David McElroy

In my dream of Christmas Yet to Come, I see a loving mother and I see our children. I see us in a church service together on a Christmas Eve.

I see bright and curious faces experiencing the wonder of something transcendent. I see two parents who love each other and are eager for their children to feel the wonder of something bigger than themselves — to feel the joy and love and connection of Christmas with people who know there is some mysterious power bigger than themselves, something which binds a community of people together through some wisp of spirit inside each heart.

I grew up in churches where the brain was more important than the heart. Nobody would have said it that way, but what mattered was doctrine and rational explanations, not experience or any powerful sense of wonder. We were vaguely disdainful of people who felt too much or expressed too much from the heart.

We quietly extinguished the transcendent from the sacred in most respects — and I believe we lost something important as a result.

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I hate wedding photos.

It’s not that I hate marriage or the people in the pictures. I just don’t see the glamour or fantasy or happiness that so many people associate with those photos. Instead, I associate them with shallow fantasy and excess spending by people looking — consciously or not — to paint a false picture for the world.

I’m often asked why I don’t make money on weekends by taking wedding photos, but I could never be a wedding photographer unless I could take the photos the clients want and tell myself I’m doing parody instead. My over-the-top satirical take on cliched “life event” photos would be exactly what many others truly want and find meaningful.

I’m really big on symbolism and finding meaning in metaphor. I find that wedding photos tend to be shallow expressions of fantasy to cover up the reality of relationships that are shallow and unhappy. Those photos let people lie to others about their marriages for years. More importantly, those photos let people lie to themselves.

My friend Keith Hall shared a story Sunday that neatly illustrates the unintended irony of the American obsession with the wedding facade, which I see as representative of the marriage facade.

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It happens all the time. Someone sees a photo I’ve shot that he thinks is good and he says, “Wow. You must have a really great camera.”

Many people believe great photos come from great cameras and that good art of any kind comes from superior tools. I never know quite how to respond to such people, because that attitude reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between an artist or craftsman and his tools.

A good photographer can make the most of a cheap camera and an untalented person can make horrible images even with a great camera — but that doesn’t mean a talented photographer doesn’t crave a great camera. And it doesn’t mean he can’t do better work with great equipment.

There’s an old adage that says, “It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools.” And it’s true.

On the other hand, a good craftsman doesn’t use lousy tools for his work, at least not very long, because he knows the difference. So which matters to doing good work? Is it the artist’s talent or the tool which matters?

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