Jewish Photographer in Boro Park, Brooklyn

Boro Park is one of the largest chasidish communities anywhere, and it keeps a simcha with its own order: the kabbalas panim and the tisch running at the same time in separate rooms, a badeken that is over in a minute, a chuppah that is often held outside under the sky whatever the weather, separate dancing from the first note to the last, and a mitzvah tantz late at night in a room that has gone almost dark. The photographs families here care about are of people rather than decor — the zeide at the tisch, the kallah's mother at the badeken, the friends in the circle — and they expect them taken without the photographer ever becoming part of the picture.

The halls are vertical and busy: a chuppah room on one floor and the ballroom on another, a balcony that is either the best view of the dancing or closed to cameras, and a street outside where nothing can wait. We ask about the hall before the date, light the room rather than hoping it cooperates, and are in place early. A bar mitzvah in Boro Park is often a seudah on a weeknight after the leining, so the portraits in tefillin, with his father and grandfathers, are planned for a morning the camera is allowed. A bris comes with a week's notice and starts on time, and it is covered like it.

Photography and cinema are one in-house team — in a Boro Park hall, one crew to work around is the difference between a mitzvah tantz that was photographed and one that was interrupted — and a Brooklyn date carries no travel charge. The Brooklyn page covers the borough as a whole and the Flatbush page its neighbour; the Brooklyn wedding, bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah pages and the chasidish wedding page go into more detail. If your date is set, tell us the hall and we will say plainly how we would cover it.