In the twenty-six years I've been a professional photographer, a lot has changed.

Back when I started shooting for the Binghamton (N.Y.) Press and Sun-Bulletin, the only way one could transmit (not by email, mind you; that hadn't yet come about) a photograph from one location to another was via a clunky analog drum scanner, something only folks working with a wire service had access to. These were still the days of Smith-Corona typewriters, though those days were numbered, and the technology we've become so accustomed to now was still in its infancy. People still listened to "Thriller" on cassette or vinyl--the CD having just been launched--and personal computers were just entering the equation. It didn't matter much anyway, as the most fun you could have was playing Pong-like games over and over.

In 1985, assuming you were a newspaper photographer, you could do what few could: send a picture of a football game from New York to San Francisco. Think about that. Seems crazy, no? It took around eight minutes, unless of course you were sending a color photograph made up of three color separations. In that case it took half an hour. We'd sit and watch this drum spin like a watched pot, nervously hoping the needle would get to the end without a "hit," a line in the photo caused by someone knocking the table or walking too heavily. One hit and you'd start the whole thing over.

Two and half decades later, anyone, including my eight-year-old daughter, can send a photograph anywhere in the world with just a keystroke on an iPad. You think about the process about as much as you might think about electricity when you turn on a light.

But some things never change. This will come as a shock to no one, I'm guessing, but good photography--the actual moment captured in a photo rather than the piece of technology doing the capturing, never wavers. I always tell students that good pictures just hit you in your head (or your heart), and you don't need a degree in photography to figure anything out. You know them when you see them, whether you're looking at a haunting 1865 portrait of a young girl by Julia Margaret Cameron or Avedon's 1955 Dovima with the Elephants, the single image which launched fashion photography.

I get giddy when I look at pictures like those, and I get giddy when I look at a picture like the one that sits atop this blog, of Megan MacCutcheon kissing her husband Tim McAtee as their first dance came to a close. I've seen a lot of first dances--432, to be exact--and a lot of dips, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a full scoop like this one. And whether this was shot on film or shot on digital or even painted in water color, this moment would thrill the heck out of me. In one frame, it embodies everything I've ever wanted to do with my photography.

The same goes for the photo of Tim and Megan embracing after their vows, the picture of the Tim in the limo, and of the newly-wedded couple standing at the top of the stairs at Decatur House, those blue walls beaming. I still get that same feeling when I see pictures that hit me, even after 26 years, and I have no intention of stopping now.

To see a mini-gallery of photographs from the wedding of Megan MacCutcheon and Tim McAtee, click here.

Matt