A Look into the Past is a series I am beginning this year to show my journey and encourage fellow cinematographers to never stop trying to improve. Wedding cinematography is a growing trend in 2015. Technology, skills, and creativity is always changing. The trick to cinematography is constantly growing your skills and developing your cinematic eye, but sometimes you hit a bump in the road, where you feel your creativity is not growing and your skills are not evolving.What do you do? Do you find a wall and hit your head against it until your brain can no longer take the pain? Do you sit in the corner and hug yourself until you fall asleep and dream about your next edit? All those are possible, but I have a easier solution.Sometimes you have to go back in time; look at your first wedding and see how far you have come. I remember my first wedding. It was a 50th wedding anniversary for my girlfriend’s grandparents. I had a full man crew with NO TRIPODS. My second shooters know I hate hand holding and if they read this, they will know it comes from my first wedding. As I am watching it, while writing this blog, I realized, I had no idea what I was doing.Here are the reasons:I was fresh out of college and I needed money. The typical life of a young kid coming out of college expecting to get a 6 figure job. At that point, I would’ve took 5 figures.I didn’t charge a lot, but to me that $600 was a lot. I used majority of it to pay my crew and buy cheap gear to help me get through the wedding. I had no desire to shoot weddings before that day, and that pretty much didn’t change after. It wasn’t until I saw the reaction of her family that I reconsidered my choice. Everyone was so excited to see the end result. Of course, I am wondering what are they so excited about? The video wasn’t good at all in my opinion, but I have been told I am my worst critic. But the reaction they gave me is the same reaction I get every time i present a client with their film. That feeling never gets old. It is the reason why every wedding vendor continues to get up and go to work everyday.I say that to say this, sometimes you have to take a look back in time at your first wedding to give you the push to seek that next piece of knowledge and creativity. You may laugh, you may cry, you may say, “ I cannot believe people hired me”, but it was the start of what fueled you to be where you are today. Enjoy my first wedding!