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Spotlight On: Eric Ronald

The Art of Wedding Photography

The Perfect Day

Often, weddings take on a life of their own. The so-called perfect day comes with its expectations and not to mention pressures from family, friends, and even oneself. Capturing that range of emotions is no easy feat. Even more challenging is capturing the essence of the couple – the newlyweds who are about to embark on a new life together.

This is what motivates Eric Ronald, a wedding photographer based in Melbourne, Australia. A recent addition to the brand ambassador program, the Capture One team, spoke with Ronald about his journey to become a professional wedding photographer.

“I was always drawn to the arts,” said Ronald. “After high school, I went to film school. So that’s where I received more of a foundation, both technically and creatively, in how I can start working on how to become a cinematographer.”

From there, Ronald focused on making films, music videos, but upon graduation, he realized that the reality of being a professional cinematographer was quite different than he imagined.

“I like the idea of cinematography as I have a very vivid imagination and am a visual person,” said Ronald.

But on set it, Ronald found himself jostling against different egos—egos who were convinced that their way was the only way.

“I found it frustrating. But also, I didn’t have the life skills to navigate that kind of world, which was a bit of a worry because I had spent all these years and passion and time to learn this craft and then not to pursue it.”

Always a hard worker, Ronald was not prepared to give up on film entirely and soon found
himself working on an Australian cop television series, Blue Heelers.

“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ve gone through this path. I’ve got thrown into TV. I’m just going to have to grab this opportunity and run with it,’ because there’s no other path for me, or at least I didn’t see that there was.”

TV Times

From Blue Heelers, Ronald began an early career in television, cutting his teeth on shows such as Deal or No Deal, Dancing with Stars, Australia’s Got Talent, among many others. For Ronald, television was both a job that required a creative mind and technical savoir-faire– the latter he credits later helped him understand the more intricate mechanics of photography.

“Working in television production helped me dial my eyes into the consistency between images and why it’s important to focus on aspects, such as skin tone,” said Ronald. “I discovered that sometimes it does not matter what the rest of the image is doing, in terms of how we stylize it. But we generally want the skin to look pretty good, so it was nice to have a creative filmmaking background, but then funnel it through a much more technical kind of training, as well as lighting and understanding the important role it also plays in both film and photography.”

Life Changes

Ronald ended up working ten years in television, upon which he started to evaluate whether he could grow anymore in this field.

“I got to a point where it’s like, the only place up from being a technical director is being in administration and management, which didn’t interest me.”

At the same time, Ronald’s older brother fell ill with skin cancer.

“So, I’m going through the process of losing my brother and working long hours for a job that no longer had anything for me,” said Ronald. “As my brother, Lee was sick, one of the last things he said to me was ‘Don’t waste a day,’ which may sound cliché, but it was particularly apt for me because I was wasting my time and, well, time is precious. My brother died when he was 25.”

Reset Button

To gain perspective from the loss of his brother and the decision to leave television, Ronald decided to travel.

“All this money that I thought was saved to buy a house, I decided to spend on traveling and spent the most of the year, traveling to all kinds of crazy places across South America, the Middle East, Asia.”

Before his global tour, he decided to get a camera.

“I bought a Canon 40D, which was a prosumer camera, kit lens, all that kind of stuff,” said Ronald. “I also had this Canon 50 mil, which was just 150 bucks.”

During the trip, Ronald took photos of the far-flung places he visited and the characters he encountered. What felt like experiencing the world and its wide variety of cultures for the first time doubled as an antidote to Ronald’s grieving, as well as grew into a creative outlet.

“It may sound cliché in many ways, but I grieved through the camera,” said Ronald. “Having nourishing experiences, such as meeting an old Peruvian woman in the Andes and developing a connection, and then capturing her portrait was what I desired at that time.”

Back Home

Upon returning home, Ronald went back to television while he figured out his next move: photography.

“Okay, Photography. How do I get there? How do I make this a thing?” said Ronald.
After his travels, his natural inclination was towards travel photography, but he quickly realized it wasn’t feasible due to family commitments.

At a crossroads again, Ronald was stumped. It was then that a friend of his asked him to shoot his wedding.

“At first, I was like ‘No way.’” said Ronald. “I wasn’t interested and also had these preconceived ideas of what wedding photography can be, which was cheesy.”
Yet, his friend insisted on referring to the photos Ronald had taken during his travels, encouraging him to do whatever he wanted.

“He was persistent and said just do whatever you want – there’s no pressure to be a certain way or do it any particular way,” said Ronald. “And as soon as he said that, then I got excited.”

New to wedding photography, Ronald started searching for inspiration. Yet, nothing from the discipline resonated with him.

“I remember looking online at other wedding photography. At that time, I didn’t find anything that I connected with me,” said Ronald. “Then, suddenly, I thought, what if you could photograph a wedding like a film?”

