PHOTOGRAPHY & FILM | 2nd Story Studio
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2nd Story Studio, founded by filmmaker JT Tinneny, is a New York-based studio specialising in documentary and editorial-style photography and filmmaking for weddings and events. They blend documentary storytelling with fashion portraiture to capture unique, cinematic moments, emphasising natural observation and composed shots. With expertise in documentary filmmaking, 2nd Story Studio work in digital and film formats, including Super 8 and 16mm.
Tell us about your business!
2nd Story Studio is a New York photography and filmmaking studio documenting design forward weddings and events through a documentary and editorial lens, founded by filmmaker JT Tinneny.
I began 2nd Story Studio with a simple idea: love stories deserve the storytelling craft of documentary film, with the polished end result of a fashion portrait. I come from documentary filmmaking, so the work begins with observation: paying attention to the people, relationships and strange little moments that make a celebration feel specific to the people having it.
I’m interested in wedding images that feel beautiful without making the wedding feel like a production. The goal is something cinematic, emotional and a little unexpected — photographs and films that still feel alive in the moment, and years later.
What would you like couples to know about you?
I genuinely love the strange social experiment of a wedding. You put every version of your life in one room — family, childhood friends, work friends, ex-roommates, grandparents — dress everyone up, add champagne, and see what happens.
I’ll give direction when it’s useful (especially with portraits) but most of the day I’m watching rather than manufacturing moments. Some of my favorite photographs happen in the five seconds after everyone thinks the photograph is finished.
I care a lot about making people comfortable enough to forget about the camera. That trust is usually where the interesting pictures begin.
How would you describe your style?
I’m interested in creating a body of work that feels specific to the wedding rather than making every celebration conform to a recycled Instagram post.
I come from a documentary film background, and I think my approach to working with people and observation is deeply informed by directing. At the same time, I’m very drawn to fashion and editorial portraiture — images that are deliberate, graphic, and a little heightened.
The work lives somewhere between those two instincts: letting real moments unfold without over-directing them, while also knowing when to step in and make a photograph. I want a gallery to hold the beautifully composed portrait, the strange in-between moment, the blur, the gesture, the architecture, and the accident. Together, those images should feel like one very specific world.
What is your most memorable career moment?
One of the clearest moments for me was during Tribeca Film Festival this year. My feature film was premiering the same week I was also photographing an elopement and a wedding. It was hectic, but it made something click for me: I don’t really see filmmaking and wedding photography as separate practices anymore.
Both are about observation, trust, performance, timing, and knowing when to intervene and when to let something unfold. I think that week was the first time I really understood that 2nd Story Studio could be part of the same creative life I’ve been building through film, rather than something adjacent to it.
The next week, one of my weddings was on Over The Moon.
What inspires you?
Cinema, documentary photography, old family photographs, magazines, architecture. But mostly people.
I’m much more interested in borrowing a feeling from a film than recreating a Pinterest image from another wedding. What was the light doing? How was the camera moving? Why did a scene feel intimate or strange?
And then weddings constantly interrupt whatever plan you thought you had. Someone cries unexpectedly, Grandma whispers a secret into the bride’s ear, the weather changes, Uncle Rick does the worm at the after party.
I think the tension between intention and accident is where a lot of the best work lives.
How would you describe your working style?
Collaborative, observant and fun.
Before the wedding weekend, I want to understand what actually matters to a couple: the people they care about, the atmosphere they’re creating, and which parts of the weekend they want to be fully present for rather than photographed through.
By the time it’s the wedding day, my team feels like old pals to our couples. On the weekend, I’m constantly reading the room. Sometimes that means disappearing into the background; sometimes it means stepping in, moving everyone into better light and making a portrait happen quickly. I don’t believe documentary photography or filmmaking has to mean being passive.
Do you shoot digitally, on film or both?
Most weddings are photographed digitally alongside medium-format and 35mm film. We also offer motion picture coverage across Super 8, digital cinema, and we’re introducing 16mm wedding films for 2027.
I love using different formats for what each does best rather than trying to make everything look identical. Digital lets me react quickly and photograph deeply; medium format slows things down and can make a portrait feel almost monumental; 35mm is loose and immediate; and Super 8 turns movement, light and small gestures into something incredibly tactile.
Adding 16mm wedding films this year has been a dream for me. I come from filmmaking, so being able to bring a format with that much depth, texture and history into the wedding world feels like a natural extension of what I’ve always wanted 2nd Story Studio to be.
A wedding can hold all of those visual languages at once.
What is a favourite product or service that you offer and why?
Our motion picture films. There’s something wonderfully imperfect about Super 8. You only have a few minutes on each cartridge, there’s no playback, and you can’t obsess over whether you got the shot.
It’s also a format that rewards real photographic knowledge. Light, film stock, exposure and composition matter enormously. Super 8 is deceptively simple to use, but difficult to use well, and I love having to understand the medium deeply enough to make those decisions instinctively while the moment is happening.
So much of my own family archive is on 8mm, which makes the format especially meaningful to me. There’s something beautiful about making films for couples today that could eventually sit alongside footage of their parents, grandparents and the generations that come after them — the way footage of my grandfather as a little kid now live alongside 8mm footage of him as a much older man today.
Who is your dream client?
Our dream clients are people who are thoughtful, creative and a little irreverent. They care about making something beautiful, but they’re much more interested in having a meaningful, fun wedding than having a perfect one.
They have their own point of view, they care deeply about their people, and they’re willing to trust us enough to be surprised by what we make together.
What is your advice to couples getting married?
Build a wedding you actually want to attend.
Keep the traditions that mean something to you and lose the ones that don’t. Leave enough breathing room in the schedule for things to happen that nobody planned. Hire people whose taste you trust, tell them what matters to you, and then give them enough freedom to do their jobs. And when the wedding arrives, be at your wedding. The photographs will be better for it.
2nd Story Studio
Website: 2nd-story-studio.com
Instagram: @2ndstory.studio
