WITNESS by THE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER IN ESTORIL
Photographs at the wedding ceremony at the Palácio Estoril Hotel, when the bride and groom exchange rings
The Metamorphosis
Look, this is it. Do you know, I dreamed of this moment a long time ago? Remember when we first met? It was right there, without hesitation. I was sure of it, and now here we are.
Well, it could just be the wedding photographer fantasizing, because there are so many ways it could have been. One thing I am sure of because I always witness it: it was certain that everything would point to that point, that moment when the two, the groom and the bride, converge and finish being groom and bride and as if by metamorphosis, become husband and spouse (normally we say wife but it seems here spouse it is more institutional and it is an institutional moment).
Anyway, that’s what the wedding photographer finds and describes constantly in the photographs he takes of that precious moment.
The memory of the important moment
I don’t even know exactly how many wedding ceremonies I’ve been witness to, not the kind that serves to guarantee to the institution that yes, they did get married in that place and on that day, but one that has the power to take little pieces of all that, make photos of them, distribute them over the pages of a book that will be the great testimony of the event.
I must say that I always feel important for being able to do that. I’m not particularly eager to boast, and those who know me know that, but I have also written many times that I am a wedding photographer who is vain about what I do and to know that they trust me to guarantee them the memory of that moment that is so important for them, the bride and groom, who from this moment on are no longer so, can only give that vanity that I like to keep to myself.
I know I wasn’t there alone and that it will last for a long time in the memory of all the others who were there at the ceremony of the wedding.
Each photograph is a seal of truth
But, as we are very volatile and have many memories to keep, by the time we’re done, we’ve begun to shuffle the place, what was said, and even the shape of the bride’s dress. Guess what they resort to when that conversation comes up where the witnesses contradict each other, mixing up and confusing the parts of the story of the day of that ceremony.
Unsurprisingly, the photos the wedding photographer took them with him and handed them to him because he knew those doubts would start happening sooner or later.
That’s my job. To make each photograph a seal of guarantee that this is how it was and put back in place and at the right time the truth of the event.
As long as I have this certainty, I will always want to be the wedding photographer of any couple that wants me there, at their wedding.