Ronald took the plunge, excited by the possibility of leveraging his cinematography training to create a wedding photo album that was more like a storyboard. Soon, he realized the value of being a wedding photographer – a witness to what is, often, considered the best day of one’s life.

“What’s exciting is that these photos that I created for these friends, will always be an important reminder of their special day and well, that has meaning,” said Ronald. “I think making these short films years before lacked any importance. They were kind of us just playing around, and then they’d disappear into thin air and be forgotten about, whereas what I could do on a wedding day was create a legacy of these couples’ most awesome day.”

Going All In

Ronald never thought he would become a wedding photographer. Yet, his desire to connect with people and draw out their personalities and quirks with each camera click aligned well with him and ultimately converted him to the genre.

“Never in a million years did I think I would want to be a wedding photographer, but I just kind of grabbed it and ran with it.”

And what started as a gig in his city of Melbourne has evolved into a profession that combines far-flung places with the “Big Day.”

“I have been able to infuse my love of travel photography into wedding photography,” said Ronald who has shot weddings in Egypt, Jordan, Sir Lanka, among many other places.

But these are not always you’re not typical destination weddings.

“We’re not just doing resort weddings, which are wonderful, in a place like Thailand, which I love doing,” said Ronald. “But also, having an opportunity to photograph in a place like India, the culture and the ceremonies are so different to what we know. There’s just so much that I just naturally get excited about and just want to snap it all up.”

Picture Perfect

On the challenges of capturing both the essence of a couple and their setting, Ronald acknowledges while anyone can take a picture of the Pyramids, it’s up to the photographer to make the human connection among the setting and subject.

“It’s about who you are as a person and being genuine and sincere. I love people. That’s one of the reasons why I do this gig,” said Ronald. “Not only do I love people, but I’m also fascinated by people.”

It’s that level of curiosity that keeps Ronald engaged and alert as a wedding photographer combined with the challenge to always connect.

“For me, the challenge is always how do I connect really intensely with these two human beings, that I’ve never met, never worked with before?” said Ronald. “That’s the ongoing challenge that I’ll have for as long as I’m a wedding photographer, and well, that’s fun for me.”

Spotlight On: Jean Cazals

The Art of Food Photography

Foodie Craze

In the last decade, food photography has accrued a cult-like following, thanks in part to digital platforms such as Instagram. The meals once recounted on personal blogs (think Nora Ephron’s film, Julia and Julie) have now been replaced with imagery of one’s breakfast, frothy cappuccinos in southern Italy, or the perfect slice of pizza in some dilapidated Brooklyn borough. You get the picture.

No stranger to this is Jean Cazals, a French food and lifestyle photographer based in London. For the past 35 years, Cazals has photographed food after 10 years of shooting portraiture, witnessing all its trends and guises, or what he refers to as the “fashion of food.”

“I originally wanted to be a heart surgeon,” said Cazals from his Notting Hill home base of London, “But I did not have the grades, and my parents urged me to explore something else, which then led me to photography.”

The visceral element of Cazals’ ambitions to be a doctor permeates much of his work. His unconventional approach to photographing food sets his work apart from most product-driven food photography, rampant in the gastro genre.

Business of Food Photography

Having worked primarily photographing food for 35 years, Cazals is familiar with the different waves of fashion and trends that impact the business, whether it’s one-shot or a series of shoots.

“Often, it depends on what the client wants,” said Cazals. “For instance, the textured background or shooting down on food is something which is very much in fashion at the moment.”

The fashion element of food can, often, be problematic in Cazals’ opinion.

“All of a sudden, people take one thing, and then everybody wants to be like that. So you get advertising companies and companies say,’ Oh, we want it like that,’ which to me is saying, ‘Oh, you want it to be like everybody else,'” said Cazals, “And then in a year, there will be something different, and so you have to do that.”

Making Your Mark

And while trends may come and go, Cazals believes he has managed to impose his style in his 35 years working as a professional food photographer. For him, it’s essential to capture what he refers to as a “stunning” element of food. Think French Impressionists.

“The stunning is important for me. Food photography nowadays can be someone plucking something on the table, taking the shot, and that’s it,” said Cazals. “And yes, while a picture of food must show the reality of things, I do think as an artist, you can create this altered reality within food photography – just in a more curated way.”

Drawn to the graphic elements of food, Cazals is interested in how food photography can tell a story – rather than show an appetizing product. For him, this is what appeals to him about the genre.

“You can’t get into depths within the subject with just one image,” he said. “And with food, you can go through a theme, like a series of few pictures of tomatoes or play with the surroundings. So it varies a lot. It really depends. The main thing for you as the artist is to insert your own style and vision.”

