BE HAPPY by THE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER
Ever since I’ve been photographing weddings, I’ve felt a great fascination for the ability people have to, as a group, be able to be happy. And believe me, I see that it doesn’t take much to do that. When I arrive at the house of one of the couples of the day and feel the bustle so that everyone gets ready, especially the bride and groom, and everything that surrounds them, I have never seen, nor felt, anyone in a bad mood, with some unresolved anger. You can’t imagine what a pleasure it is for me, and for my lenses, of course, to see family members, friends, and school friends arrive and feel the joy that everyone has in seeing, and knowing, each other and taking part in the event that has a center and towards which everyone tends: the couple. Sometimes I forget I am the wedding photographer and I stop in with that amazement at so much joy and sharing. Of course, I immediately remember, again, and take the opportunity to take all that as photos and make sure that all that love within all the gestures, words, and help stays in time because nothing compares to a camera for that.
He, time, doesn’t like permanences and this one-hundred-and-something-year-old invention was the best trick we played on him, to confuse him with his mania of always wanting to change everything. For this, the wedding photographer is essential staff and I guarantee that, as far as it depends on me, I will stop him every time I judge it necessary. Maybe, I think now, I do it not because I was hired to tell the story of the wedding day, but because I feel the duty to show everyone, in the photographs I take of them, what they are seeing. They are seeing how they manage to share with each other joy, and happiness, to solve the problems that always need to be solved together and, after the great ceremony that binds, to celebrate as it should be done whenever the important things, and the others, manage to solve.
Do I see all this on a wedding day? I see it, I see it and I prove it. The wedding photographer, on duty, is constantly being challenged by the photos of affection, sharing, helping, giving, arriving and saying goodbye and seeing that, all of them are full of love, of a love that should always be present in our lives, whether at weddings or not. Perhaps these photographs that the wedding photographer takes, and is motivated not to let many slip away because time can make them fade and transform them into new ones, giving him no rest, are an important testimony that it is possible to be happy, or better, to be happy when we are among others and to take this possibility to all the acts and relationships of life. That is what they, the wedding photos, tell me.
