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Jeff Cooke has just returned from Greece,
where he photographed a friend’s wedding.
Or, rather, he photographed a client’s wed-
ding. For Cooke, who’s based in Halifax,
Nova Scotia, “friend” and “client” are inter-
changeable. That’s part of the Cooked Pho-
tography business model.
“I never want to be a vendor at a wedding,”
Cooke says. “I want to feel like I’m a guest,
a friend. People say, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re the
photographer, we thought you were a guest
here.’ That’s the secret.” Except it’s not really
a secret. “I’m just me,” he says.What does it mean to just be Jeff Cooke?
An effusive personality, a taste for cinema,
and a tack toward photojournalism skills in
lighting, composition, and daring. He sees
his function as documenting relationships
rather than making wedding photos. His
portfolio includes gallery-worthy images in
evocative destination wedding settings: a
couple strolling through a splash of sunlight
on an otherwise darkened beach, a couple
standing on a mesa amid a burnt-red can-
yon landscape, a couple traipsing across a
boulder jetty behind a line of bright-colored