Wednesday 6 July 2016

The Wedding Pic.

When I was an amateur photographer I dreaded being asked to cover a wedding. I hated weddings as much then as I do now, and the thought of spending two tedious hours taking pictures of the bride and groom, the bride + groom + parents, the bride + groom + bridesmaids, etc, etc, ad bloody nauseum, filled me with horror. But then two people asked me to do them a favour.

One was a woman colleague who was embarking on her second marriage, and the other was my boss. He was a keen amateur photographer himself, and had agreed to do a friend’s wedding but then got cold feet and asked me to take over. Ha! The boss wants a favour now, yeah? OK, so grovel. He grovelled, and also promised me full rights to a share of the wedding breakfast and the bridesmaids' favours (which is a joke, by the way.) And so I agreed on the understanding that there would be lots of fine wine and the best smoked salmon to be had (I wasn’t vegetarian then, to my everlasting shame.)

I tried to do things a little differently while acceding to the commissioners’ right to have a sensible record of their big day. I tried to be creative, but what the hell. The smoked salmon and fine wine were excellent on both occasions. And I got one shot which I’m pleased to present in all its glory.

I won’t try to describe why I think it’s a good photograph. I’m not here to sell myself and I’ve had enough of ego for one day (having been told by the woman in the coffee shop that I am now ‘known’, although what I’m known for, apart from the fact that I take cream with my coffee, I’m not exactly sure.) Suffice it to say that it’s a photographer’s photograph, a Cartier-Bresson-type photograph, an un-posed photograph which captures a moment, a picture which seems to me to combine structural integrity with the human touch (and now I’m sounding pretentious. Sorry.) Best of all, it isn’t a typical commercial wedding picture. It doesn’t even move. (And it is to my eternal regret that I missed the following moment - when the woman in the car shut the door and the man leaning on it fell over. I'm kidding.)

No comments: