OTHER BRISES by THE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER IN BRAGA
Some photos of the bride and groom in the city of Braga, on the eve of their wedding day
The simple pleasure of photography
When the wedding photographer sets out with a couple for a combined session before the wedding day, so that they are left with a physical memory of what it was like when they were not yet married, it’s an exercise I never say no to. On the one hand, I get a certain freedom to experiment, to use a lens that I don’t normally use for this type of photography, to try some angle of viewpoint that I hadn’t thought of, and to use the chosen scenery without the haste that is often necessary on the wedding day.
Exploring the location, when it is unknown to me when I go to a wedding ceremony and party location far away from my residential area, is also a good stimulus for those moments well spent with a wedding couple that was kind enough to choose me to be with them on that day.
But there is the other side. The simple pleasure of photographing. A kind of closing our eyes, like when we do on a hot summer day by the sea to feel that warm and at the same time fresh breeze with salty aromas of seaweed that season the waters of the beach, not wanting to open them again, our eyes, and stay there, such is the happiness that, as we know, is not eternal.
Photographs of people happy with the happiness of others
But it feels good. For me, photography is more or less like that. I just can’t close my eyes but, believe me, they’re out of the range of the lens I’m using, which the wedding photographer has chosen exactly for that shot before the wedding and which takes in everything that’s in front of it in another form of breeze. With one big difference from the afternoon by the beach, those other kinds of scents come with me and can be seen afterward, as photographs. That’s why I don’t need a beach, just photographs.
It’s true. For the wedding photographer, the beach, mine, is anywhere I can pick up my camera in front of someone willing to let me take it in photons that it, the camera, will turn into electrons, unpoetic but true, and out of there will come to a photograph that is one of my first reasons for being happy. I love photographing weddings because it is one of the few places where I can find people happy with the happiness of others, including my own.
A happiness that is there to be photographed
There, I am at ease, being the wedding photographer on location, to be happy for every scent, for every light-shaped breeze that passes through each of my lenses, witnessing the love of others and the happiness it brings them. It’s true, being a wedding photographer on a city street, in an enchanted forest, or on a farm with a party surrounded by the breeze of happiness that walks there, nothing could make me happier…happy.
