Orange County Wedding Photographers

(949)  480-3536

Rachel, Steve & Tara

Steve Schlesinger- Profile

The extraordinary photographic style of Steve Schlesinger is due largely from his incredible range of skill.   Steve can create  a timeless, elegant portrait of a bride, demonstrating his ability  as a masterful portrait photographer, and in the very same wedding  he can  capture a perfect editorial image that’s ready for a magazine. His photojournalistic flair has  established him as a cutting edge photojournalist.  Steve has received international acclaim in print competitions for both his wedding portraits and wedding photojournalism.  This is rare because most photographers tend to prefer one discipline over the other and stick to it.

Though many have often appreciated his work as art, he isn’t quick to agree. “I don’t consider myself an artist, just a very good storyteller” Steve has stated.  He views the term “art” thrown around too loosely, often by photographers who feel intent is more important than ability or results.    Steve instead sees himself almost a personal biographer, using images to tell the story of a wedding day.   One of Lifetime Images long time photographers and frequent second photographer of Steve’s  at weddings is Rachel Johnson.  She has commented that Steve is interested in making wedding images that make the day more beautiful and more interesting than it sometimes really was.

A very important skill set to compliment his photographic ability is Steve’s interpersonal skills.  On the wedding day, Steve portrays a photographer who is confident (not arrogant) in his skills and abilities, someone who is professional, who  can think on his feet.   Steve has benefited from years of experience, and by staying in control even when thrown unusual curveballs, he has a war chest full of unusual stories, but no matter what, he never looses his cool, never gets thrown off guard,  and always stays in control.  Steve also likes to make the experience upbeat and fun, and has an ability to get people laughing and  interacting with each other.

Steve is a native Southern Californian, as is his father, grandmother, and children. His great grandmother was the first in the family to set foot in Southern California, she wrote back to her family in Russia to send her possessions  and  “ I’m never coming back.”  There is no other place on earth that Steve would feel comfortable calling home than Southern California, and it’s this love and devotion to the area that has influenced his work.      Spending up to his early adult life in San Diego, Steve is a graduate of San Diego State University.  His parents are both retired, his father was a professor of chemistry at the UCSD while  his mother was taught math for the San Diego Unified School district.  Steve’s dad was a staff photographer for a Beverly Hills newspaper and even photographed a few weddings.  It was with his help that Steve was able to set up a darkroom at home as a teenager and turn a mild

fascination into a full blown obsession.  Steve worked as a photographer on his high school newspaper and yearbook, and scored second place in a regional newspaper photojournalism competition.  If Steve wasn’t in the darkroom or behind his camera, he was often reading about photography, learning exactly how the camera works.  It was this strong core foundation of photographic knowledge that gave Steve the ability  to get this images he imagined. 

Steve started Lifetime Images back in 1997 during the golden era of medium format photography.  Back then it was assumed that unless you photographed weddings with a medium format camera, you weren’t really a wedding photographer.   The gear was very expensive and each image taken on film required a paper proof.  Thus,  the goal was to be as efficient with the film as possible.   A typical wedding was photographed with less than 250 images.  Today Steve shoots more than that before he gets to the church.

Steve started Lifetime Images with a rarely used medium for photographers back in 1997, a website.  This made him very popular as clients could clearly see what he was capable of doing.  By the year 1999 he was highly sought after with a very full schedule while still maintaining a fulltime job. Steve’s style grew as his popularity grew.   In 2002 Steve had a dilemma.  It seems his style was growing, and he loved what he was doing but the resulting albums looked very similar to each other.  Many of the creative images he was capturing didn’t end up in the wedding albums.   If they did they ended up being small very unnoticeable.  Steve started work on a new style of album that he heard about called a magazine album.   Steve spent nearly two months designing his first one.   When he showed it to the brides who stopped by, they were impressed, because they had never seen anything like it before.  They became an overnight sensation for Lifetime Images and things only got better when they added GraphiStudio books on to their album offerings  a year later.

Today Steve has a different view of wedding photography. “There once was a time when we would give our clients their proofs in a proof album and they would call their girlfriends up and meet at Starbucks and talk about their wedding day while looking over the pictures.   There was something  magical about this, almost like  right of passage.  That’s all been replaced with websites, and the industry average for looking at images on these sites is less than 17 minutes.  This has been lost, but not really.  Our clients are telling us that they are experiencing this to a much higher degree when they bring there finished albums into work. People just go nuts over them! Everybody wants to feel special, and that their wedding day really did matter.”   

Steve now sees wedding photography as a two part process.  The first part is the photography, the second part is refining the images.  He is very concerned that we are in an era that  will be easy to identify 20 years from now.    Just as the wedding photographers of the 1970’s overused the double exposure technique at weddings he views we live in the era of  excessive Photoshop tweaking.   “Photoshop is great for two things, the first is enhancing a great image, the second is masking  a lack of skill and talent with filters and effects.  Photoshop cannot fix images that were never taken and it can’t save all images.”

Steve, his wife Lecia, and twin daughters live in Chino  Hills, California.  He has never been as excited about being a wedding photographer as he is today.  He feels that he is off to a good start but strongly believes his best work is yet to come.

