Jo and Andy’s Dublin Portrait Session

Last week Jo and Andy brought me down to Dublin with them for a little portrait session. Here are some photographs as we walked through Trinity College and Dublin’s city streets.

When Joanne booked me as the photographer for her wedding we discovered that we were both massive Pearl Jam fans and that we were both in the crowd at the Point Theatre, Dublin, way back in October 1996 as Pearl Jam took to the stage with ‘Release’. Needless to say, I’m really looking forward to their wedding in October this year. :)

Incidentally, as we were walking through Trinity a wedding party emerged from the church. As I noticed the photographer, we waited to observe him in action.

So, the bridal party gathered at the top of the steps and everyone starts to greet the bride and groom and offer their congratulations. There are hugs, kisses, laughs; tears even. A little flowergirl is running around. The bride and groom look so happy!

My eye automatically starts to see all these little moments and fabulous picture opportunities. My brain starts to whirr! I can feel my natural instincts kicking in before I have to remind myself to keep distance (after all, I’m not the hired gun at this gig!).

So what does the traditional “wedding photographer” do while all this is going on?

Nothing. He simply stands there and misses it all! Camera in hand, waiting for the ‘group shot’, he takes not one single photograph. He doesn’t move. All those moments have gone forever!

As we left I couldn’t help thinking about all that we’d just seen and the shame that none of it was captured or preserved on film for the couple and their family.

Personally, I’m really glad I don’t follow wedding photography as a “style” – after all, who would want their wedding album just to look like everybody elses with the same poses and the same photographs (just different actors)? I think for Jo and Andy it was a real eye opener into the different photographic approaches that are taken at a wedding.

The feeling I was left with reminded me of Cartier Bresson talking about how he felt shooting on the streets of Marseille.
“I was determined to ‘trap’ life – to preserve life in the act of living. Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.”