Just yesterday, legendary wedding photographer Gary Fong and his "girlfriend" Melissa Carl became engaged in Maui, Hawaii. Congratulations!
This was long overdue in my opinion as Gary had been head over heels in love with Melissa for quite a while now. Melissa is also a talented wedding photographer based in Ohio.
The couple met at one of Gary's wedding photography seminars and spent over a year just talking on the phone as friends. Eventually, they started dating and the rest is history.
You may recall that I attended one of Gary's seminars earlier this year, but I've known Gary for a couple of years. We had been emailing each other for a while discussing photography things and also discussing his new light modifier invention, the Lightsphere. You can see a photo of me using it in my avitar in my profile description.
Anyway, Gary is very well known in the industry and has helped numerous wedding photographers with their business model and also their lighting needs by using the Lightsphere. Gary gained a huge following of photographers because of his incredible ability to photograph weddings and create fantastic wedding albums. He's now a multi-millionaire from working as a wedding photographer and from his real estate investments.
Today, Gary travels the world, invents things for photographers to use and enjoys the benefits of being a landlord! He owns multiple properties that he rents out.
Melissa is a talented wedding photographer as well. After meeting Gary, she's accompanied him through many of his adventures. Although based in Ohio, I don't think she's been there that often in the past year. She and Gary stay mostly in Kelowna, Canada or in Seattle, Washington when they are not traveling the world.
Gary was the one who turned me onto the Fuji S3 Pro camera that I have. In fact, he was the one who sold it to me from his own personal camera collection. He's an endorser of Fuji products and rightly so. Their camera's digital image sensor is recognized to be one of the best.
Best Wishes go out to Gary & Melissa as they are now officially engaged.
Wonder who's going to shoot THIS wedding?! Talk about the pressure of doing a good job!! My guess is that it will be at least one of these guys: Denis Reggie, Mike Colon, Joe Bussink or Becker. Each of these photographers are wedding photography legends in their own right and all are friends with the happy couple. We will see if I'm right...
Edit Note: 8/08/06 Gary has announced that Denis Reggie is going to be his bestman, so that takes him out of the running for being the wedding photographer. Denis is known as the "father of wedding photojournalism" and has shot weddings like JFK Jr's. So now we'll have to wait and see if any of the other people I mentioned will end up shooting this wedding!
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