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Copyright © 2006 Lifetime Images Photography
Last modified: 02/15/06

Orange County Wedding Photographers

(949)  480-3536

Rachel, Steve & Tara

Steve Schlesinger- Profile

The extraordinary photographic style of Steve Schlesinger is due largely from his incredible range of skill.   Steve can create  a timeless, elegant portrait of a bride, demonstrating his ability  as a masterful portrait photographer, and in the very same wedding  he can  capture a perfect editorial image that’s ready for a magazine. His photojournalistic flair has  established him as a cutting edge photojournalist.  Steve has received international acclaim in print competitions for both his wedding portraits and wedding photojournalism.  This is rare because most photographers tend to prefer one discipline over the other and stick to it.

Though many have often appreciated his work as art, he isn’t quick to agree. “I don’t consider myself an artist, just a very good storyteller” Steve has stated.  He views the term “art” thrown around too loosely, often by photographers who feel intent is more important than ability or results.    Steve instead sees himself almost a personal biographer, using images to tell the story of a wedding day.   One of Lifetime Images long time photographers and frequent second photographer of Steve’s  at weddings is Rachel Johnson.  She has commented that Steve is interested in making wedding images that make the day more beautiful and more interesting than it sometimes really was.

A very important skill set to compliment his photographic ability is Steve’s interpersonal skills.  On the wedding day, Steve portrays a photographer who is confident (not arrogant) in his skills and abilities, someone who is professional, who  can think on his feet.   Steve has benefited from years of experience, and by staying in control even when thrown unusual curveballs, he has a war chest full of unusual stories, but no matter what, he never looses his cool, never gets thrown off guard,  and always stays in control.  Steve also likes to make the experience upbeat and fun, and has an ability to get people laughing and  interacting with each other.

Steve is a native Southern Californian, as is his father, grandmother, and children. His great grandmother was the first in the family to set foot in Southern California, she wrote back to her family in Russia to send her possessions  and  “ I’m never coming back.”  There is no other place on earth that Steve would feel comfortable calling home than Southern California, and it’s this love and devotion to the area that has influenced his work.      Spending up to his early adult life in San Diego, Steve is a graduate of San Diego State University.  His parents are both retired, his father was a professor of chemistry at the UCSD while  his mother was taught math for the San Diego Unified School district.  Steve’s dad was a staff photographer for a Beverly Hills newspaper and even photographed a few weddings.  It was with his help that Steve was able to set up a darkroom at home as a teenager and turn a mild

fascination into a full blown obsession.  Steve worked as a photographer on his high school newspaper and yearbook, and scored second place in a regional newspaper photojournalism competition.  If Steve wasn’t in the darkroom or behind his camera, he was often reading about photography, learning exactly how the camera works.  It was this strong core foundation of photographic knowledge that gave Steve the ability  to get this images he imagined. 

Steve started Lifetime Images back in 1997 during the golden era of medium format photography.  Back then it was assumed that unless you photographed weddings with a medium format camera, you weren’t really a wedding photographer.   The gear was very expensive and each image taken on film required a paper proof.  Thus,  the goal was to be as efficient with the film as possible.   A typical wedding was photographed with less than 250 images.  Today Steve shoots more than that before he gets to the church.

Steve started Lifetime Images with a rarely used medium for photographers back in 1997, a website.  This made him very popular as clients could clearly see what he was capable of doing.  By the year 1999 he was highly sought after with a very full schedule while still maintaining a fulltime job. Steve’s style grew as his popularity grew.   In 2002 Steve had a dilemma.  It seems his style was growing, and he loved what he was doing but the resulting albums looked very similar to each other.  Many of the creative images he was capturing didn’t end up in the wedding albums.   If they did they ended up being small very unnoticeable.  Steve started work on a new style of album that he heard about called a magazine album.   Steve spent nearly two months designing his first one.   When he showed it to the brides who stopped by, they were impressed, because they had never seen anything like it before.  They became an overnight sensation for Lifetime Images and things only got better when they added GraphiStudio books on to their album offerings  a year later.

Today Steve has a different view of wedding photography. “There once was a time when we would give our clients their proofs in a proof album and they would call their girlfriends up and meet at Starbucks and talk about their wedding day while looking over the pictures.   There was something  magical about this, almost like  right of passage.  That’s all been replaced with websites, and the industry average for looking at images on these sites is less than 17 minutes.  This has been lost, but not really.  Our clients are telling us that they are experiencing this to a much higher degree when they bring there finished albums into work. People just go nuts over them! Everybody wants to feel special, and that their wedding day really did matter.”   

Steve now sees wedding photography as a two part process.  The first part is the photography, the second part is refining the images.  He is very concerned that we are in an era that  will be easy to identify 20 years from now.    Just as the wedding photographers of the 1970’s overused the double exposure technique at weddings he views we live in the era of  excessive Photoshop tweaking.   “Photoshop is great for two things, the first is enhancing a great image, the second is masking  a lack of skill and talent with filters and effects.  Photoshop cannot fix images that were never taken and it can’t save all images.”

Steve, his wife Lecia, and twin daughters live in Chino  Hills, California.  He has never been as excited about being a wedding photographer as he is today.  He feels that he is off to a good start but strongly believes his best work is yet to come.

  [ Home ] [ Up ] [ New Page 1 ]

Copyright © 2006 Lifetime Images Photography
Last modified: 02/15/06