Wedding Photography: the moments that matter.

I am a trained journalist in love with photojournalism. I always have liked it..

I  wrote. I’ve always liked writing too. But in the words I couldn’t describe what I see. I realized when I was 14 years old, that what I see, my camera describes what I see best. The stories I had to tell. They were images. They were always photographs. And writing..hmm..I am leaving this for my wedding and portrait blogs that I enjoy updating a lot.

I learned the basics of the darkroom, shooting black and white film.Mostly by myself or with colleagues fanatics. Few years after I have learnt manual photography I moved into digital, but miss my old habits spending time in the darkroom since, sometimes. Making black and white prints expecting always something new, black and white photography might be unpredictable and you can never be really sure what result you can get. There are lots of rules you have to obey but still all depends n so many components  that I wonder how people managed to do it for so many years before the digital era.

I am writing about all this because this whole darkroom story reminds me of a wedding photography and why I love shooting weddings so much. It has got its rules and in some ways it’s a very organised event, you seem to know what’s going to happen, you know when some people are going to do what. And yet you know nothing. Every wedding is completely different, every couple adds something new to the mix. I love being there to capture their day and I hate being in their way. You won’t find me running around telling people what to do. I try and walk in with a sense of confidence. And I try capture the events as they happen in relaxed way.

I trust the day. I know the story is there, all these emotions, and beautiful wedding portraits, candid photographs all the characters and the close-ups, details . It will be great, people will be as they are at the weddings -with me around, I don’t have to tell them what to do, where to look, sometimes I need to tell them where to go:) but I rather watch the story unveil and try to capture every bit of it quietly. I work as a photographer capturing these things the way I see them.

I’ve realized I’m good at telling photostories – long and short – mine and others – and there’s nothing I love more. I don’t need to do much, the stories are already there, unexpected ready to unveil unaware of their beauty, all I need to do is capture them and put them together, be it in an album or a photo book, slideshow, on-line gallery. You won’t see me staging people all day asking groomsmen to fight with each other for the shoot (it is possible though on special request:)), these moments are happening naturally quite often because that is the moment that matters.