I suppose, as long as the luncheonette it is served in has that requisite ancient feel. And Shorty's has that in spades.

From there it was on to Cleveland. We told Alexandra that there was a rule that anyone who enters Cleveland must get silly and say Helllllooooooo, Cleveland but she wasn't buying it. Truth be told, I think Alexandra, at six, is at the age where she doesn't do anything that her father tells her to anymore. But I did it and it felt good to walk in the footsteps of Spinal Tap.

Cleveland is a beautiful city. I sheepishly admit to never really spending any time there and that's a shame. The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Monument has the beauty and gravitas that any public memorial should. You can't help but stare at it from blocks away, with it oozing that Paris-by-way-of-Heartland look. As we continued exploring, there were so many other examples of classic turn-of-the-century big city architecture that I thought I was in Chicago. Except for one thing: people.

Shaker Square aside, there were parts of Cleveland that resembled a scene from a sci-fi movie, one of those about a city after some virus had swept through. Now, to be fair, the Indians were playing, nor were the Cavaliers, all days and nights when downtown must be rocking. But not this day. As we wondered around the city, we noticed that there didn't seem to be a lot of downtown dwelling spaces--apartment buildings, homes, placed where people, well, live. As is typical with a lot of cities, those people wandered away decades and decades ago and only now are municipalities trying desperately to lure them back.

It didn't matter really. The Berkshire bacon married with nectarines at Lola, home to Iron Chef Michael Symon, was one of the best dishes I've ever tasted in my life. Period. And the Springsteen exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was a très guilty pleasure for a fan like me. (There's a spiral staircase leading from one floor of the exhibit to the next, and all the way up the words to Thunder Road are scrawled on the wall. You just sing to yourself as you climb the stairs. Way cool.)

Once you're out of Cleveland, the corn sets in pretty quick. And by the time we got to State Route 281 we were totally immersed. Flat, flat, flat. Straight, straight, straight. I was tempted to start speeding a bit, being so far away from any population center, but then I figured that the Ohio State Police probably love city slickers like me. And so I just took in the corn.

And then, Defiance. What's in a name? Well, in the case of Defiance, obviously a lot. Some towns have wimpy names like Hicksville and Plainview--both within three miles of where I grew up. Hicksville? Plainview? You might as well admit you're a total zero. But Defiance? Now that's a name with some teeth. Images of Davy Crockett (yeah, wrong state, I know) and the Alamo (yeah, wrong state, I know) instantly pop into your head.

As you enter Defiance, at least from the route we took, you can't help but notice the huge General Motors Powertrain assembly plant, recently spared in the spate of closings. It's massive and it's also painfully obvious that any closure or reduction there would devastate the city. We all hope for the best.

We stayed at the Frank Baker Inn, a bed and breakfast in a 1910 Defiance home. The inn is just a couple of feet from Defiance High School, where our Ashley was recently inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame. (The Los Angeles Dodgers' Chad Billingsley was among the other inductees.) Ashley played basketball and ran track, though everyone, including the reverend who married her, mostly spoke about her volleyball prowess. Our Ashley was District Player of the Year, so I guess I'm not going to challenge her to any pickup games anytime soon.

We had a wonderful time driving past the places that have a lot of meaning to Ashley--the site where Fort Defiance once stood ("the canons there now are only reproductions," Ashley lamented), the Crescent-News where she once worked, and the Tim Hortons doughnut shop, where, based upon Ashley's thin frame, she never once ate. And on her suggestion, we spent a morning at Sauder Village, a pioneer reenactment town not all that different from the Old Bethpage Village Restoration I used to sneak into as a kid. Alexandra helped churn the butter at Sauder and my own memories of doing the same thing--decades and miles apart--came flooding back.

The best part of the trip was meeting Aashley's family, particularly her parents and grandparents, of whom we've heard so much. Everyone was so welcoming, just as we expected. In fact, perhaps the highlight of the trip came moments after we arrived at Ashley's house. I had teased her about a welcome parade, complete with bunting, but Ashley secured the next best thing: an official proclamation from the mayor of Defiance, raised seal and all, welcoming us to his fair city. ("Whereas Defiance is home to six-time national horseshoes champion Alan Francis...")

The whole weekend was an absolute treat. After all, most people in America don't get married at the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. As much as I love that venue, there's so much to be said for a small Ohio wedding. Eating breakfast at Kissner's, where we were the only people who didn't know everyone else in the joint; watching my daughter Alexandra dance the night away with a charming young boy named Michael; and, most of all, watching Ashely, International Ambassador of Defiance, Ohio prove my favorite author wrong.

You can, and should, go home again.

Take care,

Matt

Thanks for joining us at the Twitter Arts Channel (TACi). It's a beautiful night here at Wolf Trap, not a cloud in the sky. What more could you ask for than a nice blanket, a glass of wine with a loved one, and an endless sea of LED lights emanating from your neighbor's cellphone. If you're lucky, some of those same neighbors will make a few calls during the show and probably grab a couple of snapshots. Should be a great and relaxing time!

Tonight, we'll be hearing Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the "Pastoral." We couldn't think of a piece of music that lends itself more to constant typing away at a Blackberry than this one. It just screams out "technology!" The musicians are warming up now and while they do, we thought it would be a good time to reprise some of our recent Twittercasts here on TACi. Enjoy the show!

Turandot, by Giacomo Puccini, Metropolitan Opera, 7/12/09.