After the Superbowl, I couldn’t stop thinking about a huge, glaring contrast that happened in front of millions of people and how it reveals something much bigger, much more human.

During Super Bowl LX, everyone noticed a huge cultural mood shift that goes much deeper than football. Did you notice it too? We all lived through two totally different emotional experiences back and forth. The first was the commercials. The second was the halftime show.

The contrast was intense, right?

The Commercial Breaks felt Like a Future Without a Soul

If you paid attention to the ads, you’ll know what I mean. This year’s spots were dominated by AI products and AI-made content, crypto stuff that left people rolling their eyes after a fun moment of nostalgia. Gambling promos…de-aged celebrity cameos that landed deep in uncanny valley territory. Even the suggestion of a surveillance state disguised as finding lost dogs. Excuse me?! I’ve seen so many people describing the ad breaks as dystopian. The entire economy was pitched as AI, crypto, or weight loss drugs, and the cultural vibe felt hollow, even nefarious.

Hardly any ad was for something you could hold in your hands.

And somewhere deep in the back of our brains, we all collectively thought:

“None of this feels right.”

Then Came the Halftime Show

And suddenly the energy shifted.

The thing that instantly grabbed my attention was the intimacy of the set. Bad Bunny is wandering around the sugar cane, giving real people a time in the spotlight. People were wearing regular street clothes, not costumes. The Taco vendor was a real LA vendor. The store, La Marqueta is an actual bodega in NY. That was a real nail tech. THAT WAS A REAL WEDDING.

The halftime show landed on a viscerally real level. There was hope. There was joy. And this was a joy that came not from the sludge of late-stage capitalism but from real music, movement, culture, and identity that felt connected to people’s true lives.

The performance was full of human beings making something together, not simulated moments designed to make you buy something.

You could feel the difference.

That’s exactly the feeling people want more of. Not just in entertainment, but in how we reflect on our lives as humans.

Pulling Things Back to my Niche: Weddings Are the Halftime Show

Weddings are one of the last places where you can find the most densely packed amount of raw, unfiltered, vibrant, joyous humanity.

And I’m realizing…I want to show that. I don’t want my photos to look like a synthetic ad.

I don’t want:

• perfectly contrived moments
• forced smiles that look beautiful but don’t meet the eyes
• staged emotion that tells couples what should feel meaningful

I want to show something more like that halftime show: something with pulse, truth, and presence.

I want to show:

• real laughter
• gut-wrenching nerves
• a choreographed first dance gone wrong
• when the best man’s voice cracks during his speech
• the dynamics of a group of friends who met in middle school
• hugs that are so tight the dress wrinkles
• the moment some random animal becomes the mascot of the day

These are the moments that age well. These are the moments you actually feel when you look back at a photo. These moments will never churn up a feeling of primitive rejection or “this doesn’t feel like the truth”.

What People Are Craving

What resonated with people during that halftime show was the grounded realness of it.

That’s what people are craving for their weddings too.

They want photos that feel like life, not like content.

They want proof that it wasn’t a styled event.
They want proof that it actually happened the way that it happened.

If you’re looking for a wedding photographer who cares deeply about this stuff, I’m here for you. Let’s get in touch!