Make Room at the Table

There’s no denying that food photography has drastically changed since Cazals first embarked on his career. As a trend, Cazals believes food photography has become more accessible due rise of technology. Today, there’s also more room at the table, and by that, more women shooting food which makes food photography “richer because you have two visions instead of one.”

“I think at the moment the young food photographers generation is more interesting in capturing food on the go than curating food photography,” he said.

Balancing Act

The consummate stylist, Cazals, loves to use food also as a prop in his work. Styling is a key factor in my photography. The way the space, element, light work in harmony.

“While normally food should be there to show something like a recipe in a book, or for a magazine, I also like to push the boundaries and play around with the subject whether it’s an egg with a knife underpinning it.”

For Cazals, this playful approach to food photography epitomizes his vision of the disicipline.

“I want people to look at an image that is not just a snapshot of a food, but something that goes a bit further that surprises the viewer whenever possible.”

On juggling the artistic and commercial demands of being a photographer, Cazals says that the desire to take photographs means becoming a professional, which means taking on commercial work.

“Because we’re artists that will always serve as the foundation for what we do – whether it’s hobby and profession, or both,” said Cazals. “We do photography because we like photography, and we like to take pictures, and then it becomes a professional, which means we earn money.”

However, Cazals negates the notion that by becoming a professional or doing commercial work will compromise one’s artistic integrity. Yes, money is involved, but it allows him to do what he loves every day and earn a living from it.

“I was and am fortunate to be able to do something I enjoy every day, which started out initially as a hobby that became my livelihood,” said Cazals, who also acknowledges how crowded and competitive today’s photography landscape is, in part due to the rise of digital technologies.

”Again, it’s a privilege to do what I love and make my living from it.”

Spotlight On: Bryan Minear

For this week’s Spotlight On feature, we spoke to veteran brand ambassador Bryan Minear about how his work as a fine art and landscape photographer has evolved, the perks of fatherhood, and his views on the marriage between technology and art.

He’s a dad and husband first – two fundamental qualities to understanding how Minear thinks about the state of play and the media landscape today. It also seems to act as a sort of compass for where Minear’s energy goes in the creative world; these days, perhaps best encapsulated within 280 characters on that other social platform photographers have been rediscovering in the wake of Instagram’s pivot to video. More on that to come.

But it’s there–maybe rebelliously–where the mid-thirties Minear starts to sound in a way that betrays his age but sets him apart from his peers. He shares his work, sure, but also his mind. And on Twitter, people tend to read more and give more gravitas to words than a caption on Instagram.

Fittingly, Minear has recently used Twitter as the account to blast IG, attracting notice from creative platforms, such as DPReview and Reddit. Their readers have applauded his disdainful words for Instagram’s about-face for photographers, while his contemporaries have expressed empathy for his views.

“In my eyes, Instagram stopped caring about artists and independent creators a long time ago. I have been a huge supporter of Twitter since the beginning and found a thriving photography community here around 2019 when I began to pursue it as my primary social media outlet,” he tells DPReview.

And caring about artists, art, the craft itself, and the future of all three is something that drives him. Minear is old enough to know there are more predictable avenues and more dependable ways to make more money. Still, young enough (and savvy enough) to know he has the scope and time to make an impact in, and maybe more importantly, for the industry with the right moves. And he’s made plenty of those – becoming a Fuji X Photographer and Capture One Ambassador, to name a few.

He credits his grandfather with getting him started in photography, “He always had cameras around,” he says. Still, it’s to Minear’s credit that he simultaneously developed his photography and graphic design abilities, the intersection of the two proving to be the fertile soil for the new world of NFTs, a world Minear adopted early on.

In this way, Minear has found himself less defined as a pure photographer and more falling into that modern category of ‘creator,’ a kind of multi-hyphenate. To become a successful sustaining creative today with a base in photography, you must buck the antecedent notion that the value of an image can only be measured from within IG analytics. And of course, he would have to be in this world where the frivolity of imagery makes some feel they’re entitled to custom work at commoditized prices. This is where NTF comes in, something he shares his knowledge on through podcasts, tweets, and anyone interested in lending an ear.

So, while he might take up a loudspeaker to call out Instagram and Mosseri for flipping script, he’s accepting of what he can’t change, Darwinian enough to change with the game, and has the wisdom to know when to do each. He knows the dose makes the poison.

What you figure out about Minear if you open your eyes and ears to consume his content is, ultimately, he exemplifies the modern creator with this ‘hero’s journey process, and marrying art and tech. And the way he speaks about NFT and this marriage of art and tech will both excite you and swivel the Rubik’s Cube of your day. He’s effusively positive at a time when the industry needs that most, and that’s the thing; after speaking to him, you walk away thinking to yourself, “Yeah. Whatever he’s on, I’ll have some of that.”