IMPULSION by THE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER IN LISBON

Photos of the bride and groom, in the garden of Quinta do Vale in Stº. Antão do Tojal in Loures, on a photo walk

• Pode ler este artigo em Português. 

The wedding photographer’s drive

We all need an inner force, or rather, a force that pushes us inside when we decide, or find, something we want to do, be it a professional project or a simple artifact to improve an object we use or like.

When I saw that being a wedding photographer had become a must in general, as an idea and as something, as written here, that had given me unexpected pleasure, I needed a motive, a stimulus, or as the Americans say with much eagerness, a drive that would serve me as a fundamental reason because I would change everything that had to do with my profession of many years:

… photographer of other things, but among the other things, there was one that I tried from time to time and that gave me an additional pleasure: photographing models for fashion catalogs. It wasn’t something I did much, but when it happened, I felt it was special.

Now, one thing I saw a lot when looking for wedding photos, occasionally, by other photographers or if I passed by one of their shops, of those who did weddings, was the portrait.

Drive number one, the portrait

A groom, a bride, the two of them, and…wait a minute, this might be like what I sometimes do to show dresses and suits in the pages of a catalog or a magazine. This could be my drive to go to weddings, my fundamental reason to leave the packages under the warm lights of the studio and set off on a new adventure. There, I found my reason for being a wedding photographer.

It was. To take my bride and groom of the day and go with them on what I affectionately call our walk, it’s time, shall we go? Of course, time cannot be lost because, otherwise, we lose the light that gives us, the light that makes the photographs as I think they should be made. And so it was.

Drive number two, everything else for the photographs on the wedding

An adventure that hasn’t stopped until today, that has given me many joys and, judging by what I’m told, much satisfaction for all the weddings photographed walking in front of my cameras and lenses. It is only one part of the wedding day. It is the part, the only part, where it is I who trace the path of the afternoon, paths in that walk that, even today, I don’t miss for anything.

Yet, I can no longer say that it is my drive, that it is the portrait of the bride and groom late in the afternoon on the day of the wedding ceremony that moves me because I have come, very quickly, to discover that the whole process, from the moment I arrive where the first of the couple is until the second before I pack up and head home that drives me.

And so it goes on.

Dot by dot:

• We all need something to drive us to do what we believe in or want for a job we aspire to. As a professional photographer for many years, I missed something that I didn’t do regularly.

• It was portraiture. It served to propel me as a wedding photographer because I discovered that there, at weddings, they abounded.

• Through it, portraiture, I embarked on an adventure that hasn’t stopped to this day, although it’s no longer the only drive that takes me to weddings. I found so many other endless things there, to bring back as wedding photographs.

You need to know:

• It’s true that, in yours, I’ll get great pleasure from the portraits I’ll be taking, but so many other things drive me today that everything will be useful for your wedding photos. Contact me and I’ll prove it.

• The portraits are from the session with the bride and groom at Quinta do Vale in Stº Antão of Tojal, Loures.