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Alisha & Brook Todd Photographers
Making Wedding Dreams Come True
By Emily F. Popek
For Alisha and Brook Todd of Alisha & Brook Photographers, marriage has meant
more than a personal commitment--it's become their very livelihood. "I didn't think
I wanted to do wedding photography," Alisha Todd confesses. "A close family friend who
was a photographer asked me if I wanted to go into it, and I said '... I don't think
so.' " In love with photography since high school, "I knew when I brought that first
contact sheet out of the darkroom that this was what I wanted to do," Alisha says.
The young shutterbug had other ideas about her future. "I knew I liked photographing
people, and I was thinking I was going to go more toward fashion," Alisha says. "Then
I did a wedding for a friend, and I realized that this was the direction I wanted
to go."
When Alisha married Brook Todd, the young groom was working as a carpenter, and she
was building up her photography business from scratch. "Alisha was doing weddings,
and I was tagging along carrying her bags," Brook says with a laugh. "I got totally
tired of sitting there and doing nothing, so she let me pick up a camera that had
about three shots left on the roll of film."
The couple thought little of Brook's foray into wedding photography until Alisha
was working on her portfolio. One shot stood out, and upon examining it more closely,
the couple realized that Brook, not Alisha, had captured this unique image. Realizing
she had a good thing on her hands, Alisha started showing her husband the tricks of her
trade.
"The next wedding I shot one roll, and the next time it was
three," Brook says. "I quit my job around 2000, and went full-time into photography."
Since then, the couple has quickly racked up a series of prestigious honors and
accolades as wedding photojournalists.
Alisha's relationship with WPPI goes back several years; the photographer attended
her first convention in her late teens, and has been back every year since. Sponsored
by Kodak and Bay Photo Lab, Alisha and Brook have been platform speakers at WPPI numerous
times, and have been honored by the organization with awards such as the Grand Award
for Photojournalism and the Accolade of Photographic Mastery.
Other high points in the Todds' career included being interviewed by Richard Quest
for CNN International's "Quest for the Perfect Photo," and being named to American
PHOTO's 10 Best Wedding Photographers in the World. Additionally, they were selected
to photograph the nationally televised "Fantasy Wedding Dreams Come True" event
organized by Oprah Winfrey, an experience Alisha cites as a major professional
milestone.
"Oprah Winfrey said our names on television, which was amazing," Alisha says. "We
got calls from people whose wedding we had shot years ago, who heard our names and saw
our images on TV, and were so excited that they could say, 'That's our wedding
photographer!' " Brook adds, "It's another thing that sets us apart, or distinguishes
us from someone else."
With Brook's outgoing personality and Alisha's calm, focused air, it's hard to
imagine this couple having any trouble distinguishing themselves, with or without
Oprah's help. But the Todds face the same challenges as any professional: competition,
and plenty of it. "I think every market now is pretty saturated with photographers,"
Brook says. "The niche we've gone after is the high-end bride in the San Francisco/Napa
area, but with the Internet, it's really the high-end bride anywhere."
With a studio in Alisha's home town of Santa Cruz, about half the weddings the Todds
shoot are for clients who live elsewhere in the country, but have planned their nuptials
in the Bay Area. Their portfolio also features destination weddings from locales such
as Mexico, Hawaii and Tuscany.
Alisha can appreciate how far the studio has come since she got her start years ago.
"When you start, you definitely start at the bottom," she recalls. "You're trying to
say, 'How can I compete against other photographers?' But eventually what you have to
do is differentiate and market yourself as a brand people recognize." For Alisha,
marketing herself had to grow to include her husband, which posed its own challenges.
"It was hard changing the business name from my name to our name," Alisha admits.
"Photography was something that Alisha did. When I came along, there was a little bit
of, 'Wait a second, you're stealing my identity!' " Brook says with a laugh. It's clear,
however, that the two have talents that complement one another.
Brook, the gregarious one, says, "I've always had the gift of gab." He takes a lead
role in meeting with clients and handling phone calls, while Alisha does more on the
back end, designing albums for clients and filling orders. After years of shooting
together, the couple "split up" in 2008 and began offering clients the option of
booking them separately, enabling the studio to take on more clients and generate
additional revenue. "It's definitely been different; You get used to having that
other person there," Brook says, admitting that he felt some trepidation the first
time he flew solo without his "teacher" by his side. "Alisha was always the lead
photographer. It was a little weird at first, but I found my groove, and now it's
all good."
With growth, there are often growing pains, and the Todds have been mindful of how
they want to develop their business. "One year, we shot about 50 weddings, and that
was a little crazy," Brook says. "We realized that more like 25 weddings would be
perfect for us. We've thought about hiring other people, but we really want to stay
more hands-on. When your reputation is one of quality and service, it's hard to imagine
turning that over to someone else."
Another thing that proved hard to let go of was film; the Todds went digital about
two years ago. "We held out for a long time," Alisha says. "I was really comfortable
with film, I knew what results I was going to get, and I was a little reluctant to
make the switch."
As it happened, the decision got made for her, to some extent. While Alisha was
pregnant with their daughter, Giada, Brook began shooting with a Canon EOS-1D Mark III.
Coming back to work after her daughter's birth, Alisha faced the change to
digital--a change she has now embraced. The way Brook sees it, the camera doesn't
matter as much as who's holding it. "No one would ever go and ask Picasso what kind
of brushes he used. It's just a tool. I tell clients, 'You're hiring me because of me,
not because of the tools I'm using.' "
The tools in question for the Todds are a Canon EOS 5D with a range of Canon lenses:
35–350mm, 70–200mm f/2.8, 28–70mm f/2.8, 17–35mm f/2.8, 100mm f/2.8 Macro, 85mm f/1.2
and 14mm f/2.8. The couple processes their large JPEG format files using Adobe Lightroom
on their Mac Pro.
While Alisha estimates that about 80 percent of the couple's business is weddings, the
Todds recently launched a secondary website to highlight portraiture. Realizing they
could offer a different variety of services to their local clientele, Brook and Alisha's
portraits site features pregnancy and baby portraits as well as familiar categories
such as families and seniors. "We market our wedding site to the San Francisco/Napa
area, but we live in Santa Cruz, which is a couple of hours south, so we market
portraits to a different area," Alisha explains.
The charming portrait site,
www.alishabrookportraits.com,
with headings like--"wee ones" broken down into "taters," or toddlers, and "tots," or
babies; individual and family portraits are divided into "branch" and "tree"--sparkles
with playfulness and intimacy. "I think some of our wedding clients just wouldn't have
thought of us for portraits until we launched this site," Alisha says. "This lets them
see us in a new light."
As for the future, it's full steam ahead for the Todds. In December, Brook and Alisha
participated in "The Longest Day," a photojournalism project that gathered together 24
top photographers and gave them 24 hours to write and shoot a short film. The resulting
films will be shown at WPPI 2009, where the Todds will also present a program on
marketing your brand with emotional impact.
The couple has no shortage of goals for the coming years. "I would love (our photographs)
to be on a photography magazine cover and a national wedding magazine cover," Alisha
says. "I'd love to photograph a wedding that's featured on Platinum Weddings, [a TV show]
and I'd love to have a coffee-table book. And a workshop in Italy," she added with a
laugh. You can view more of their work at
www.alishabrook.com.
Don't miss Alisha and Brook's WPPI program, "A + B = SEE," on Tuesday, February
17th, 2009 at 8:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. in Room # 319/320 at the MGM Grand during WPPI 2009.
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