JoYCE Keum
Master Photographer & Founder
Joyce Keum is all about capturing moments. Documenting emotional, once-in-a-lifetime connections during your wedding day with her loving eye is the hallmark of Joyce’s style. But this wasn’t always the case. Joyce began shooting after years of designing albums for the best wedding photographers of our time. One day, curious why Joe’s camera (the same model as Monte Zucker’s) did not yet produce images of Zucker’s caliber, Joyce started shooting. An image from her very first wedding was awarded an incredibly prestigious and coveted prize at Wedding & Portrait Photographers International – a worldwide gathering of the very best wedding photographers. A natural learner, Joyce immersed herself in photography studies. “I remember learning early on that weddings are all about the beauty and the glamour. And I believed that.” This perspective changed drastically after Lindsay’s wedding in 2006.
At Lindsay’s wedding, Joe and Joyce provided the same exemplary coverage they’ve become known for. But right off the bat, this wedding was a little different. “The father of the bride came out wearing his Hell’s Angels shirt,” Joe remembered. This was the outfit he was going to wear down the aisle. “If you take one more photo of me, I’m going to break that camera!” He jokingly said. At the end of the evening, the very last song, Lindsay’s father picked up his wife (her poor health prevented her from walking on her own) and carried her onto the dance floor. Lindsay began crying and joined them.
“I used to think weddings were all about the glamour. But they’re about the love.”
Unaware of what this moment meant, Joyce created a beautiful image of the three of them. It was only after the wedding she realized the lasting affect her photo left on the family. Tragically, both of Lindsay’s parents passed away within six months of her wedding. The image Joyce created during the last moments of Lindsay’s wedding commemorated an incredibly rare, incredibly loving moment the family shared. “Lindsay told us later she had never seen her parents dance together,” Joyce said. “It was then that I realized that the weddings aren’t about the beauty and the glamor. They’re about the love among families.”
This commitment to finding and creating beautiful images of a family’s love is impossible to miss in Joyce’s work.
