Eight Years Ago Today I Started My Degree At Columbia University
Apollo Fields Wedding Photographers | Long Island Photographer | Columbia University NYC | Destination Weddings | Heather Huie
Eight years ago today I started my degree at Columbia University.
I’d like to say that this was a decision that really launched my career, took my art to a new level, and set me apart from the competition– but I’d be lying. In fact, my shiny advanced ivy level education was remarkably… unremarkable.
Let’s back it up a bit here. The year was 2014 and I was two years out of my bachelors that I had completed at TCNJ. My undergrad experience was one that challenged me, kept me in the library until the lights were turned off, left me in the studio so late sometimes that the only other person in the building would be the security guard as he trailed back and forth through the hallways on his graveyard shifts. There I’d be in an otherwise dark corridor, typing away, illuminated by only the light on my laptop and his flashlight, and without saying a word he would just nod his hat in my direction, or occasionally throw me a peace sign.
Things look a lot different now
My professors had expected a lot out of me, and I happily rose to the occasion.
When I graduated magna cum laude, I felt at once a sense of pride as well as a strange solitude. Even a little disappointment, if we’re being honest… I had spent so much time reaching for perfect GPAs there that I had failed to make time for developing many true friendships. While others were fratting away with their Theta Beta Bimbos, I saw no appeal in rallies and rumbles. I felt, in many ways, that I had gotten all of that buddy buddy brethren out in boarding school, and it was time to focus on my academics. So I did.
Nevertheless, I still felt like I had something more to say (prove?) in the world of academia so two years later I threw an application at Columbia and was delighted to be accepted into their Masters program. I had always lived near the city but never in the city, and was ready to push myself again the way I had at TCNJ. Except more, naturally, because it was a more advanced degree at a more advanced school. Right? Not exactly.
On my first day, one of my professors who was old as dirt laid out a bunch of books on the table before us. She told us to thumb through them, so we did. She then informed us that these were all of her books she authored, and when we had as many publications as she did, then we were allowed to have an opinion in her class. Super, I thought, what a bitch. But of course, she had been tenured for twenty years which in her case meant that she was hungry for nothing more than a paycheck and her position was unflappable.
This was, I would come to find out, part of the problem with these celebritized professors. Either their egos had gotten so large that they were unwilling to engage in any sort of debate or rhetoric with us lowly students, or they had simply grown tired. How long can one teach the same material with believable fortitude? I don’t know. But I do know that all it took was a simple, “May I have an extension please?” to be granted one and absence meant almost nothing in terms of your grade at the end of the semester.
Hell, I decided about ten minutes into a welding class that I was terrified of welding, and flat out did not turn in a metalwork sculpture. It was one out of the three final projects we would be graded on that whole term, and I still received an A-. Trust me, my woodworking skills were not refined enough to carry me to the finish line, and I interpreted that grade as proof that I was paying for my degree, not my education.
So it has been eight years since I embarked on my ivy league journey.
Six since I graduated.
It will probably be another sixty before I’m done paying it off, and if we’re being honest, I’m not sure anyone really cares. My paycheck didn’t automatically inflate itself once my diploma was placed in my hand, and nobody came rushing to my side with job offers. I did, however, receive a bottle of Veuve from the University, which I promptly drank straight from the bottle in my light blue cap and gown walking down Broadway. That part didn’t suck…
I still believe in school and I realize that I have been very, very privileged along the way. Scholarships and fellowships and grants have given me my proverbial wings, just as student loans have given me my proverbial shackles. To that I say fuck you Sally Mae, and all your boomer comrades who told us to stay in school even though they only made it through the twelvth grade. Yeah, I’m looking at you mom and dad, because you might not remember when I was seventeen and you guys enthusiastically pushed student loans at me with the empty promise that I would graduate with a six figure job right on the other side, but I sure do.
I’m not bitter anymore (I mean, don’t ask my therapist) but I would like to end this on a positive note. My undergrad taught me that you can work yourself to death and still miss the mark on perfection – that perfect 4.0 – and you might not even have many friends to show for it in the end. But I had a great education there. I had phenomenal professors who actually gave a rat's ass about our opinions and expanding our minds. My masters taught me that sometimes you have to pay to play, and that when you’re spending $50k a year, you actually can just walk up to your teacher and say you want an extension. But freedom ain’t free, so be prepared to pony up when they come a’knockin’, and they always do.
