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Roël Photography:
Getting Clients to Love the Experience
By Heath Hooper
Canadian photographer Roël Dixon-Mahatoo caught the photography bug at a young age,
but took a few career detours before turning his hobby into a full-time job. It was a
family member who first introduced him to the camera. "When I was a kid, my uncle
was an avid photographer who I followed around like a crazy kid at the age of three--with
my camera with no film in it," he says. Roël, now 44, started assisting a wedding
photographer while in high school in Sarnia, Ontario, occasionally shooting a few
weddings on his own. But his family, being pragmatic, figured art wouldn't pay the bills.
So the budding shooter earned an engineering degree and went to work for a telephone
company, which took him abroad--from the United States to Europe, Australia and New
Zealand. After about eight years on the road, he returned to Canada in 1996 to start
a telecommunications consulting firm. Even then, Roël was occasionally photographing
weddings on the side, mostly for people he knew. "Most of my friends noticed that when
I was behind a camera at a wedding, it wasn't like I was working, I was playing," he says.
"It finally clicked, and I said to myself that 'I keep telling people to do what they
love. Why can't I take my own advice?' "
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He spent about three years transitioning from a telecom engineer to a wedding
photographer, taking the plunge to full-time photographer in 2004. Roël dabbles
in fashion and children's photography, and produced a book on Africa to benefit
children orphaned by AIDS, but he always returns to wedding photography. He says his
reasons for going into wedding photography were twofold. "I just love weddings, first
and foremost," he says. "We're not doing brain surgery or saving lives or anything
on someone's wedding day, but a wedding day is a very important day in people's lives
for a number of reasons," he says. Roël sees his job as taking the core memories
of the day and presenting them to the couple in a permanent format. "I think we have
such a huge impact on people's lives, without realizing it sometimes," he says.
His studio, Roël Photography, recently became a family business when Anne,
Roël's wife, left the software industry and joined her husband when the
studio moved from Toronto to Stratford, a small artists' community about 90 miles
west of their former home. "Part of the reason why we're [in Stratford] is we wanted
to surround ourselves with all this artistic energy," he says, adding that being
surrounded by artists in other fields brings a different dimension and helps him see
the world in a new way.
Bringing his wife into the business was an easy decision, Roël says. "She's got
the perfect skills for it in terms of managerial [and] marketing," he says, "and
her computer skills make her integral, particularly with the postprocessing and
album design." Between the two of them, the pair has about 50 years of computer
experience under their belts.
The couple converted two rooms of their own home into studio space where they meet
with clients. "We have a very comfortable home and we're very proud to show it off to
our friends and our clients, and we're happy to have people over," he comments.
Roël wants to establish a personal connection with the clients prior to the
wedding day, whether through engagement photos or a personal consultation. "Someone
who's really relaxed and who totally trusts you--you're going to get great photos at
the end of the day when they're in that frame of mind," he shares.
Kyla and Robert Wiesner used Roël Photography to photograph their August
2008 wedding. Kyla called the experience "wonderful and calming." Kyla says, "We
found them on the Internet and, after interviewing two other photographers, the
Roël Photography team was clearly the best choice. They were kind, interested
in who we were as individuals, and as a couple, and welcomed us into their home.
We are overjoyed with the results," she says. "We would and already have recommended
them to other couples who are getting married in the future."
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Roël doesn't like bringing people into the studio and taking photos against a
background, but instead prefers to take people to significant places in their lives.
He either has a couple come to the studio for an interview or goes to the couple's home,
talking with them about their likes and dislikes, and about their experience with
wedding photography. "No two couples are the same," he says, and often couples want
a fusion of different styles of photographs. The consultations help pare down what
the couple wants, he says. After finding out about the couple, Roël then talks
about his approach to wedding photography and shows the couple his portfolio, which
consists primarily of wedding albums, 30 to 50 pages long, with dozens of images
that allow Roël to show how the studio tries to customize each wedding's
coverage. "I'm not about taking individual prints, I want to tell the story of the
day," he comments.
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To hone in on what kind of shots he'll need, Roël has couples go through a
visualization process, asking them to imagine themselves looking through their album
10 years after their wedding. "I ask them to describe what they're seeing, and usually
that question gives me about 80 to 90 percent of what I need," he says. He also asks
the couple to use three adjectives to describe their wedding, and then has each couple
explain what each of the three adjectives means to them. Roël says his client base
has gotten away from wanting the "line 'em up and shoot 'em" style of photographs.
"Wedding photography, in my humble opinion, is being looked at as more of an art form,"
he says. "I think the bar has been raised quite dramatically."
Roël's process for telling the story can change radically depending on the kind
of wedding being shot. "Western Christian weddings, for instance, will usually be
one-day affairs, going from the bride and groom getting ready up through the ceremony.
But with the melting pot of cultures that exists in Toronto, it's quite common for us
to have two people of different faiths getting married," he says. Such events sometimes
require multiple shooting days to get the wedding's entire story told. "It really
depends on the couple," he says.
The studio primarily uses Nikon cameras, mainly D3s and D700s, along with a full
complement of Nikkor lenses. All images are processed in-house on Macs using Adobe
software with initial processing in Lightroom, and special effects and album design
done in Photoshop. The studio uses primarily Nikon SB-800 and SB-900 Speedlights
for lighting, but also brings light modifiers to the site when needed. All of the
lighting is portable, with everything powered by AA-batteries and fitting into two
ski bags. "Weddings have become more involved events," he says, "so photographers have
to be able to set up and break down really quickly. If I can't set it up in two minutes
and have it working, I won't use it," he says.
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A minimum of two people, Roël and his wife, go to each shoot. The studio also uses
a part-time photographer and graphic designer when needed. Roël says he likes to
work with other photographers to see how they go about doing their job. "One of the
things I love about this job is there's more than one way to see things, and you can
never stop learning," he shares.
The studio shoots roughly 25 to 30 weddings per year with approximately two-thirds
of the work coming from referrals. The Internet has also played a huge role, not only
with marketing, but also by making the workflow more efficient by allowing quick proofing
of the album layouts online. All of the studio's packages now include albums, and the
studio also posts a video slideshow on the company's blog along with an online gallery
to allow friends and family to see the shots and order prints. "One of the great things
about [the online gallery] is since we do so many weddings that have people from all
over the world attending, it's almost like they can get to see the couple's wedding
coverage without actually having to be at the couple's house," he says.
The studio wants its clients to not only love the photos, but also love the experience
and perhaps love Roël Photography. The clients might get close to their photographers,
but the photographers also often get close to their clients. On their first anniversary
of the wedding, each couple receives a bottle of champagne and box of chocolates from
local producers. "We're thinking about them," Roël comments. The studio also hopes
to photograph the family not only at the wedding, but also throughout their lives. "We
want to create really great images that are meaningful to our clients and present them
beautifully," he says. "We want to have a fantastic experience from the moment they
contact us to the time that we start photographing their children." You
can view more of Roël Photography's work at
www.roelphoto.com.
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