If theres’ one thing I’ve learned from watching so much Grey’s Anatomy lately, it’s that part of learning to be a good doctor is learning to slow down and fake confidence even if you’re nervous or scared out of your mind underneath the surface (at least on the show…I really hope any doctor I ever have is not as nervous as the ones in this show seem to be sometimes…)…Just in case you are woefully unaware of the premise of Grey’s Anatomy (as I sadly was until just a few weeks ago), the medical drama series follows five surgical interns at a hospital as they gradually learn and become more seasoned doctors. Part of their learning process is being thrown into unpredictable medical cases where they have to think quickly to solve health problems and save lives.

Soo most of the time as a wedding photographer your not actually saving lives…but I think you can make a solid comparison here if you use a little imagination…it’s kind of the same because these doctors have one chance to save a life…and on a wedding day you have one chance to capture images and create lasting memories for the bride and groom…Does that sound intimidating? It definitely did to me at first…On a wedding day you have to think about a ton of different things at once, and that can be enough to make you more than a little nervous…

I think the biggest things that helps the surgical interns in Grey’s Anatomy and that helps me on a wedding day as I’ve been learning is to consciously make an effort to slow down…I think it’s your natural instinct to want to speed up your thought process and rush to make a decision, but it’s so much easier to make the best decision if you literally tell your brain to slow down so that it can focus on the task at hand and anticipate your next move…I think it’s important to remind yourself that you have the power to reason and make the best decision possible by making an INFORMED decision…ie. If youre stressed and running out of daylight on a wedding day for portraits it’s much better to find some pretty light to take portraits in than to try and drive across town to the perfect location where it might be dark by the time you get there…Make the decision to stay and be confident in that decision…confidence breeds confidence…meaning that will help your couple feel really confident in your decision! When the doctors are confident in Grey’s Anatomy, I see the patients adopting the same confidence that the doctor has in the decided upon procedure.

Another example could be when you’re directing a couple on how to pose for portraits…sometimes if you only have a few minutes for portraits it’s easy to let your mind race trying to figure out the best most creative ideas…or sometimes it can get tricky if the couple has an extreme height difference…This is another time when I would tell myself to slow down and give myself a minute to re-evaluate…I think it’s okay to say to a couple “You two can just talk for a second and enjoy the fact that you’re MARRIED! I had a really  cute pose in mind and want to make sure I execute it correctly!”…Then you can take a second where the couple isn’t looking to you for what to do next to decide on what to do next…AND this opens the door for you to grab a shot of them interacting with each other naturally…I’d say it’s a win-win situation…

Lastly, I’ve learned that a lot of planning and pre visualizing goes into being able to slow down and have confidence…In Grey’s when a patient goes into surgery, the doctor has had extensive training and has a plan for the steps he needs to take during the surgery to save the patients life…at the very first wedding I ever shot by myself (which is the wedding that the pictures in this post are from…so fun going through old images!) I arrived TWO HOURS before I was supposed to be there…that’s kind of embarrassing to admit but it was so helpful for me to be able to plan out where every portrait would take place beforehand and it allowed me to be really confident in myself as I helped to execute the day!  If I didn’t take the steps to create a wedding day timeline or visualize how I will execute the wedding day, then my mind would be racing and I would probably forget something or get ahead of myself. Having a schedule and a plan helps me to slow down, have confidence, and enjoy the wedding day with the couple!

Can you tell by the thinking behind this post that I’m just slightly addicted to Grey’s Anatomy? I’m jumping on the bandwagon really really late in the game but it’s such a good show…Yesterday I told Ryan it was making me wish I was a surgeon…I was kind of joking.

Happy Tuesday!