Will and Lauren Pursell are the talent and brains behind Will Pursell Photography in Vancouver, B.C. This husband and wife team shoot every wedding together and strive to capture the risky, creative shots. Their work was also recently featured in an article on Cosmopolitan.com: “15 Beautiful LGBT Weddings That Will Make You Feel All the Feelings.“
How did you get started in photography?
I thought I was destined to become a ski bum. In my late teens, skiing was all I really had really planned to do with my life. I didn’t have much interest in any sort of career goals at that point. I went on a trip to Lake Louise to ride a real mountain (I lived in Ontario at the time), where I ended blowing out my knee on the first day after overshooting one of their big jumps. There goes the ski dream…I wasn’t prepared to fly back, so my friend suggested I come and take some photos of him skiing to pass the time. I was lucky that he was an amazing teacher. He had just started playing with off camera flashes and was excited to teach me some stuff with lighting.
After my first photo I was hooked! The flashes really added something extra to the photos that I had never seen before, and I could not believe that I took the photo! Over the next year I bought a Nikon D70 and a few SB800 flashes and shot every single day. I mostly took photos of my friends rollerblading (doing tricks on rails, jumping over stairs, etc.), which really helped me develop the skill of capturing the moment at the best possible time. I also don’t think I shot a natural light photo for about a year, so it really helped me get super fast at working with lights. Fast forward a year later, I was applying for jobs during summer while I was in business school. I ended up landing a corporate photography gig at ING. It gave me the opportunity to fly to almost every province in Canada taking photos…for money! It was clear photography was my new life path. After doing a few contracts here and there, not really able to find a good niche, I ended up taking a job at a professional photo lab when I moved to Vancouver, BC, where I was lucky to get a glimpse of a how a bunch of portrait photographers ran their business, and see all their photos from behind the scenes. Not too many wedding photographers were using much flash back then, so I saw an opportunity to bring something a little different to the market. So after about 11 years I am still here doing photography!
What do you love most about shooting weddings?
I love the fact that people actually want their photo taken, and enjoy capturing the real candid moments to tell a story. I love that I get full creativity on how I capture the couples story, and the amazing reactions that I get from my clients after seeing their wedding photos complete. I get to hang out with cool people that I would hang out with if they didn’t hire me.
Tell us about how you incorporate storytelling into your work.
I really try and play off using colours and lighting to create a feeling. Making a scene high key vs low key can completely change the way the story is told. Having a far away scene setting shot vs a closeup will bring different emotions. I usually really try and play off of the locations and venues. For example, having a first dance where you are shooting from outside the venue inwards through a window/doorway, might tell much more of a story then a closeup because it involves more of the surrounding scenery, and you get a feel for how the venue looked and the ambiance. However, the close up will really show the emotion they are feeling at that moment, which is why we try and get a variety of both to bring the couple back to relive their day. We watch a lot of movies for inspiration.
What is one of your favorite things about shooting as a team?
I love that I get to work with my partner and best friend. We end up doing everything together and we motivate each other a lot. When shooting it’s awesome to be confident one of us will get the shot allowing more creativity for the other. I usually shoot wider and with lighting and Lauren usually shoots with long lenses and natural light, so its great to give so much variety. Because we do every wedding together, we have mastered the art of knowing what each other needs or wants (whether it’s a certain risky shot one of us wants, or help with equipment) without the need to talk too much. It just allows the days to go much more smoothly.
Any challenges to overcome?
Before I had Lauren work with me full time I was having a really hard time getting shoots edited in a timely manner, and it was showing in my customer service. I wanted the highest quality edited photos, but I ended up having to answer emails for more then half my day. Now that she is on full time and we have our roles figured out, everything runs really smooth. It was also a must have to outsource the dreaded accounting.
How do you integrate Fundy Designer into your workflow and business?
Lauren is the album designer. Her original career was a graphic designer, so when I convinced her to give it up to work with me, her having full control of the albums design was one of the things we agreed upon. She used to make them in InDesign, which was clunky, slow and unintuitive for laying out wedding albums. Nothing would drive us more crazy then some spacing being slightly off since InDesign doesn’t easily allow you to space layouts evenly.
I kept saying there had to be something that would design an album intuitively, but we could never find anything that would give us enough control. We stumbled across some screenshots and videos of Fundy before it was released, and knew it was the one. I think we bought it on day one! It really does everything and more that we wanted. Lauren really wanted to have to control for custom layouts and she loves adding backgrounds to them to enhance the design. Fundy knocks everything out of the park on the customization aspect of the design. It has cut the design process down by about ⅕, which allows us to make better designs, faster revisions and over design extra spreads. The increase in design speed helped us bring our album prices to be more affordable, which helped us go from six albums in one season to 21 the next!
For more information on Will Pursell Photography, please visit their website or follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