Fast forward to 2021
Apollo Fields 2021: 54 Weddings and 1 Baby
For the most part, our job as wedding photographers is to blend in, not stand out.
To move throughout the day like inconspicuous flies on the wall, floating through rooms and in and out of moments like a steady breeze through an open window. We take great pride in being given the opportunity to navigate the intimate spaces of wedding days, playing off the principle that stepping on a truly genuine moment is a cardinal sin. Year-in-and-year-out we flutter from venue-to-venue, unpacking and repacking our camera bags as quickly and commonly as the shutter clicks on our cameras. I am writing this blog to give a glimpse of what it is like to document a commencement of love 50 times a year in the span of six or seven months. It is with great love and appreciation that I say—it is our time to stand out.
From Brandon and Lia’s Wedding in September 2021 in Little Compton, Rhode Island.
2021 Still Wasn’t “Normal.”
We try to avoid using the word normal because it’s one of those “non-words” that doesn’t really mean anything. What exactly does it mean for a person or a year to be “normal”? As it pertains to people: the quirkier the better; but as it goes for wedding seasons, we’ll take predictable. Like the idea of a wedding happening on a specified date and location. Of course we have empathized with every couple for the last two years but can you imagine what our Google calendar has looked like? Think Charlie Kelly in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia vibes. Now picture him in a wedding dress.
And yet, it was the best year of my life.
I like to joke that having a kid feels like you’re playing the game of life on hard mode. Every activity of everyday or every trip is just that much harder. Mornings feel earlier and nights feel longer, but in between extended bouts of exhaustion there are pristine moments of overtired bliss. Like the walk Heather and I took at midnight in Montauk after a wedding as we watched the crests of waves hover and crash on the coast over and over again in the bright moonlight. Or when I held Capa just above the surface of the rooftop pool in West Palm Beach, pushing him through the water like the dorsal fin of a dolphin swimming in the Caribbean. For everything that being a parent takes away from you it gives it back in moments of overwhelming joy.
And also the busiest.
Between our 54 weddings in 13 states plus an unspecified amount of family and engagement sessions we changed diapers, spoon-fed, walked, drove, and nursed our baby Capa. The crazy part is that despite all of the time Heather and I spent together we often felt like we never saw each other. We developed a workflow where I would take Capa in the morning and let Heather catch up on sleep after nursing him all night. Then we’d have breakfast together and one of us would take him for the next stretch while the other person works. It was like a game of hot potato if that potato was adorable and could poop and pee. And despite developing the habit popular to babies of rubbing my eyes when I’m tired, I have no regrets about how we handled everything.
Ron and Sunil’s wedding in August 2021 at The Battery on the southern tip of Manhattan.
a reminder to Change over time.
I was just talking to Heather this morning about how I can’t imagine both of us still bartending full-time like we did in our twenties. It’s not that we couldn’t or we shouldn’t but rather that we value the current iteration of Terrence-and-Heather (-and-Capa) over the one at the beginning of our relationship. In a funny way, our 2021 wedding season felt like a full bartending shift spent “in the weeds” where we never got to look up and kept going from one thing to the next. As the years pass I can’t help but notice the trajectory of our lives and how the previous events prepared us for what came next. Who knows what Capa will mean for our future but if this year was any indication of what’s to come, I can’t fucking wait.
NYE 2015 - One of Heather and I’s first photos together. Taken at a diner on the UWS at ~ 5:00am.
Northport Long Island Elopement Photography
Jamie and Allison's Crab Meadow Beach Wedding Portraits | Northport NY Photographer | Apollo Fields Wedding Photography
The birds of the beach soared over our heads, higher than the early morning rising summer sun, taking turns plunging into the Long Island Sound. Their impacts sent a sputter of splashes on the surface, wings flapping amidst the spray, almost like they were cooling off in a ceramic bird bath at the center of a peaceful garden. The air was fresh and only slightly saline as high tide swept up the shore, covering the thousands of small, hollowed-out sandy homes of Crab Meadow Beach with a shifting layer of foamy water. Allison and Jamie bowing their heads, gently closed their eyes, bringing their foreheads to softly rest upon one another like wings spread in the wind, floating above the earth, ready to take their dive at any moment.
