Photographer: Ethan Watts
Ethan Watts loves photographing weddings—capturing people on their special day and finding ways to show what is unique about each couple and their event. In this case, not only was the couple unique—so was the way he met them.
A Positive Spin
Ethan’s business is based in Utah, but he shoots most of his weddings in California. “When Prop 8 was repealed in California, I saw a post about how gay marriage was an abomination,” he says. “So, I posted on my business page that I would be willing to give free engagement sessions to the first fifteen gay couples who messaged me within 72 hours. The response was huge. I had fifteen couples within the first 45 minutes. Some of them hadn’t been able to find a wedding photographer and just had a friend take photos on an iPad. They had no idea what a difference it would make to have professional photos,” he says. For the couple seen here, Ethan met up with the two grooms on a beach in Malibu.
As a gay man, Ethan also draws personal inspiration from sessions like these. “Doing these sessions gave me a real connection with where I see myself in the future,” he says.
Success
While Ethan says he sometimes gets push-back on the same-sex images he showcases on his web site and in social media, there’s another statistic that’s even more impressive: they’re always in the top 5 percent of hits on his sites. “I might be losing a few people,” he says, “but I’m gaining more of a fan-base of people I want to be working with anyway. The biggest thing we want to convey in our business is that there’s no one definition of love.”
Posing
“There was definitely some trial and error when I shot my first same-sex couples,” Ethan laughs. Clearly, the stereotypical boy–girl poses don’t apply. “With girls, it’s a lot easier. You pose them together and they tend to connect naturally. Then, it’s just about creating intimacy with them on the eye or face level,” he says. “When photographing men, it’s about making them look big, making them look strong. I like to make sure they are open toward me. I also like to get a sense of their roles in the relationship and work with that. With guys it’s about getting the physical body contact.”
