Targeted Age Group:: 16+
LAUGH, SMILE, THEN LAUGH AGAIN!
Memoir of one pro wedding photographer’s 45-year career. A rollicking romp down memory lane, written as a humorous fun read for non-photographers to enjoy.
~ ~ ~ WHAT
…humorous stories does he tell about what all he’s seen?
…sticky situations did he encounter?
…kind of people did he have to deal with/how did he do it?
…mistakes did he make?
…life lessons did he learn along the way?
…advice does he have for future brides?
…did he do to quickly double his annual income?
“Wow!! This fast, funny and entertaining read really tells you what one of most interesting jobs in the world is really like!” “Un-put-downable. Nonfiction at its best!” “5 Stars!”
Due to job stress, most wedding photographers burn-out after just a few years. Very few ever go on to make a lifetime career doing weddings. Those who do are a breed unto themselves.
Kindle E-Book Edition, with about 200 of my favorite full color wedding photos and tons of funny, sometimes shocking stories about my career.
PHOTOGRAPHERS: To quickly become a better wedding photographer, rather than read “Wedding Photographer”, choose my other version, with the same great stories, plus you might gain 45 years of on the job experience in one easy read, written to make you better at your craft:
http://www.amazon.com/Wedding-Photography-Improve-Quickly-ebook/dp/B00S41E6IY
This book was featured by BookDaily.com in their subscriber newsletter on 2-4-15. The result?
Book’s Stats for 2-5-15: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #385 Free in Kindle Store
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > Biographies & Memoirs
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Download Wedding Photographer: A 45-Year Career On Amazon Kindle Unlimited
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
Having really crazy dreams that were robbing me of my sleep about my former career. It was written as therapy.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
I just lived an interesting life, with a really interesting career.
Book Excerpt/Sample
Chapter 1: What I Saw
~ I actually decided to write this book because I started having crazy dreams after I had been retired for a few years. These dreams were robbing me of my sleep. They were about things going wrong while photographing weddings that I could do nothing to control. Those things never even came close to having happened when I was actively photographing weddings.
I dreamt about things like being late for a wedding because I wasn’t done making my own film to shoot at the wedding! Crazy! I dreamt I was watching helplessly as a roll of fully exposed medium format film fell from my fingertips at the altar in front of everybody being photographed. Everyone there, including me, watches it unroll down the aisle in front of me, ruining the film and obliterating all the images taken on the roll. Again, totally crazy. I haven’t used a roll of film in over twenty years!
I always had feared dropping an exposed roll of film before getting it safely sealed and knew it was a possibility, so I always held all exposed rolls of film very tightly, using both hands, until I had licked the attached adhesive strip on the end and sealed the roll with it. I exaggerated this effort.
~ The funniest thing I remember seeing at a reception was when the bride’s sister got up to make her wedding toast. She said, “As everyone here knows, the bride was extremely boy-crazy as she grew up.” Everybody there laughed a knowing laugh.
She then pulled out the bride’s own personal childhood diary and read aloud humorous readings from different bookmarked sections of it for a good fifteen minutes. She read about how hung up the bride had been on different boys she had known and how she had thought this one or that one was so dreamy or good-looking.
Everyone there got a good roaring laugh out of it. It was funnier than most professional stand-up comedians’ routines! The bride took it all in stride and seemed to enjoy it as much as anyone there.
~ The newly married couple arrived at their country club reception site in a horse-drawn carriage, one of those used on Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis for carriage rides. Seeing a photo opportunity, I had the wedding party line up before going into the reception, using the horse and carriage as a photo backdrop.
Just as I was ready to take the photo, two of the girls in the wedding party let out blood-curdling screams and jumped at least a foot in the air. It turned out they were standing near the business end of the horse when it felt the need to take a whiz.
Those girls, the ones who screamed, had gotten soaked before they even knew what hit them. The horse’s whiz had bounced off the concrete, splattering and thoroughly soaking the entire backs of their long gowns. Boy, they were really popular for the rest of the night!
~ While waiting to start formal group photos, a minister made a point of telling me one of his favorite stories. It was about an encounter with a videographer from one of the Dayton, Ohio, television stations, who was hired to video a wedding in his church, way back when that wasn’t done very much. The minister told him what the rules were for filming his video. The guy responded he was a TV cameraman and knew what to do. There was no need to worry.
