Katie VanderWal
Thirteen years. Hundreds of weddings. Still tearing up at first looks.
I photograph the real stuff. Candid by instinct, editorial by eye, and always chasing images that document your day and bring back memories you may have long tucked away.
This is your history. It deserves to be art.
When I'm not behind the camera, you'll find me deep in a true crime podcast, soundtracking the edit to 2000s alternative, memorizing dog breeds for no practical reason, plotting the next road trip across the western United States, and chasing the aurora borealis into the darkest, coldest hours of the night.
Scroll down for a few frames from the hunt.
The open world.
Between weddings, I reset by getting as far from home as the calendar allows — wide-open American highways and the kind of strange coastal quiet you can only find a few thousand miles past anywhere, from the western United States to the farmlands of Northern Ireland.
The aurora hunt.
There's a particular kind of cold that only exists at 2 a.m. under a sky full of green fire. I'll drive hundreds of miles for a forecast, stand in the dark until I can't feel my fingers, and wait. When the sky finally breaks open — ribbons of green lifting over the treeline — every frozen mile is worth it. It's the wildest, most unpredictable light I chase, and the chase is half of it.
What I love.
The frames I keep for myself — the people, the animals, and the miles in between. Everything I love, when no one is paying me to shoot it.
