PRECIOUS by THE SINTRA WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER

A photo of the bride’s face next to the bouquet as she gets out of the car at the Santa Maria Church in Sintra

• Pode ler este artigo em Português. 

Faces in anticipation on the wedding day

That restless serenity. I notice, even in the photographs that have turned out, that I usually see on the faces of the main people involved in the great but real choreography that is the wedding day, a certain sense of restlessness that makes them either laugh in a certain way or even, now and then, look at them as if they are facing something important.

They’re not faces of doubt, but of expectation. They feel that they are about to be a part of something special and that it needs to go as they have always dreamed. That’s why the wedding photographer also feels a certain compulsion to discover these faces, because in the others there, I only find joy and lots of smiles.

Valuable looks that only the wedding photographer sees

They are rare, the ones that guarantee you those photographs that will make the difference, among all the others that were there throughout the day, at that precise moment, which is one of those that the photographer knows has to be that one, or lose it forever.

Whether it’s brides or grooms, sooner or later they’re there. The wedding photographer already knows that, if he is attentive, they will appear and cannot escape him, because all the others that he will encounter in all the other moments will not be understood without them.

They’re the ones who show us, later on in the photographs, that it was important. You might ask, but how is it that on a party day you find pensive faces, as if their eyes are looking behind them or somewhere else that only they can see? Well, that’s how it is. Of course, over time I’ve come up with my theories on the subject and it shouldn’t be much different.

Important moments in wedding photography

Either they’re so anxious for that moment to arrive when they say yes, that they want to, that they accept and all of a sudden they’re free of it, of the anxiety generated by the important moments, and that’s that. Or they could be trying to do something that isn’t possible for them or for all those who have been married before them, since the beginning of the world, or those who will be until who knows when.

Let’s face it, if it were possible to guess what it would be like after the yes, it wouldn’t be much fun. Knowing, at a glance, what life would be like after that, would prevent it from being done as it should, on top of what it was, resolving what it is, and planning what it will be.

The photographer, the emotion catcher at the wedding

It’s like that and it can’t be any other way. And what a privilege it is for the wedding photographer to observe those faces, in those moments, even if he never knows the reason for them. He’s not the priest who’s marrying them, he’s not any of the groomsmen who swear they’ll always be with them to laugh and cry, and he’s not the father or mother who, in their way, also offer me those faces. He’s just a catcher of emotions that he likes to turn into photographs.

And that’s no small feat. Imagine that those emotions, those faces, were left there without anyone to remember them. That they disappeared to such an extent that there was no history to remember them, either because no one else had seen them or because time takes everything from people’s memories.
But he, the wedding photographer, was, and will be, there whenever, even fleetingly, they, the faces, appear full of them, the emotions.

Ah!!! After the yes ceremony, wherever it is, I never see them like that again. I don’t know why.

Dot by dot:

• One of the subjects I most like to be able to find on the wedding day are those faces, usually of the bride and groom, in a kind of momentary expectation that, if they are not a photograph, they can never be again.

• They are as valuable as they are rare, but the wedding photographer knows that if he is attentive, he will always find them, pensive for a moment.

• There may be many reasons for this, but I can’t know. It seems that, in that instant, something very important crosses their mind and puts them into unmissable photo mode.

• These are emotions transformed into photographs that the wedding photographer has learned to detect, and to react to immediately, because they only appear for a short moment.

You need to know:

• The photo of one of these moments was taken as soon as the bride arrives in front of the Santa Maria Church in Sintra for her wedding ceremony.

• You will also have one of these moments on your wedding day, before, during, or after the ceremony. If you would like to have it photographed, please, contact me. I’ll do my best to find it.