The bride and groom were starting to say their vows at floor level, when the minister saw really shocked looks on everyone in the audience. Jaws were dropping open! He turned around to see what was going on.
There was the TV cameraman, perched high above the minister’s head with his TV camera balanced upon his shoulder. He was shooting down over the minister’s head and shoulders from that vantage point, standing with one foot on top of the pulpit and his other foot on the railing. He was about four feet off the floor, shooting downward.
The minister said he wasted no time running him down from his brazen perch and banished him to the back of the church before continuing with the ceremony. Now that’s funny! The minister swears it is true, too!
~ A groom at another wedding clued me in to be ready for something special when he removed his bride’s garter at the reception. I was really on my toes and nailed the expression on his face when he came out from under her dress, with a pair of red bloomers, which were big enough to fit a full grown elephant! He had such a shocked look on his face, as he held them high in the air, and stretched them out for everyone to see.
~ While photographing a huge high-society wedding party at the State Office Buildings in downtown Indianapolis, I had to keep backing up a hill in order to get back far enough to capture the entire wedding party and the water fountain in the photos. I didn’t have my wide-angle lens with me during this part of the assignment and had to make do without it.
Suddenly I felt something brush across my shoulders, as I backed up. I had run into a row of tall hedges and gotten pretty deep into them before I knew what was happening to me. The real problem was that tons of pigeons had been roosting in and on the hedges for ages, and the hedges were totally covered with an overabundance of white bird poop – and now, so were the shoulders of my dark suit jacket.
The rest of the assignment had to be finished without me wearing a jacket, after I showed everyone my coat and explained what had happened to it. Everyone got a laugh out of it and I wasn’t penalized for not being formally dressed the rest of the day. After this experience, I kept a spare suit, a spare white shirt, and a couple of spare ties in my car.
~ Once I saw the ring bearer steal the show. He made a statement he wasn’t wild about being ring bearer when he stopped halfway down the aisle, turned, and threw his ring bearer’s pillow like a Frisbee towards the back of the church.
During the ceremony, he totally stole the show again when he went up right behind the bride, groom, and minister and sat down on the steps there, facing the audience. He proceeded to stick his finger inside his shirt collar, and he kept tugging at it, trying to stretch his collar out. He made faces, rolled his eyes, stuck out his tongue, while pulling his tie over his head like he was being hanged with it. He brought the entire audience to a roar of laughter. You have to watch those kids. They’ll steal the show every time!
~ The smallest church wedding I ever did involved just me, the minister, and the bride and groom. It can’t get any simpler.
~ At the Rush County Fairground in Rushville, Indiana, about twenty years ago, all the single ladies were lined up for the bouquet toss. One woman, who was wearing a tube top, seemed to really want to be the one to catch it. She out-jumped everyone else, but in the process, her hooters went into motion, too. They rose and rose and kept climbing, not stopping until they had seen the light of day. She was even quicker, getting her clothing rearranged properly again, than she was catching the bouquet! Yes, she caught the bouquet. No, I didn’t get the clothing malfunction on film.
~ During coverage of a wedding at the chapel on Miami University’s campus in Oxford, Ohio, just before taking group photos of the men, I glanced toward the rear of the church. The outer doors had been left open to allow air to circulate throughout the building. The step leading up to the chapel door was very low – apparently too low, since a snake had slithered up the step and was making its way toward us down the aisle!
The groom was brave, scooping it up from the floor. The snake wrapped itself around his wrist. He carried the snake outside and released it in the grass. When he returned, I asked him if he had noticed the snake had a diamond pattern on its back. The groom got all pale and seemed a little woozy. It took a couple minutes for the color to return to his cheeks.
~ Tuxedo rentals were a side line business I had for several years, while working the local market in Richmond, Indiana. One bride even put all of her bridesmaids in tuxes for her wedding, just to be different. Boy, talk about being hard to fit for tuxes! Girls are certainly built differently than boys are!
Tuxedo fittings were done at our home back then, as I had not yet bought my studio building. One of the guys who was there for a fitting happened to have been in our basement a few weeks before fixing our furnace or our plumbing. While he was being fitted for his tux, our darkly brindled Persian cat came into the room and he started really laughing hard.
He told us why our cat had made him laugh. On his trip to our basement, he had encountered a pair of large glowing yellow eyes in the dark crawlspace he was in. He said he had been scared half to death and had gotten out of our crawlspace as fast as he could when those eyes appeared. He had just now come to realize that what he had seen in the dark had been our Persian cat.