Jamie and Allison took the proverbial “plunge” or “dive” a couple months prior under the tree cover of a forest in Maryland at the height of quarantine. They, like many other couples who planned to get married in 2020, had to decide what the celebration of their love would look like during a pandemic. It’s so hard to shift expectations when they’ve already been set, but if it’s anything we’ve learned from Jamie and Allison and the difficult situation in general, is that love, like water, will always find a way.
Jamie and Allison’s Zoom wedding celebration in June was intimate and endearing, heartfelt, and natural. Figuring out how to get hundreds of little faces to fill a series of screens on several different devices changes the physical landscape of the audience but not the nature of the celebration. Love is—and always will be—at the core of weddings, and we’re watching in real time how we are all adapting to our expression of it. While a few family members were on hand to photograph the ceremony and first dance on the day of, Jamie and Allison decided they would take a trip up to us in Long Island, NY, to further honor and document their love and connection.
The idyllic found a home in circumstances less than ideal that morning on Crab Meadow Beach. Jamie and Allison moved effortlessly in the sand in their stunning wedding clothes as we watched and snapped away in awe. Heather is a sucker for evening golden hour and sunrise wedding photography and our morning with Allison and Jamie further solidified her resolve. The golden shape of their smiles and the aura around their faces hit the lens and our hearts with equal emotion. It was hard not to be happy.
And that’s what many couples think they are missing during this tough time. There’s definitely some truth to it but Heather and I and Jamie and Allison are the silver (or golden) lining kind of people; we are the kind of people who know that our love and our effort will carry us through the tough times and lift us even higher in the lighter ones; we are the kind of people who commit and take a plunge when we need to but extend our wings and float in the breeze while we can.
Enjoy some of the pics from Allison & Jamie’s Wedding portraits:
NYC Apollo Fields Date Night
NYC Date Night | Apollo Fields Wedding Photographers | The Standard Hotel Grill NYC | Stomp New York City
Yesterday, Heather and I’s date night in Manhattan turned into a full-fledged celebration of the relationships we have with our couples and with each other. The night began with a delicious meal at The Standard Hotel compliments of Executive Chef Igor, one of our newest clients for 2020. From there we trekked across town to St. Marks Place to catch Stomp, a rhythm-centric musical production that featured Rob Brinkkmann, a groom from one of our 2019 couples. As we walked the wintry streets of New York City we couldn’t stop gushing about the friendships we’ve made at Apollo Fields, and how important it is to us that they don’t start or stop with a shutter click.
Many people believe that the relationship with their wedding photographer ends when their wedding day is over or when their final pictures are delivered. For most of the industry this is true—as wedding photographers we provide a service that has a definite end—but the connections we make don’t have to end with the cutting of the cake. Heather and I choose to look at our couples as friends, as people we would love to formally or informally grab a beer with before their wedding day to hash out worries and logistics, or eventually invite over for dinner after they’ve tied the knot. This enriches our lives, the relationship we have to our couples, and undoubtedly elevates the final products we deliver.
By getting to know our couples on a personal level we are introduced to them as individuals, as people rather than clients. We are brought into their personal and professional worlds, whether they are badass chefs, talented performers, techies, or accountants. Whatever industry they may be in or whatever hobbies they love, we get to know them for who they are rather than what they are to our business. We choose to celebrate them because cheerleaders in our lives are hard to come by; it’s not like anyone smiles and claps for us in our morning commutes. Heather and I recognize that we enter people’s worlds in very significant moments in their lives and we believe that the responsibility to document their love does not begin and end at the altar. We believe that love lives in our couples relationships’ to their families, to their occupations and hobbies, and most readily accessible, to their friends.
I honestly couldn’t tell you how many times Heather and I looked at one another yesterday and said how lucky we are to be in our position. To gallivant around New York City with connections and friends doing their thing behind bars, in kitchens, and on stages. The friends we’ve made through Apollo Fields are constant reminders to be grateful, but more importantly, building these relationships into our business is a practice that transcends the bottom line. We may run a business to make a living but without our relationship to one another and to our couples we wouldn’t really have a life at all. Here’s to all the people in our lives who make us laugh, feed us delicious food, or pour us our favorite brews. At Apollo Fields we will continue to document your love to the best of our abilities, celebrating your highs and embracing your lows, but most of all, honoring all of you for who you already are.
