Sergio Lopez: Best Wedding Photographers 2012

Sergio Lopez Tucson, AZ sergiophotographer.com

An electrical engineer, Sergio (who goes by his first name only) was always fascinated by technology. So when his brother got married in the early days of digital, and the photographer was shooting with a then-novel digital SLR, he was fascinated. “It looked like the guy was having so much fun working with the high-tech equipment,” he says. “I wanted to do it too.’”

The next day he returned home to Tucson, Arizona, and bought a DSLR on eBay. Then he read every photography book he could find. “When engineers have a problem, we do research,” he says. “I got really obsessed with doing it well. Later I realized I couldn’t just do it on the weekends, so I quit my job.”

The technology may have drawn him in, but it was the clients who made him stay. “I realized that the biggest part of photography was people,” he notes. “Engineering was a beautiful thing, but at the end of the day, nobody ever hugged me because they thought my work was beautiful.”

These days, Sergio photographs a wide range of weddings in a lively documentary style. “I shoot humble weddings and opulent weddings,” he says. “The most important thing for me is that the couple is very expressive. If the family laughs and cries, it doesn’t matter how much money they’ve spent.” Experience has taught him the value of patience. “Photographers have to wait for the moment to come to them,” he says.

That’s not to say his perfectionist streak is gone. “When I go to a wedding, my goal is to take the best photograph ever captured in the history of wedding photography,” he says. “I know it won’t be, but it keeps me going. Every time I work, I think, ‘Today it might happen.’ ”