~ For my stepson’s wedding, his best man had to be replaced with a stand-in when he didn’t show up in time for the wedding. My stepson’s original choice for best man finally arrived just before the reception ended. He had been involved in a fistfight, and the tux I had rented him was all torn, bloody, and dirty.
~ In Plain City, Ohio, the highlight of an Amish bride and groom’s entire wedding day was having their photo taken with the full moon rising in the background, and photos of their guests waving lighted sparklers as the newlyweds drove away from the reception in their horse and buggy.
I was surprised to be hired to photograph an Amish wedding, as I had always heard they did not believe in having pictures taken of themselves. I guess all Amish are not the same, or maybe some make exceptions on special occasions. I’ve also done Mennonite and Quaker weddings, as Richmond, Indiana is a town that was originally settled by Quakers and has a Quaker college.
~ Some of the best partying down I’ve ever seen occurred at about a dozen receptions I did late in my career at the Rathskelter, a German restaurant and reception site just north of downtown Indianapolis.
People always loosened up as the evening went by, as they got more liquor in them. Sometimes they got downright plastered by the end of the evening. I remember one shindig at the Rathskelter where, by the end of the night, the bride and her maid of honor were dancing on the tops of the tables they had dined on earlier. I don’t think I’ve seen people have as much fun before or since.
Parking spots were really hard to come by near the Rathskelter. I always had to hunt for one, and sometimes I ended up having to carry both of my heavy camera rigs and my reception equipment bag for a long city block or more.
One night at the Rathskelter, I came out in the wee hours of the morning, at the end of the festivities, and went to where I had parked my car. It simply wasn’t there. It was gone. There I stood, with all my equipment in hand and no way home. I could not believe this was happening. Had it been stolen or towed? Would I have to call the police or have my wife get out of bed in the middle of the night and drive over sixty miles to come and get me?
I didn’t carry a cell phone back then, so I borrowed one from a bouncer at a nearby bar who was manning the entryway to his establishment, after explaining my predicament in detail. Up on the side of the building next to where I had parked was a sign with the phone number of a towing company to call if your car had been removed from the lot. My call to the towing company revealed that they had not towed my car from the lot. I returned the cell phone to the bouncer and considered my options.
There were several streets intersecting each other at odd angles where I parked. Looking around, it dawned on me there were several such tiny triangular lots, all at this same intersection. I hoped that maybe I was simply at the wrong lot! Right across the street, I could suddenly see part of a car parked behind the hedges in the other lot which looked strangely familiar. I crossed the street and was so relieved to find it was my car. I had just been confused about where I had parked it. All of my worries faded quickly as I loaded up my equipment and quickly headed home.
~ When I was getting ready to park in a field already full of parked cars at an outdoor wedding on a rural Ohio farm, the best man jumped in his car. He threw it into reverse, gunned it, and managed to T-bone my vehicle. “Man, I don’t know how that happened, I looked in my mirror before I backed up!” he exclaimed. I replied, “You are supposed to be looking behind you while you are backing up, not just before.” Man, what a way to start photographing a wedding!
~ Once, I arrived at a church in Richmond for a wedding, only to find the church dark and the doors locked. Calling the bride on the phone revealed she had caught her fiancé red-handed in bed with another woman a couple of days before the wedding, so obviously it was a wedding which wasn’t going to happen. If only she had called me when she had decided to scrub the wedding, I could have been saved the effort of getting ready and going to the church.
~ My wife recently reminded me of one time while we were dating when I had to rush off to a wedding, only to realize after it was too late to turn back that I had on my “dress tennis shoes” instead of my dress shoes. I must have looked pretty funny dressed in a formal suit and tennis shoes! I explained what had happened on my arrival and completed the assignment dressed like that. Only now does the thought cross my mind that I could have stopped and quickly bought another pair of dress shoes on the way to the wedding. Hindsight is 20/20!
~ While stopping to take photos of a wedding party at Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument on Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis, I came to realize I had locked my keys inside my car with the motor still running. Luckily, I always carried a second set of keys on me, but it took a couple of minutes for it to register that my second set of keys were in my pocket. I had already started to panic by the time I realized it. Another close call avoided.
~ Once, I got to a local wedding in Richmond, Indiana, before realizing I had forgotten to grab a certain piece of camera equipment from my studio. I called my wife to see if she could fetch it for me and bring it to the wedding site so I could keep working in the meantime.
