How Zuckerberg Hired Photographers for His Wedding

Photo by Noah Kalina

Being one of the world’s popular public figure, Mark Zuckerberg—CEO of Facebook, really knows how to avoid exaggerated publicity for his wedding and to keep it secret until the D-day. The strategy he applied worked not only on the invited guests but also on the two photographers shooting the event—who had no idea they were actually going to shoot the wedding of one of the world’s most influential figures.

The two lucky (yet surprised) photographers were Noah Kalina and Allyson Magda. Noah was called personally by Priscilla Chan—Zuckerberg’s girlfriend—only the day before the wedding. With not much time to prepare, he directly caught a plane and flew to Zuckerber’s home in Palo Alto.

For your information, Noah is not a wedding photographer; he is mainly renowned for his viral self-portrait everyday timelapse video. As for shooting Zuckerberg’s wedding, he used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and a 24-70mm lens, added with a 15-minute editing. His photo, as seen here, is exactly the one Zuckerberg later posted on his Facebook’s status announcing his wedding.

Photo by Allyson Magda

On the other hand, Allyson Magda, a professional wedding photographer, was asked to shoot a party, which—as told to any other guests—was told to be a surprise graduation party for Priscilla. To Forbes, Magda admitted, “Since it was such a surprise, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to digest the facts.” She added, “But then I started thinking: they hired me for a reason, and so I simply need to do what I do at every wedding.”

Magda studied photography at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and this year would be her 13^th year as a professional wedding photographer. Commenting on Zuckerberg’s choosing her to shoot the wedding, she told Forbes, “I was obviously completely honored and thrilled at this amazing opportunity.”

The detail photos of the wedding haven’ been publicized yet as the two photographers had agreed to keep the details of the event limited and not to disclose any specifics about it. Only several photos have been released, giving a brief description of Zuckerberg-Chan’s wedding—that for a high-class affair, the wedding was very much simple, humble, and far from lavishness. forbes.com