As I often repeat in the lines of this site, photographing your wedding is for me only a pretext to photograph you! Your wedding is a milestone in your life as a couple. It is the result of a journey and the beginning of another story that remains to be written. Your wedding is part of a larger story, that of your couple. So it’s not just a wedding that I photograph. It goes far beyond. What I photograph is a chapter of your life!
The person you are is also defined by those around you. Your family members, your friends, have an impact on your life, your personality, your feelings and your path. Your wedding is therefore this collective story. It is a story involving many characters who come together for a celebration. And you are the main character.
Your wedding is an opportunity for them to show you their love. By their presence, their smiles, their words. It is therefore natural that these people present on your wedding day are an integral part of my photo report and the story I tell.
I draw your attention to one point. It will be impossible for me to include, for sure, all the guests on the final report of your wedding.
I am not able to memorize 80 or 100 faces in one day. I can try to photograph as many people as possible but could not guarantee, with certainty, that everyone appears. That’s why I strive from my arrival on the morning of the wedding, to identify what I call your ‘first circle’.
During our preparation meetings, we will have seen together who makes up this circle. It is generally your parents, your brothers and sisters, your witnesses etc. It can also be your grandparents, childhood friends who come from afar or any other person particularly important to you!
It is in a way the hard core of the wedding, composed of 20 to 30 people, that we will find in the few key moments of the wedding such as the preparations, the ceremonies or the speeches. These people will have priority throughout the day in my photographic choices. The idea is that each of these people appear in the story that I am telling.
The other guests will not be neglected either! Their presence is no less important to you since you invited them! They will therefore as much as possible appear in my report. That’s why I always take a moment in the day to make individual portraits not posed of the people present, without necessarily worrying about who is who.
The cocktail is usually the most opportune time to do this. But it can also be during dinner, if the light is beautiful. These portraits, I want them fair and natural. They will therefore not be posed.
In the approach of documentary photography and reporting, it seems essential to me to be an integral part of the wedding to obtain natural photos. I remain visible. I do not hide behind a bush to make these portraits. Most of the time, people do not know that they are photographed. And when they realize it, they know anyway that they can trust me to enhance them and not be disturbed by the camera.
Anyway, if some people simply want to smile at me while looking at the lens, I will take the picture with pleasure.
A few weeks after the wedding, your guests will be delighted to discover themselves in portrait when they see the report. You will also be happy, when time has passed, to have been able to keep a nice memory of their presence on this beautiful day.
There is nothing more interesting than the landscape of the human face.
– IRVIN KERSHNER
Lyon - France
+33 (0)7 81 60 32 03
