Don't smile for me

I stopped doing weddings when people began staging, yes staging, weddings.

I remember my first wedding gig - I was a back-up videographer/photographer. The groom's father, who was obviously having issues with the fact that his favorite son was naturally being overshadowed by the bride, hired us even if they already had a whole crew from Manila doing the same thing. "That group was hired by the bride, and they might just focus to much on the bride and her family. I want my family to be featured in the video and in photos too."

That set-up worked out well for me. People, particularly the bride and groom, weren't posing nor performing for me. I documented the wedding from afar, from the sidelines, for the crew from Manila made sure I knew who the "real" videographers were and would not hold a pose for me. As soon as they got their shots, they immediately dismissed the subjects to make sure that I didn't get to shoot my own frames or footage.

Stolen shots, they call them, and they were all I was able to get and that's exactly how shooting that wedding felt - I was stealing moments. But from those stolen moments - of the father's silhouette on the balcony waiting for his son to finish dressing up, of the son coming out of the room (a quick steady shot then a quick pan back to the father) and the tears welling up in the father's eyes, a bride's unguarded moment walking out to the garden on her way to a pre-wedding shoot with her bridesmaids... woven together and they told a pretty nice story. They, both the groom's and the bride's families, ended up distributing the video we made instead. But in these days of pre-nups and post-nups and what-nots, I lost interest in telling a staged story. Wedding clients didn't want the photographers to simply capture the ceremony as it unraveled, these days most couples primarily perform for the cameras which make for contrived walks down the aisle, first kisses and first dances, etc.

I'd like to shoot a kiss that happened, one that was motivated by an impulse, an attraction, a desire to express a feeling and not the one that was done for my camera lens. I'd like to take photos that capture beautiful moments, and not moments staged to get the perfect picture. I love the grain in under-exposed photos, the imperfections of an imperfectly framed photo that tell stories, I want that smile brought about by a happy thought and not because I said the word.

But these days, there are hardly clients for such photos.