My wife still reminds me that she was cleaning the oven when I called. She wasn’t dressed to be seen in public, but she ran the errand for me anyway. I immediately learned to always check that I had all my equipment together the day before a wedding to make sure all was ready.
If I had been at a wedding a couple of hundred miles away from home, I would have just been stuck trying to complete the assignment as best I could. I never again had to worry about having to face this situation, because of the checklist and my prep the day before each wedding.
~ Couples have hired me and paid my full price just to photograph their receptions, as they had gotten married at distant “destination wedding locations” weeks before and were now celebrating their marriage back home with their families and friends.
~ The owner of the largest furniture store in our area hired me to photograph his daughter’s wedding several years ago in the backyard of their home. The star of the day turned out to be their pet cat, who kept strutting back and forth, rubbing up against the heels of the wedding party members throughout the entire wedding ceremony, much to the delight of the audience.
~ On the Miami University campus wedding in Oxford, Ohio, all the men in the wedding party wore kilts the entire day. During the reception, they all got up in front of the guests and did a Scottish-esque dance together in a straight line. At the end of the dance, they turned their backs to the audience, bent over, and flipped up the back of their kilts, mooning the audience and revealing they were wearing tartan-patterned boxer shorts. It was the hit of the evening!
~ Another bride and groom rode in to their ceremony on horseback. They dismounted, got married, remounted their horses, and rode off together. I think the bride was into barrel racing.
~ There has been a nudist camp in nearby Centerville, Indiana, for as long as I can remember. Either nudists never get married or they decide to take their own photos; but in any event, I never got a call to do any weddings there. I always wondered if the brides would wear wedding gowns or not? Maybe it is a clothing-optional event?
~ Over the years, I’ve pretty much seen it all at receptions, from bagpipers to Mexican mariachi bands, to Cajun-style zydeco bands, to a costumed Elvis impersonator, complete with Elvis wig, who sang to the bride and groom.
~ One wedding in Ohio was a couple hours late getting started. One of the bride’s relatives was driving from a couple hundred miles away. She was in charge of bringing all the artificial flowers and the altar decorations, and she was late arriving with the goods. We couldn’t even take any photos, while we were standing around for those couple of hours, because we had no flowers or bouquets!
~ In Dayton, Ohio, I was standing in the lobby just inside the church’s front door, waiting for the wedding party to get ready for the processional. A man wearing a suit came in from outside and two big, burly ushers immediately cut him off. He was told the bride had left specific instructions that he was not to be allowed on the premises. “But I’m her father,” the man said. “I’ve got to see my little girl get married!”
The ushers refused to allow him to enter and sent him on his way with his hat in his hand. I’m sure there is an interesting story behind what happened. Since I felt I had just witnessed a scene that I shouldn’t have, I never inquired about what the details were.
~ In Cedar Grove, Indiana, after a Catholic wedding, everyone had already been drinking for a while when one of the young bucks in the wedding party came up to the groom, who was standing right next to me at the time. He said to the groom: “Hey, man, can I try your bride out? Come on, let me try her out!” He repeated this loudly about three times.
Envisioning an upcoming riot, I quickly grabbed the groom by his elbow and said, “I need you to come with me, I’ve got a couple of photos to take that I need you for.” I pulled him away from the scene, the incident became history, and a possible fistfight was avoided.
~ One bride came down the aisle with a remote microphone in her hand under her veil, singing to her groom as she walked. One bride and groom both picked up microphones during their service and sang to each other.
~ The neatest personalized license plate I ever saw at a wedding belonged to the mother of the bride at a wedding on the campus of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. It read, “GOTS2GO.” I guess she did.
~ When I arrived in the basement of a church to get photos of the guys getting ready, I found they had all arrived early, were completely dressed and seated around a table playing Texas Hold ‘Em poker. I seized the opportunity to get some unique photos, firing away while they played.
~ Have you ever attended a wedding at a mental institution? Well, on the grounds of Richmond State Hospital, located in Richmond, Indiana, there is a small chapel used for church services for the mental patients there on Sundays. It is also available for weddings, if anyone in your family works at the hospital. I’ve done weddings there twice. Another connection is that my wife retired from RSH after many years there as a psych attendant.
During one of the weddings there, a few of the mental patients who had grounds privileges wandered into the chapel to watch the wedding from the rear of the building. They caused no trouble, soon lost interest, and went back out on the grounds again after watching for just a few minutes.
~ I was thirty minutes into my hour and a half trip to the wedding site when I came to realize that – horror of horrors – I had forgotten to put in my upper denture plate prior to leaving. After making this realization, I debated whether I should go back and get it or go on and do the assignment without it, as I looked anxiously to see how soon the next exit on the interstate would be coming up. Going back to retrieve my denture plate won. I still was able to get the group photos done before the wedding.
The bride’s father had started to worry about what was holding me up. He shot me a little bit of a dirty look upon my arrival, but I won his approval for the day by doing a super job of covering all the events that transpired.
Thereafter, I carried a spare older upper denture in the glove compartment of my car, so there would never be a repeat of this incident.
~ Twice, I’ve done weddings where the bride was the daughter of a couple whose wedding I had photographed twenty years or more before. Now, that’s pretty unique! Second generation customers!
~ The guys in one wedding party had me take a rear view of them all lined up like they were taking a group whiz in the big waterfall in the lobby of the reception hall in Cincinnati. It seems doing so was a custom there.
~ One set of newlyweds, when introduced at their fancy big city reception, entered smiling, waving – and wearing Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse fuzzy slippers which they wore for the rest of the evening.
~ I have seen all kinds of limos used at weddings over my years in the business, everything from stretch VW bugs and stretch Hummers, to trolley cars, buses, Model T’s, and even a 1930’s Rolls Royce which I got to ride in later in the day.
One stretch limo I was following to the reception tried to navigate a tight corner at an intersection, but failed to make it. The driver ended up spending five minutes getting it around the corner.
Not ten minutes later, the limo driver found himself totally unable to move the limo in any direction. He had gotten the limo hung up in a big dip in the road where two hills came together from opposite directions. None of the limo’s wheels were touching the ground, so a wrecker had to be called in to free up the limo before anyone in the wedding party could continue on to the reception.
A limo was expected at the bride’s home to take the girls in the wedding party to the church, but it never showed up. It had suffered mechanical problems, the owner of the limo service explained to the bride’s father. About six cars were quickly pressed into service to get the girls to the church. So much for their planned fancy ride!
~ There was a red Labrador who served as “best dog” at a wedding I did about ten years ago between two Miami University students at their on-campus wedding in Oxford, Ohio. The dog eagerly took part in the processional, the recessional, and stood at the altar during the ceremony. It even posed for wedding party group photos afterwards, but I don’t remember him attending the reception.
~ The hottest wedding I ever did took place in a Presbyterian church on the town square in nearby Liberty, Indiana, several years ago. It was a scorcher! Everyone had cherry-red cheeks and sweat dripping from their foreheads and faces as they came down the aisle during the processional. A lot of churches back then didn’t have air conditioning.
~ While waiting to get started photographing a wedding at a small church in Franklin, Ohio, I looked out the window at another church right next door. There was a marquee out front of the other church proudly proclaiming, “Now appearing, live and in person: Jesus Christ.”
~ Have you ever seen a Hog Trough Dance at a reception? Neither had I, until I covered a reception in southwestern Ohio. They brought out a six foot long device made to look like a trough from which hogs are fed. The groom danced around and over it, putting first one foot in the trough, then the other. His best man picked him up around the waist and turned him upside down so the groom’s head was in the trough. What was it all about, and what inspired the strange dance? Sorry, I still don’t have a clue, but it sure made for a bunch of unique photos!
~ Some of my wedding workdays were nearly twenty hours long, including up to five hours driving there, five hours driving home, and eight to twelve hours of photo coverage. I remember coming from a wedding near Chicago. It was after 2 a.m., and I still had two more hours before I would get home, so I had the pedal down.
Suddenly, I saw a police car coming the other way on the divided highway. I tried to slow down, but as soon as he got past me he slammed on his brakes and fishtailed so he was facing back in my direction. He then came charging across the median to get to my side of the road, then flipped on flashing red and blue lights and pulled me over.
He was nice, asking me if I knew I was speeding. I said I had just finished putting in about a twenty-hour day photographing a wedding and reception way up north of Fort Wayne. I told the police officer I was dead tired and just trying to get back to Richmond, so I could get to bed before I fell asleep at the wheel.
“Well, I’m going to let you off with just a warning this time. Get home and get some sleep,” he said.
