The Full Story
and why it matters for your wedding day.
Where it began
My Dad Always Had a Camera
It started long before I could hold a camera properly. My dad brought one everywhere he went. Family trips, milestone moments, ordinary Sundays that only felt ordinary until you looked at the photos later. That camera was not just any camera either. It was the one he and my mom bought as a gift to themselves for their own wedding. He had one rule he never broke: if you photograph people, make sure everyone in that photo gets a copy.
That camera now sits with me.
I think about that a lot. The same camera that was there for the most important day of his life eventually found its way into the hands of someone who spends his life showing up for the most important days of other people’s lives. I did not plan that. But it feels exactly right.
That rule of his was not just generosity. It was his way of saying that memories belong to the people living them. I did not fully understand that as a kid, but it became the quiet foundation of how I approach every wedding I photograph today.
When I was old enough to pick up a camera myself, I started doing exactly what he did. Documenting moments for friends. Getting photos printed so everyone could take a piece of the memory home. Years later I would show up to their weddings and see those same photos playing in their slideshows. Moments I had captured without thinking twice had become part of how they told their own love stories. I did not fully understand what that meant at the time. But I never forgot it.
“I have always done it this way until I finally got paid to do what I truly loved growing up.”
THE YEARS BEFORE
I Was an Engineer First
Before photography, I spent years building a career in mechanical engineering. I started out as a draftsman, learning the craft from the ground up, and worked my way up through the industry until my last role where I carried two titles: Project Engineer and Solutions Manager in the architectural and construction world. I was designing and engineering products around architectural drawings while coordinating between architects, manufacturers, and installation crews in the field. The Solutions Manager title was essentially official recognition that when something went wrong and nobody else could figure it out, I was the one they called. That happened a lot.
I was good at it. I worked long hours, climbed steadily and made it to engineering manager. That was supposed to feel like an arrival. When I got there, it felt more like a ceiling.
The company wanted to cap my pay no matter how many hours I put in. The ladder I had been climbing had a limit nobody had mentioned. And underneath all of it, I was burning out in a way that was hard to name, let alone admit out loud.
“I had spent years solving everyone else’s problems. I had not stopped to ask about my own.”
THE HARDEST DECISION
The Leap
Photography had always been in my life but I did not take it seriously as a business until 2012, when I got my business license. By then I had been quietly building something on the side while still showing up every day to the engineering career I was burning out from.
Yvonne had been encouraging me to go full time long before I was ready to hear it. She was my first test subject, my most honest critic, and the first person who genuinely believed my photography was worth something. She saw it in me before I was willing to see it in myself.
When I finally decided to make the jump after 14 years in engineering, the timing was far from perfect. Yvonne was pregnant with our first son, my family thought I had lost it, friends were skeptical, and my mom called every two weeks to ask if I had found a real job yet. The doubt came from people who genuinely loved me, which is what made it so hard to shake.
But Yvonne never flinched. She reminded me that I could always return to engineering with the experience I had built. That the risk was not as permanent as it felt. That she believed in what I could create if I gave myself the space to try.
So in 2014, I went full time. And I have not looked back since.
“She was not just behind me. She was the reason I moved forward at all.”
WHY IT MADE ME BETTER
Engineering Did Not Leave Me. It Followed Me Into Every Wedding.
People sometimes assume that leaving engineering for photography was a full reinvention. It was not. Everything I learned in those years shows up at every single wedding I photograph.
I know how to stay calm under pressure. I know how to communicate clearly when plans change and expectations need to shift. And on the rare occasion something does not go according to plan, I know how to solve problems in real time without missing a beat or a moment.
A lot of photographers document the chaos. I was trained professionally to resolve it. I walk into every wedding with the same calm, problem-solving mindset I once brought to construction sites and architecture firms.
Your wedding day deserves someone who can hold things together not just creatively, but operationally. That is the photographer you get when you book BYC.
“I do not just show up with a camera. I show up with 14+ years of problem solving behind me.”
WHAT THE NAME MEANS
B, Y, and C
I am the B and the C. Benny Chiu. But the Y has always been the most important letter.
Yvonne is the woman I married, the love of my life, and the mother of our two sons. We have been together for 23 years and in that time she has never once stopped believing in me, even when I struggled to believe in myself. She has never been behind the camera. But she has always been beside me. Through the engineering years, through the leap into photography, through every early wedding when I was still finding my footing, and through every milestone that came after.
I named this business BYC because I wanted her fingerprints on it. Not as a formality, but because this business exists because of her. The courage to start it came from her encouragement. The patience to build it was shaped by her support. Every award, every published feature, every couple who trusts me with their most important day carries a piece of her in it too.
It felt only right that even in the name of my business, she continues to be my anchor.
“I am an international award-winning wedding photographer because of Yvonne’s unwavering support.”
GIVING BACK
The Community That Built Me
When I was first starting out in wedding photography, I did not have a roadmap. I had a camera, a dream, a skeptical family, and a long list of questions I did not know how to answer on my own.
What I found was a community. Southern California Professional Wedding Photographers, known as SCPWP, was the group of peers who generously shared their knowledge, their experience, and their encouragement when I needed it most. That community helped shape the photographer and the professional I became.
Today I have the privilege of leading that same community as its sole administrator. For the past six years I have worked to keep SCPWP alive and growing. It is a private, invite-only network of nearly 200 vetted wedding photographers and videographers across California, built around shared standards, mutual respect, and a genuine belief that we are all better when we help each other.
Every year we gather for our annual holiday dinner, a tradition now 13 years strong. And every year I watch photographers who were once exactly where I once was find their footing because someone in the room took the time to help them.
I do this because someone did it for me. And because the photographer I am today is proof of what community can do.
Ready to take the next step?
I would love to meet you both and hear about your day. Every couple deserves a photographer who shows up not just with a camera, but with intention, experience, and genuine care for the story you are about to begin.