Bambi Cantrell: Heavenly Weddings By Sarah Coleman As one of Microsoft’s Icons of Imaging, Cantrell captures the important moments during nuptials

Bambi Cantrell: Heavenly Weddings<br><br>By Sarah Coleman<br><br>As one of Microsoft’s Icons of Imaging, Cantrell captures the important moments during nuptials

Bambi Cantrell: Heavenly Weddings

By Sarah Coleman

As one of Microsoft’s Icons of Imaging, Cantrell captures the important moments during nuptials

Bambi Shows us her way of taking photography to another level

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>>Click here to read Bambi Cantrell's 10 tips for wedding photography...

Bambi Cantrell loves to poke fun at herself. Take “The Devil Wears Boda,” a spoof movie trailer she made with friends, in which she starred as a wedding photographer diva-from-hell. Striding through a five-star hotel, barking orders and demanding to know why “Annie Leibo-was” had been preferred over her for an assignment – to photograph the Queen of England, no less – Cantrell’s evil alter-ego gave Meryl Streep’s bitchy boss in “The Devil Wears Prada” a run for her money.

In real life, though, Cantrell could not be more gracious and down-to-earth. She regards these qualities as essential to her work, and they’re part of what’s catapulted her to the very top rank of wedding photographers. “Wedding photography is very intuitive,” she says. “You have to listen to each client and respond to them individually. I always want to get the important images, but not at the couple’s expense.”

Cantrell’s ability to “get the important images,” and to render them with uncommon flair and artistry, has been widely recognized. In 2006, Microsoft invited her to become the first female member of its “Icons of Imaging” program, praising her “relentless passion for exclusively photographing people.” In 2007, American Photo magazine named her one of the ten best wedding photographers in the world, and in 2008, she received a rare “Golden Eye” award from the Russian Federation of Professional Photographers.

Not bad, Cantrell muses, for a girl who barely scraped through high school. “I’m the proud owner of a 2.0 GPA,” she says with a laugh. “It’s not because I’m dumb. I’m just very visual, and I had no desire to learn from books.” Which is somewhat ironic, she adds, given that she’s now authored three of her own, “The Art of Wedding Photography,” “The Art of Digital Wedding Photography” and “The Art of People Photography.”

No doubt, part of Cantrell’s warmth and charm can be traced back to her Southern roots. Growing up in the small town of Columbus, Georgia (“We didn’t even have a freeway in our town,” she recalls) gave her a strong sense of community, and her feisty, capable mother was a great role model. “This is a woman who could do literally anything, from tiling her bathroom to sewing a dress,” Cantrell recalls. “She was the driving force in my life.”

Photography beckoned when, as a teen, Cantrell took money from her first job and bought a Brownie Instamatic camera. “I’d pose my brother out in the front yard,” she remembers. “I fell in love with photography immediately.”

More than anything else, though, the event that propelled her toward wedding photography was her own wedding. On a budget, Cantrell decided to save money by asking a friend to shoot her wedding photographs. The results were not good. “I remember sitting down on my couch for the first time and looking at my wedding photographs, and they were so bad, but what did I expect?” she says. “The thing that really killed me was that my grandparents had been at my wedding and I had absolutely no pictures of them.”

A few months later, when she and her husband moved to the Bay Area, Cantrell decided to grab the bull by the horns. Approaching local wedding photographer Don Gerhardt, she offered to work as his assistant for free. “Of course, he hired me on the spot!” she says. For the next seven years, she assisted Gerhardt and worked as his second shooter at weddings, absorbing everything she could about the business. Cantrell eventually went on to start her own business, Cantrell Portrait Design.

Since then, the business has grown and flourished, adding another photographer, Michael van Auken, as Cantrell’s associate in 2002. Last year, Cantrell and Van Auken moved their studio to the town of Benicia, where an 1,800-square-foot space had become available in an historic arsenal. “It’s a wonderful place,” says Cantrell. “There are painters, mixed media artists and glass blowers in the building. Having all that artistic energy around is so stimulating.” Inspired by the surroundings, she recently took a life drawing class in one of her neighbors’ studios to get her creative juices flowing.

Digital photography offers her lots of creative opportunities too. An early adopter of digital technology, she says she loves the flexibility it allows her. “The moment I capture the image is just the beginning,” she says. “I can go on to create whatever I can think up.” She’s joined a growing list of photographers who are creating and marketing their own sets of Photoshop “actions” to apply to images. Hers can add effects like infra-red and black-and-white vignetting, and she even has one that can “pump up the detail” in a wedding dress, accentuating its texture.

Cantrell is diversifying in other ways, too. Recently, she partnered with two other high-profile wedding photographers, Denis Reggie and Joe Buissink, to develop The Photographers’ Network. A 24-hour Web-based broadcast channel, the Photographers’ Network will offer content that ranges from tutorials on how to get more from your point-and-shoot camera to an “American Idol”-type reality show, where professional photographers compete for a prize. Though its brain trust comes from the world of wedding photography, Cantrell points out that content will be wide-ranging. “The three of us have been in the industry so long, we know lots of famous people in different genres,” she says. She hopes to have the channel up and running by summer 2009.

With a new portrait studio, an about-to-be-launched photography network and frequent speaking engagements, Cantrell is one busy lady. Still, she’s quick to point out that her first love, wedding photography, will remain her main focus. She can’t help it: she’s addicted. “I love the spontaneity of it, and the fact that things don’t always go perfectly,” she says. “I don’t think there’s anything in the universe more entertaining and wonderful than people, and I love being around them.”

So brides and grooms, take heart. The devil might wear Boda, but her inner angel will be there to capture your special day.