THE MASTERS OF THE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER IN PORTUGAL
Some photos of the bride and groom at Alandroal Castle during their session with the wedding photographer
Powerful portraits
Portraying someone is a challenge and a kind of discovery of the other, of the photographed, for the wedding photographer. When I was only interested in looking at photos, I used to buy a French magazine, Photo, which started to show me a path that, at the time, I had no idea would exist. I began to have contact with photography itself, what it was, and how it was done.
There was no interest on my part to be a part of it. However, I remember being very impressed by the portraits of a gentleman called Yousuf Karsh. They were powerful black-and-white portraits, revealing contrasts that shaped the faces in a way that left no one indifferent.
A few years later, I read more about this mastership, how he worked, the relationship he had with his subjects, the materials he used and, at that time, something was already shaping what would be my future and my relationship with portraiture.
Photography took over
When I started photographing to earn my living with it, still a long way from the wedding photographer that was to come, I was not yet involved in portraiture, at least of people. There began a time when photography took over and I didn’t even bother to define its direction. It gave me satisfaction, it gave me a livelihood and some quality of life and why remind myself of Yousuf Karsh’s photographs?
But times change and with them, life changes. I never thought of becoming a portrait photographer, but what is certain is that little by little, the interest grew, it entered calmly into my professional work and after a certain moment it started to become a serious interest and there I went, as one should do, revisiting the great masters, already classics, especially two of them besides the already mentioned: Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon.
Tributes
Not that I wanted to imitate them, because that would be a disrespect to the admiration I had for them. But, it is true, from them came much of my interest in portraiture, which, I recognize today, was my greatest interest in photography, even before I knew it. When I met the wedding photographer I became, it was because of the portrait that I knew I could do there, in weddings, and that imposed itself without me having any say in the matter.
Knowing that at a certain time of day, I could set off with the couple who had just been married, take them to leave their guests for a while, and try to read them through the eyes of a camera with their lenses and with that give a new reading of them to write as a photo on a sheet of paper, nothing could make me happier, as if I were paying tribute to those masters who never knew of my existence.
Every time I set off on that little journey with a bride and groom, they are the ones the wedding photographer tries to honor.
At least, it feels good to think so.
