Patrick Groleau Photography

Patrick Groleau is someone I feel honored to be able to call my friend, as well as a trusted vendor. I have watched him on the event site working with people, in a very quiet, almost unassuming way. Not at all like any photographer I have ever worked with, he has a gift for catching the real moments, not the orchestrated ones. His candid shots seem to look like they are too good to be candid, and his shots that are posed, don't appear to be. He is watching several things at once when working...he is watching the timeline, the flow of the day, the light, the mood and bringing it all together to create a photograph album that will speak to a bride and groom for all their days.

When I asked Patrick to give me a little bit of a bio...I found myself smiling as I read how he became entranced by photography...it is very much the same path that I became entranced with cooking. He with his Dad, and I with my Father's Mother.

I've decided to put what he sent me here in full...in his own words because they truly capture Patrick and what he is all about. Please do visit his website whether or not you are looking for a wedding photographer. If you are shopping for photography services, you will find that not only is Patrick very reasonable, he is indeed fair. That is a rare trait among professional photographers these days. Patrick...here's to lots more weddings together! (yes.....I'll save you some lobster....)

... first memory of photography is one of standing tip-toe atop a stool in a pitch dark room ... once my father had immersed the paper in the tray full of smelly developer and turned on the faint yellow safelight, i was allowed to grab hold of the edge of the table and hoist myself up so that i could better watch the magic as the image he had exposed in his camera earlier in the week was slowly brought to view by the chemicals soaking the paper ... then, after the stop bath and fixer and two long sessions in the wash tanks, i was allowed to squeegee the pictures and place them in the drying racks ...

... later, much later, via some sort of under-the-table barter, he provided me with a cardboard box filled with rolls of outdated kodak print and agfa color slide films ... i can remember the day my ma came into my room and, after looking at the pictures i'd pinned up on the walls, asked, "these aren't the pictures you showed me, where are all the good ones" ... i pulled open one of my desk drawers and pointed to several envelopes, "those're the good ones" ... she peered again at the pictures on the walls, noticing that alongside each was a photograph cut from a magazine ... "what're these pictures" ... "those're all pictures from national geographic, ma, mine are all the ones i messed up taking" ... she stared at her seemingly crazy, son, "why don't you put up all the nice ones you've taken" ... "because i won't learn anything from them, ma ... i want mine to be as good as the ones in the geo" ...

... that's how i started ... later, after much reflection, i learned that i'd taken to photography because it so perfectly complimented my vision ..