Well... maybe they only love one shovel in particular.
As part of a large online community of wedding photographers, I have the opportunity to learn from some of the best. In 2005 and 2006 I traveled to Las Vegas for a convention and trade show with everyone. One of the convention activities is a shoot on location. Last year, we were all guests at a real wedding and could watch the couple's wedding photographers work. They were lucky enough to have some of the best wedding photographers in the world including
Bambi Cantrell,
Yervant, and John Michael Cooper. If you don't know the work of
John Michael Cooper then you owe it to yourself to check out his site. He's not at all your mother's wedding photographer. He's known for his anti-bridals and his trash-the-dress sessions.
Unfortunately, I didn't make it to Vegas this year so I missed their desert shoot with JMC and David Beckstead (more on him later). For one of his anti-groom shots, JMC used a shovel and then sold it to
Joel Wiebner, one of the photographers in the crowd. Now that shovel is traveling from one photographer to another and having its photo taken. There's even a
traveling shovel website to document the travel. Shovels apparently don't travel very quickly, but it has already gone almost 7,000 miles and has a long list of photographers to visit. It should be fun to check in once in a while and check out the shovel's travel photos.