john gallino (event photographer)

I was first exposed to the art of photography in November of 2005 when I recieved a job at Photovisions, a wedding photography studio in my area. Over the course of the following two years, I learned the crafts of taking beautiful pictures, designing albums, and editing images in the digital darkroom. I also honed my skills by attending weddings and bar mitzvahs and assisting in documenting the days' events with photographs. Since then, my images have been featured in several wedding albums and some hang gracefully in the homes of happy newlyweds.

I now attend Ramapo College as a Visual Arts major with a concentration in Photography, all the while running my own small event photography business through this website. My style is heavily photojournalistic, simple and colorful in nature due to my great admiration for masters of photography like Henri-Cartier Bresson and Stephen Shore. I pride myself on my ability to document an event the way those who were there remember it by capturing the little details that make the event unique.
My work has also been spotlighted in the December 2007 issue of Shutterbug Magazine.

A Word About Weddings
Photographing weddings is truly rewarding work because it's such a happy atmosphere. Everyone is smiling and laughing, and even when the bride is crying or the groom is nervous, it's all in good fun and it still turns out to be the best day of their lives. That's something I really enjoy being a part of, and capturing the most important moments of the day - the hugs, the kisses, the little ringbearers getting ready, the mother of the bride putting the boutonniere on the groom, the bride and groom as they exit the church officially married under the eyes of God - these are the moments that the families will never want to forget, and so I'm happy to photograph them to the best of my ability.
I always come back from weddings in excellent spirits, without a doubt in my mind that photography is something I want to pursue the rest of my life. It is a great way to recenter myself and remind myself of what I truly enjoy doing. Because after many weeks of not taking pictures, or being distracted by other, more stressful things, doubts arise in my mind. Is a photographer really all I'm going to amount to? Is that what I want to contribute to the world? Yep, yes it is. Sure, it may not always be as important as an engineer or a doctor, but the world needs artists. Though I hate to identify myself as an "artist" (I usually can't stand most artists), I have no choice but to realize that photography is my calling. It's the only thing in my life that I honestly have a passion for doing, and I'm good at it to boot. It brings me great joy and makes me feel alive, for some reason. There's nothing like seeing a wonderful moment in front of your eyes, and lifting your camera and clicking the shutter, knowing that you have actually captured that moment in time to be looked at again and again. It's a wonderful feeling and it is almost like cheating time itself.
Oftentimes when people look at my images, they say something like "you take beautiful pictures," but that's missing the point. It's not the pictures that are beautiful. It's life. Life is filled with beauty and wonderful moments and scenes, and it is just my hobby to collect as many of those scenes as I can so people can enjoy them as much as I have. That's why I want to be a photographer, and nothing else will fill that spot in my heart.