Joel favors natural, candid photography with minimal posing to capture the magic moments of your wedding day. He uses imaginative camera angles, time exposures and other creative techniques to capture images that other photographers miss.

Stale, formula poses are used for most shots, based on their proven track record for print sales.

Joel draws upon his experience as a cinematographer to make dynamic use of natural light, adding as little artificial lighting as possible.

During your wedding ceremony, Joel uses high-speed lenses and films to capture dramatic images in low light without flash.

Most shots are taken with direct fill-flash, resulting in flat, boring pictures.

The ceremony is not usually photographed, due to flash restrictions in most churches.

Joel shoots 600-1000 pictures, then personally edits them down to 300-500 and sequences them to tell the story of your wedding day.

Most photographers only shoot about 200 pictures to save on the cost of film, then show you all of them, good or bad.

You get to Keep ALL of your proofs.

The proofs are presented to you in an archival quality storage box, which you also get to keep.

You often only get to keep 20 proofs and must buy the rest from the studio.

The proofs are presented in cheap albums, which you are forced to purchase at a high markup.

Your negatives and digital files are yours to keep!
You save hundreds to thousands of dollars on enlargements by taking your negatives or digital files directly to high-quality photo labs that Joel approves. Joel will recommend several different labs for different kinds of prints at different prices. Some of these labs offer hand-processed, archival prints frim film negatives.

Alternatively, we can create a private website for you, so that you and your family can order prints online. We also offer custom designed albums.

Most studios retain your negatives and digital files, forcing you to order prints through them. Enlargement orders are sent off to low-priced, high-volume commercial labs, then re-sold to you at a markup of several hundred percent.

We also offer museum quality digital exhibition prints of your favorite wedding photos on fine art papers up to 40"x60."

Not available.

We offer several wedding packages, including one that features unlimited time and film over a two day period. Joel has been known to work up to 14 consecutive hours on a wedding shoot.

Most photographers limit you to eight hours or less.

Joel will happily travel anywhere in the world to capture your wedding day on film or digital photography, adding the travel costs to the package price.

Services are not available outside of a 50-mile radius from the studio.

A working and exhibiting fine art photographer, Joel restricts himself to twenty weddings per year, so that he is always fresh, creative, and ready give customers his full attention.

Many studios book 3-4 weddings per weekend, using assistants to finish up one wedding while the photographer heads off to the next.

Joel is an accomplished photographic artist with over 25 years of experience shooting assignments in over 40 countries. His work has appeared at the Weston Gallery, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in Black & White Magazine, and in many other public and private collections. The unique vision he brings to photographing your wedding assures that your pictures will be beautiful, spontaneous and original.

Most wedding photographers are little more than business people with cameras. Very few have ever photographed anything but weddings and almost none have ever had a museum show.

Pickford Pictures now offers clients a choice of film or digital wedding photography. Digital technology has advanced so far in recent years, that the quality now surpasses film, especially in low light situations. Another major advantage of digital images is that they can be printed in both color and black & white, at little or no additional cost.

Despite all of the advantages of digital photography, we know that a few of our clients are still going to want their wedding day captured with the classic look of traditional black & white film. Therefore we continue to offer B&W film packages.

Most wedding studios have followed the herd and gone completely digital, abandoning film entirely. Most never knew how to shoot black and white film properly in the first place.

Highly personalized service and uncompromising quality do not come cheap, but is your wedding day worth anything less?

High prices do not guarantee high quality (see all of the above).