The power of stills photography

It’s amazing how a photograph can have the power to take you back to a time and a feeling. This photo of Natalie and Eoin Gillen getting married still makes me come over all sentimental. It’s partly because they look so happy and there is such a sense of momentum and romance about it. Natalie looks ecstatic, and very beautiful. I love that her friends are gathered around her and smiling as she moves forward. Part of the magic of the photo is personal: I inadvertently photographed my boyfriend (top left) before we had ever met, so the camera saw him before I did. To me it is proof of the power of photography, and a reminder of how important it is to have a good professional photographer at your wedding.

Contrast that with video. I have a video of my eighteenth birthday party, which is very entertaining to watch, but the annoying thing about it is that I can’t remember much about the event outsides of the video. Plus, I never actually sit down and look at the video. I don’t even have a video recorder anymore! I wish I had some decent pictures of me looking young and eighteen! Video simply cannot evoke the feelings of a good still, and you cannot hang a video on your wall to give you split second reminders of happy times. As one bride put it, ‘I see my wedding photographs on the mantelpiece and it reminds me of that happy day and of why I got married, through the good times and the difficult. It is my most treasured possession.’ It’s a wonderful feeling to know that I took that picture for her.

Later that evening David and I got talking and we’ve been dating for nine months now…

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 8:45 amand is filed under personal work, photography, wedding photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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