DO NOT CARE ABOUT ME by THE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER IN SINTRA
Some portraits of the bride, in make-up, at the Church of S. Pedro de Penaferrim in Sintra and Quinta dos Alfinetes
The signs
Communication. When we are dealing with each other we need an essential tool that, without it, things can get difficult. We need signs that represent things, actions, and intentions and give some meaning to what we are doing.
As a wedding photographer, I have, always, had an immediate dilemma, but that is immediately resolved. On the one side, I do not want to interfere with what the people are doing on a wedding day. On the other, I can not be the guy that arrives at the place and everybody is at my service. I know, I have been writing about, that I believe that couples marry with the only intention to provide the wedding photographer the subjects to photograph, not the other way around.
They are at my service and it is not me that provides a service to them, as a photographer. But that is my twisted mind, which I think is not different from the one of any other fierce photographer since he picked up a photographic camera. In fact, it is the world that was invented for them, in the way they take pieces from it and call it photographs. With me, it could not be so different.
Don’t care about the photographer at the wedding
So, it is needed to arrange who is there, for the wedding, and the best way to do things. From what I wrote in the first paragraph you may be thinking that the wedding photographer will be the boss and everybody will be submissive to their orders.
But is not like that. His arrogance goes to the point of making it very clear, right from the start that, please, do not care about him. Pretend he is not there, avoid tripping over him if you find him in awkward positions with the cameras in his hands, and do not laugh at him if you see him peeking from places more adequate to children, who still think they are invisible behind a flower’s vase.
Can you see how the ego of the wedding photographer can go? Forget about me. It is his dearest request.
How to be irrelevant can bring photos
Until today, I couldn’t understand what someone does, so dedicated to his job, who can tell stories with photos like nobody else, who is vain as already described here many times, and who asks to do him a big favor by making him completely irrelevant, during all the day of the wedding. Maybe, something is wrong, but I know him enough and I can read his trickery.
What he wants is to run around and nobody giving any attention to him, let him quietly observe them, peeking at them, stealing their smiles, looking at each other eyes, finding the exuberance or the shyness of the gestures, those I love you so much, how beautiful you are, the suit was made for you when she arrives for the ceremony, so, every those thing that fills his cameras, fascinate his lens and in the end, he has a true story to tell. In other words, the wedding photographer is no more than a tyrant, backward.
It is just that, by presenting himself as completely disinterested, he knows that everyone will do what he wants.
Well, he is not a fool, no sir.
