American Photo: The Top 10 Wedding Photographers of 2011

Rocco Ancora
Ancora and Bell
Melbourne, Australia
roccoancora.com

“They were all excited, running around, with shoes coming off,” says Ancora of the girls who were waiting with the father of the bride for a portrait session. When one of the girls saw him coming with his camera, she hopped onto the couch. “I love her suddenly proper expression,” he says.

Rocco Ancora stumbled into photography while studying architecture. “One day we had to take some photos of buildings,” he says. “I picked up a camera and it was the beginning of a love affair.” That torrid romance soon led him to abandon architecture to devote himself to lenswork, first as an assistant learning to make prints in the darkroom. He quickly became a pro, and by 2004 was running his own studio. “I love the whole idea of shooting a wedding,” he says. “I love that it’s an unrepeatable event and there’s so much going on, so much emotion.” Ancora’s style reveals his grounding in film and darkroom work, emphasizing carefully previsualized images with a broad palette of tonalities that can easily become fine art prints. While his event shots make skillful use of available light in a documentary style, Ancora’s portraits have a more painterly look shaped with a combination of natural light and strobes. “I like to take the light source away from the camera and create as much modeling and mood in the image as I possibly can,” he says. Ancora’s influences in portraiture sometimes lie outside the field of photography. “I draw a lot from Renaissance art and Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and from Rembrandt and Vermeer,” he explains. “I’m fascinated by the way they used light.” Ancora’s aesthetic and his printing mastery have won him many accolades. Now he guides other photographers as creative director of the international XSiGHT studio group. “More and more couples are looking for that creative difference,” he says. “They want to put something on the wall that is truly beautiful.”

“Even though there were people everywhere, this moment of solitude presented itself just before the bridesmaids followed her up the stairs."{C}