IMAGINE BEFORE by THE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER IN PORTUGAL
Some photos of the groom getting dressed for the wedding, which will take place, the ceremony, and party, at Quinta do Castro, in Cadaval
• Pode ler este artigo em Português.
With imagination, to foresee wedding photographs
I’m not always drawn to the obvious when I start photographing, for example, at the groom’s house. So, when I arrive at the location as a wedding photographer, my eyes behave like characters in those American cartoons where everyone moves at the speed of light. They go wild and flood my brain with imaginary framing possibilities — from here I could do this, behind there I could try that, and if I crouch over there, it might result in a very interesting photo.
But what my eyes and brain still haven’t learned — or maybe don’t want to, because imagining is such a joy—is that once things actually begin, everything they had planned won’t work, because people never do what they were expecting. And thank goodness. Otherwise, no matter how imaginative they were, the results might end up feeling repetitive, which is something wedding photographers don’t like at all.
A kind of game for the wedding photographer
That’s when a sort of game begins, in which the wedding photographer is always trying to guess what will happen next, and now and then gets surprised, which, in the end, is what brings that beautiful gift turned into a photo. So, for those who one day want to photograph a wedding, the advice is this: don’t trust what your eyes are trying to anticipate in your brain, because fortune-telling is a thing of fairy tales. But I still haven’t lost hope of getting it right, like people who play the lottery. Sometimes it does hit…
Point by point:
- At every wedding, as soon as I arrive to photograph the groom’s or bride’s preparation:
- My eyes immediately start searching for anything that might help
- To compose photographs
- To serve as a complement
- To imagine points of view
- To anticipate photographs
- However, the wedding photographer knows that once shooting begins:
- Nothing imagined will happen
- Everything will come together in another way
- But that’s exactly what the photographer hopes for:
- That the events remain genuine
- Not the result of his intentions
- Ending in a true story of that wedding
- It’s not worth anticipating the photographs at a wedding, no matter which part we are preparing to shoot. Reality always surpasses imagination — as it should.
You need to know:
- The truth is, it’s an exercise I probably should have given up a long time ago. I know that none of what I imagine will happen. The couple follows their direction, they interact in their way, and none of the photographs I take will have anything to do with what I had imagined.
- Still, it’s not entirely useless. First, because I discovered elements in the location that might help me compose the photographs. Second, because starting from imagination makes it easier to adapt to reality and eases the flow of taking all the photos that will come. So it’s not a completely pointless exercise.
- Maybe that’s why I can’t help it — and why I turn my first visual exploration of the space where the couple will get ready into imaginary wedding photographs. It’s like creating a mental sketch that I will keep transforming as the real photographs begin to unfold.
That’s the method I’ll be using when I meet you during your wedding day preparations. There are other methods, sure, but this one works well for me. Let’s set up a meeting so I can tell you more about my approach and other important details, and show you more of the photographs and wedding albums I’ve done.
- You can see a full wedding story:
- In Quinta do Castro In Cadaval, Portugal