Welcome to the site! Thank you for looking to learn a bit more about me and my photography. We are based out of Canton, Connecticut. While we do have experience in many different fields of photography, we specialize in Weddings and Engagements.
First, a quick little blurb about my life (don’t worry, more about my photography after this paragraph!) I have a wonderful Wife and 4 amazing children (2 boys and 2 girls). I grew up in Durham, Connecticut. I had moved to NYC to attend the New York School of Visual Arts when I was 18, and soon began working in film and television for companies like NBC Studios and Warner Brothers Television. After 9 years in the city, I moved back to Connecticut to devote my entire life to my love of photography and give my family a calm and peaceful life! While photography was always a driving factor in my life, after those 9 years, I finally answered my calling, and followed my dreams and there is no better place to do so than Connecticut!
My first introduction to photography was as a kid with 35mm cameras, something I still enjoy shooting with. I entered the digital age when I landed a job with NBC Studios finding locations to film in and photographing them. The fire ignited inside of me to shoot more and learn as much as I could. It wasn’t until about 4 years later, when I got married, that I realized I wanted to be a Wedding Photographer. We had a slightly sour experience with our photographer. I looked at how lucky he was, he gets to forever be a part of peoples lives and memories. As exciting as that sounded, our photographer was not so thrilled to be at our Wedding and to fulfill print orders after our Wedding, even with all the money we had spent. Well long story short, I knew my personality and photography skills would go hand in hand in creating an awesome overall experience! It was that year, that I began learning and training for a career as a Wedding Photographer. While it took many years to perfect my craft, one thing is for sure, my passion only grew as I learned. Once I developed my craft, I took it to the real world and tested it out, and the response was overwhelming. Whats even more exciting than that, is I love shooting Weddings more than ever, every time I turn on the camera. I never knew how much excitement and passion one could have for a job, but I realized I finally found the career I love.
One of the biggest questions we get before meeting anyone, is what makes us different? We shoot in a modern traditional style. Meaning, the images we create are meant to endure for a 100 years stylistically. They hold the creativity and uniqueness of images today, particularly with my use of lighting, but the final edits are designed to reflect a longer standard of photography. With current editing trends we just do not know the longevity. It is a very exciting time to be alive as we can tweak and adjust looks of our images to any degree we want, instead of having to choose a particular film stock to get a certain look. With that being said though, there was a boom in the early 00’s of selective color (editing all but a single color out of an image) and the sepia tones came back as well. That was short lived as we clearly can tell those are very outdated styles by todays standards. While its important to remain current, its also important to remember that styles and trends come in and out, and my images are intended to never go out of style. Much of this also comes from the actual shoot as well. When shooting and posing, we like to position my couples in the best lighting and scenery, then encourage them to interact, and crack our corny jokes till they are busting at the seems laughing. So there is a hint of candid mixed into a very traditional posed photography style. With the combination of all those styles, we get very natural, realistic, and beautiful photographs. This allows us to photograph your best sides and angles while still getting those great natural smiles and laughs!
We also love lighting. Having studied lighting, one of my favorite things to do is photograph couples in the dark as I have a blank canvas at any location. This lighting knowledge has been one of the major things to differentiate us from so many other businesses. It is a unique way to add to the many images we deliver on a wedding day!
See some of our most recent work on our facebook page, or by sitting down with us for a consultation by emailing at justin@jbensonphotography.com or filling out the contact form by clicking the button below.
When working on my business model, we also took some very important things into account. We wanted to make sure every couple could get sufficient coverage at a cost that would not only help them, but still being able to run the business in the best way possible. This means that while we have to maintain a base price for any coverage on any day, we can have flexibility in building packages and payment plans that work for you! My wife and I had paid for our Wedding by ourselves as well, and while it took a lot of work and some adaptations of our ideas, we managed to have a Wedding we both loved, within our budget. And that was also a goal behind my business structure. We wanted to be able to offer every couple the photography they dream of, at a price point that they could afford.
While it is not always possible to remain within all budgets, we will do our best to help you get that photography on budget, or on a payment plan! Wedding Photography is such an important aspect of your day, its not something we recommend you settle short on, even if it means you have to a bit over budget to get perfection!
The best way to get to know us is to sit down with us or send an email, we hope we at least were able to shed a little bit of light on us! Please enjoy exploring the website and please feel free to reach out to me anytime with questions!