Sunday, September 18, 2005

Wedding thoughts

Yeah, so lately I've been shooting and editing a lot of weddings. Great work and I generally love being around people on the wedding day. Its a kinda "Disney magic" for grownups. There's the feeling that nothing that matters can go wrong. People just want to feel good. It can be a fun time to be around.

The thing that I've noticed more and more is that when I'm shooting posed shots I get to see a range of emotions as people interact. I normally shoot 2 or 3 of each posed shot and as I go back through its funny to see how in the space of a few seconds people react to their emotions. Often on the wedding day there are minor glitches (OK, every wedding day I've photographed had minor glitches and some had major glitches) but the wedding still occurs and its wonderful. When you put someone like the bride and her maid of honor or the bride and her father or the bride and her mother together in a shot you start off noticing that they're "posing". Ask 'em to look at each other for a second and when those people who want to "do well" for the bride & groom see how beautiful the bride is its awesome to see their tension just evaporate. Things that seemed so dominantly annoying just seconds before suddenly get 0 time to stew in their brains 'cause they're looking at that friend or daughter or granddaughter, etc and seeing how she's grown up and they're thinking of how much they feel instead of what they need to do. For those who've never photographed a wedding, the difference in the space of just a few seconds is awesome to see. Posture changes, facial muscles change and you can see how much someone means to someone else.