Jen Fariello Photography

The greatest thing anyone ever said to Jen Fariello is that they can feel her photos. Not just see them. But actually have an emotional reaction to them.
 
“That’s the ultimate compliment to me,” Jen says. “When a 2-D medium can make you feel something. That’s always my goal — creating a feeling and a memory and an emotion — no matter if the photo is of a ring, a cake, or a kiss.”
 
An artist and visionary, Jen goes above and beyond to secure that split second in time when a single tear rolls down a cheek, a flower girl giggles or a grandmother’s knowing smile reflects in a window. She leans into wedding themes and tones to cultivate a photo album you and your family will hold dear.
 
The seasoned Charlottesville wedding photographer and Northern Virginia native fell in love with photography in high school, gravitating to UVA and graduating with a studio art degree. Early fans fell in love with Jen’s work at her Downtown Mall studio gallery. At a time when wedding photography was very formal, traditional, and posed, couples would walk into her studio and point at the grainy natural black and white film images and say “We want that.”
 
“People wanted something different,” she says. “My style was dramatic and edgy and just full of energy. Which was so contradictory to the traditional flash color wedding photography that was popular in the ‘90s.”
 
Jen shot her first wedding in 1996 with zero expectations. Soon, she was taking on 50 weddings a year, falling for the booming Charlottesville wedding industry. “Now wedding photography can be anything you want it to be,” she says. “I was very much a part of that shift. I was a fearless 22-year-old. There was nobody doing what I was doing.”
 
Jen has stayed true to her art, shooting film and digital to produce fine art wedding images and portraits and sharing her deep appreciation for the soft luminosity and romantic artful aesthetic of film photography. She draws raw beauty, action, and emotion into rich moments, going the extra mile to make sure couples are having fun and enjoying their day.
 
“I want them to look back at these images and remember the feeling and how much fun it was,” Jen says. “These photos become a beautiful historic record of who they were as a young couple.”