For those of you who were unable to view the newsletter due to text that mysteriously showed up too dark, you can read the Fall newsletter online.

Hey, there! A few of you have reported that my e-newsletter came through with black text on a black background. Oops! Sorry about that. I’ll post a link here tomorrow to the email so you can read it online instead.

Thanks for your patience while we get things going!

The recent announcement by Jerry Sanders, mayor of San Diego, that he would approve a measure legalizing gay marriage reminded me that I’ve been sitting on a post for awhile about using inclusive language in documents that I give to wedding clients.

One thing I rarely hear other wedding professionals talk about is how to make sure their services and businesses are welcoming to LGBT couples. While the US is in the midst of large-scale public debate about the legal status of gay marriage, LGBT couples continue to make public declarations of their love and commitment in large numbers. LGBT couples are having weddings despite the lack of legal protection for their relationships. As a queer woman myself, I am heartened and excited by the increasing regularity that I see these ceremonies.

One way I can participate in the marriage equality movement is to make a concerted effort to photograph the weddings of LGBT couples. As a photographer, I have the opportunity to increase the visibility of the unions that LGBT couples are making to one another simply by taking photographs of these unions. However, while that’s a wonderful step, I recently decided that it wasn’t enough. I don’t want to simply capitalize on the new “gay wedding” market. I want to be a pioneer of social change!

That may sound like a tall order, but there are some very simple things that those of us who work in the wedding industry can do to make sure our business and services are welcoming to LGBT couples. While we may not have any images or examples of LGBT couples in our portfolios, one very simple thing we can do is to erase gender-specific language from our business documents.

Now, I say “simple,” but actually this is not the easiest task to accomplish! I recently took a close look at all of the verbiage on my website an in the printed materials that I give to wedding clients, with an eye toward making sure the language was inclusive of LGBT couples, and it was really difficult to find word substitutions that didn’t make things that much more confusing. To give you an idea of some of the difficulties I encountered, here’s some of the roadblocks I faced:

• If there’s no “bride” or “groom”, then do we still have “bridesmaids” or “groomsmen”?
• If a couple has two brides, and their attendants are a mix of men and women, what do we call them?
• If the couple is two women, are both “brides”? Are two men both “grooms”?
• Who gets their photo taken with the flowergirl? What about the ringbearer?
• If I want to use the same documents for ALL of my couples, how do I use language that isn’t gender-specific without either becoming confusing or alienating the heterosexual couples that I work with?

Those were just some of the questions I asked myself during the process of making by business documents inclusive. Part of what sparked this pursuit was a wedding that I photographed a few years ago in Toronto for a lesbian couple shortly after Canada legalized gay marriage. While it was wonderful that gay marriages were legal, their marriage documents had not been updated to reflect the change. It amused the brides that one of them wrote her name under the space for the “groom,” but not everyone would have a sense of humor about it. I don’t want to run the risk of alienating any of my couples while we plan for one of the most important days of their lives, and I definitely don’t want to leave LGBT couples feeling like their relationships are an afterthought.

After a lot of thinking and brainstorming with friends and colleagues, I was able to come up with some solutions. (Big thanks to Cheryl and Jane!) Rather than referring to people as “brides” or “grooms”, I am leaving space for people to write in their own names. On my list of formal wedding photos, each person has the same list of individuals (or groups) for potential photos, and they can check boxes to let me know who is being photographed with whom. On my wedding contract, I no longer have spaces for the “bride” to write her name and the “groom” to write his name. Instead, there’s spaces for the couple to write their names, give me their phone numbers, and tell me to whom the numbers belong.

Going through the exercise of making my documents welcoming to all my wedding couples—regardless of gender or sexual orientation—may seem like a hassle, but it’s one that I think is important to face. I invite any other wedding professionals reading this to take a look through my new, inclusive wedding documents for ideas on how to make your own paperwork accessible to your clients, whatever their orientation may be.

In honor of Labor Day, I wanted to take a moment to share with you a few of my favorite quotes that relate to doing what you love:

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
: Henry David Thoreau

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that…I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.
: John Lennon

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.
: John Lennon

I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.
: Madonna

No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself.
: Rabbi Sofer

When you love what you’re doing, you’re not working.
: Henri Cartier-Bresson

What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.
: Julia Cameron

Leap and the net will appear.
: John Burroughs

Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.
: Joseph Campbell

Hate what you’re doing? Have an unrealized dream career? I have two recommendations:

1. GigZig your current job at PayScale to see what you could be doing in five years
2. Pick up a copy of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and work the program in the book.

Happy Labor Day.

I’m backlogged on photos at the moment, but I took an hour today to select and edit a few images from my ongoing Sun Signs project. These images were taken this afternoon. I skipped posting any images for Cancer or Leo, but I’ll post those as soon as I can. That’s the problem with these personal projects—they always get lower priority than work for clients. :\

What’s the Sun Signs project about, anyway? Scroll down below the photos in this post for more details.

See more in this set on Flickr

The Sun Signs project is a long-term art project that I’m doing. It’s a project that I’ve been thinking about for years, and finally started working on last June. It’s a project that I fully expect to be working on when I’m 40, 50, 60…heck, as long as I can pick up a camera and find people willing to sit for me, I’ll be working on this project.

The premise for this project is simple enough: How does astrology influence who we are? My goal with this project is to let each person’s personality shine through as much as possible while I’m photographing them, and then select the image that captured their “essence” the best. I do not pose people for this project—honestly, I rarely pose people at ALL when I photograph them, but I definitely do not do it with these images—and I stick to extremely simple lighting arrangements and framing. I am not trying to be artistic with the images, or to do anything staged or contrived. What I want is to capture moments of people being exactly who they are in that moment in time.

I am taking these photos on people’s birthdays because that’s when the astrological energy is the most focused on us, according to the astrologers I’ve spoken with. On our birthdays, the universe’s energy is extra validating of those qualities that make us unique, astrologically-speaking. My ultimate purpose with these images is to display them in various combinations (a show of all Capricorns, or all air signs, or all queers representing each sun sign), and let people draw their own conclusions about how much (or how little) astrology impacts each of us.

If this sounds like the kind of project you’d be interested in participating in, here’s the low-down!

Details:

• Cost: $30 at my studio in Redmond, WA ($50 if you prefer me to bring my lights and equipment to you and you are located in the greater Seattle area. Outside of the greater Seattle area, please email me.)
• You sign a model release form allowing me to print, display, modify, and use these images for this project and in my general portfolio.
• You must be available on your birthday, either during the day or in the evening.

You recieve:

• Online proofing gallery from which you, your friends and family may order prints
• DVD of high-resolution (print-quality) images, with a print and display release
• Professional (though minimal) re-touching and image processing

If you’re interested in participating, please email me at mcb@mollybennett.com with your birth-date and we’ll set something up! People from all walks of life are welcome: age, race, ethnicity, size, shape, gender, sexual orientation, shoe size and ice cream preference are unimportant!