The same exact scenario transpired about four different times over a six year period. Telling the precise truth always got me off with just a warning.
~ The groom at one wedding I did in the Richmond, Indiana, area was a professional fishing guide in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. When I arrived at the country church in the late morning, the guys were still fishing in the small pond out back of the church.
~ There would not usually be anyone on site when I arrived at the venue. I would rather get my trip there behind me and have some time on my hands on the other end. I also allotted about an hour and a half extra to cover any delays I might encounter on the way there. Interstates sometimes turn into parking lots!
I learned my lesson about the value and necessity of having time to spare built into getting to the church on time. It was in the days before GPS, and my route was blocked by a train for a long time. I reached the altar of the twin-spired church in Hamilton, Ohio, just as the first bridesmaid started coming down the aisle. Now that’s cutting it close!
~ In the late ’70s I photographed the wedding of the bar manager at our local country club. Her husband worked with my wife at the Richmond State Hospital, so we would often talk briefly every time I went to the country club to cover a reception. I remember one time late in the evening, when she came over to me with a piece of paper in her hand. She said, “I’m not looking forwards to this.” She showed me the piece of paper in her hand, saying it was the bar bill the bride’s father was about to receive for having held an open bar for everyone present all night long. In today’s dollars, it would have been for about $20,000! It is amazing how much liquor a huge room full of people can drink during the course of a night when they know it’s all free.
~Half the way through the evening, at a wedding reception in Noblesville, Indiana, the half a dozen bridesmaids were all seated on chairs, in the middle of the dance floor.
Six or seven adult men, most of whom appeared to me to be beyond their prime, were then drafted from the audience to perform their best raunchy dance in front of the bridesmaids, so those bridesmaids could judge which was the best dancer.
To their credit, all the guys really gave it their best efforts, with many of them rolling up their pant legs to show off their sexy knees, and giving it all they had, dancing back and forth in front of each bridesmaid, as the music played on. Yup, a rip roaring good time was had by all that night!
~ This is one of the most beautiful and original wedding cakes I ever saw. Yes, it is an actual likeness of the bride and groom as the cake topper! They told me they had run across a website for a company somewhere in Asia which made the cake topper based on a photo they sent in. Neat.
~ Looking through the wedding photos I’ve taken, I just came across some taken at one 2007 reception that jogged my memory about what happened there.
What caught my attention was the bewildered and totally embarrassed look on the bride’s face in the photo of her just after the groom removed her garter. The photos preceding this one showed the groom with a disposable camera in his hand.
Next I saw the photo of, I believe, the groom’s dad, who was career military officer with lots of campaign ribbons on his uniform. He was auctioning off the camera. These all tied together to jog my memory about this long forgotten, once in a lifetime event.
Best I recall, the dad gave the groom the disposable camera right before he removed his bride’s garter. The groom slipped completely under her gown, with the camera in hand. He took a photo while under there, as everyone saw the flash go off. He then rushed back out and gave the camera to the dad, who had a microphone in hand. The dad proceeded to auction off the camera, with the exposed photo the groom had taken, to the highest bidder. I think it brought somewhere between $20 and $50, as there were several anxious male bidders for it. Boys will be boys, I guess.
Even though I could have included those photos in the book, I’ve decided to just let you use your imagination, instead. I’m sure this bride will applaud my decision to keep her identity a secret.
Author Bio:
Bill Collins is currently a semi-retired wedding photographer. He was formerly a full time pro weddings-only photographer serving the Indianapolis-Cincinnati-Dayton, Ohio regional wedding markets, with 45-years experience as a wedding photographer.
Bill was born in Connersville, Indiana and graduated from CHS in 1963, with almost double the number of credits required to graduate, while managing to skip his Junior year.
He was a top wedding photographer in Connersville for over twenty years. In the 1980s, he moved to Richmond, Indiana, where he owned and operated Bill Collins Photography, at 315 NW L Street, for more than a quarter of a century. During the final fifteen years of his career, he only photographed weddings, averaging a wedding a week year around, by serving mostly big city brides throughout Indiana, Western Ohio and Northern Kentucky.
Bill was formerly a Professional Photographers of America member for many years, who studied at Winona International School of Professional Photography, which is owned by the PPA. He received training by several of the top Master Photographers in the United States throughout his career, in order to make sure his style and abilities were always up to date.
Bill is currently living in Greens Fork, Indiana, with Sue, his wife of many years, and their two pet cats.
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