THE HAPPY by THE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER
When the joy of others is our joy. That is certainly what the wedding photographer sees, and collects, every day he is at a wedding.
Although I do not have time to check the state of mind of the wedding guests as soon as they arrive at the wedding ceremony venue, because when I arrive there not only are they all already tidily arranged in their places as witnesses of the great event, but what I have to do is to try to talk, in the case of churches, with the priest to know what rules I have to do my work in there, to register the entrance of the groom with his mother, and then, in a frantic rush, to go and tell the bride that she can come now, they are all waiting for her.
So, in those moments, guests are a kind of anonymous mass that serves as a backdrop for me and which I use as frames to frame my main characters.
Indeed, they do not impose themselves on me, they let themselves be in their role of mere observers of the important moment that will happen next, and only during a ceremony, already in progress, do I start to notice them and choose them for some portraits of who is and how they are to show the bride and groom, afterward, what their guests were doing behind their backs, while they listened to the officiant and waited for their vows.
But, even there, the wedding photographer still can’t know their state of mind because ceremonies, and more solemn ones, tend to intimidate us and we remain more or less indifferent, except here or there when the wedding photographer detects, from a distance, someone who is moved, wipes away a happy tear or breaks into a smile that doesn’t deceive because it is of true happiness for what he witnesses.
But, even so, it is still not possible to know what is in the soul of each one of those who are there, except for those already highlighted.
But then everything suddenly changes. The ceremony is deemed to have taken place, the metamorphosis of the couple has already taken place, the bride and groom have disappeared to give way to the husband and wife, the signatures to guarantee that everything remains on paper, to be filed away and go down in history, are drying up and, as if to complete the ritual, everyone is already outside, flowers and other seeds in hand, waiting for the couple to appear and give them a surprise that will make them very happy.
Now yes, the wedding photographer sees some guests completely different from those who were watching the ceremony. Instead of gloomy faces, his lens now collects smiling, happy, festive faces, now I’m the one I want to hug and kiss for congratulations.
It is now that the wedding photographer witnesses, and each time this happens, how the happiness of two, the groom and the bride who are now husband and wife, is the happiness of each of those who are there with them. It could even be the wedding photographer’s impression just by observing but when I look at the pictures, that my lenses have delivered to my cameras, I know it was not just an impression of mine.
That’s what always happens.
