JEWISH WEDDINGS

I love working on Jewish weddings. They are rich, emotional, traditional, fun and sweaty! The pictures I am showing are from lovely Rose and Jeremy in London. The preparation doesn't necessarily involve bridesmaids but the very close family. There is usually some kind of tension whether it is silence or chaos. The act of marriage in the Jewish culture is something very serious despite couples looking quite relax about it. While the bride is getting ready, the groom goes to the synagogue and has his own ceremony with his ushers, parents and rabbi.


As the guests starts arriving they are being asked to sit genders apart, one half sitting opposite to the other. Whether before, during or after ( all depending on the synagogue facilities) the bride enters discreetly a separate room with her relatives. The groom has to leave the guests and invites his ushers to join him on his way to his bride to be. This ceremony is called the Bedekken and consists in recognizing and acknowledging that the woman here present is the one he accepts to marry. She usually wears the veil as he walks in, and he has to unveil her face and to agree to the rabbi that she is the one. They then walk into the main hall of the synagogue leading the procession and the whole bridal party in between the male and female sides.


They finally arrive at the chuppah which is the tent displayed on a large alter where the couple and parents of each side will gather to proceed to the core of the ceremony. It starts with the walking in circle 7 times around the groom, exchanges of vows, drinking of wine and breaking of glass by the groom. They then sign the traditional registrar with the Jewish calendar. In some occasion like the wedding presented today the couple will walk to an opposite altar which will be open only to them when they can see their future or the unseen, that's what happen here at Bevis Marks in the City.


Then we proceed to the reception. Group shots have to be performed in a military efficiency. Those are highly important more than in any other type of ceremony. You have to be sharp and bossy. When you are done with the groups and the couple shots, the MC will ask the guests to seat down as the couple is preparing to make a special entrance. And contrary to other cultures we start here with dancing and the chairs. The groom and the bride will be taken apart and be sat on a chair that will be elevated in the air. Each gender group will try to make the sitter sick somehow and will then produce a sort of dance in the air between the bride and groom. Once they had enough, they come down to the floor and dance with their mates. The boys can be quite excited and virulent! that usually last for 15/20 minutes. The you get called for starter.



Depending on the families and traditions but sometimes guests are being asked to dance between each course. Speeches will be performed in a traditional way, and toasts to the Queen are quite a standard. You also have a traditional ceremony where a glass is being praised and passed across key members of the congregation.


After all those traditional bits and the cutting of the cake, you have finally the first dance and the big party. The dancing usually never stops until the band calls the last score. That will be a final dance with all the guests making a circle and crushing the couple in a tremendous final.


As a photographer you have to be utterly prepared and confident. You also have to allocate responsively your time between creativity and formal needs, the formal needs being here a priority. There is no time for rest if you want to do a great job, but all the materials are out there to make it look great. Jewish weddings are the ultimate test as a wedding photographer and I love them!

VALUE AND PRICE

Photography and especially digital photography is so available nowadays, so democratic. Whether you are an amateur or a professional, an relatively affordable investment is all what you need to take pictures. No need to know about the different films, the papers, the labs. No need to know about the basics of photography such as lightning, exposure, bracketing, frame while you shoot. The technology has improved so much that cameras and softwares make your life easy. No need to ask for a graphic designer to do your website. You can do your own blog for free and many other companies propose templates that you can have control directly from your desktop. Well, as you can imagine it is not something I am fully supportive of. Don't get me wrong, I completely agree that progress makes our life easier and enhance somehow the average quality of what's on the market. I use the term here somehow because this is what we perceive, or I shall say what the technology aims us to feel. But in fact, that technology doesn't really deliver and only pretends.

By leveling the mainstream it does so by the bottom. Everything looks pretty good on surface. It takes someone with knowledge about the medium to understand what lies behind. And obviously the whole idea of presenting portfolios or highlights has never been the best way to truly understand the talent. Folios, websites and others only present the best stuff which is fair enough if you are specialised in food photography, design, landscapes, etc...photography that requires time on one specific subject at the time. But when it comes to reportage you need to approach someone's work in a completely different perspective. It has to be good, creative, personal and consistent, not to mention the photographer's personality on the day. And that is something you cannot see from a website really. Most photographers would show you one truly great shot of one particular wedding and would move on to the next wedding. To my opinion this is not being honest. But this is what our societies have been driven for decades now. As little people have knowledge about the trade they get excited about the flashy bits. And on their wedding day or after this is a very different bitter story. This is what is happening for the last two years especially.

The recession came on, the digital quality increased and ways of promoting become almost free, therefore everybody wants to be a wedding photographer as there is little work left in other industries. Because wedding photography has never been taken seriously from the professional milieu, all sorts of amateurs come in and lower the dedication and quality.
I was an amateur too 10 years ago, but I studied in the best schools and worked in the top environments dedicated to outstanding quality. And when I started on the market I had a certain experience about the trade from its history, lab, computer, studio and street photography. I just had to put all that into practice. And I always reinvent and diversify my projects to keep my wedding practice fresh and creative. All that dedication, whether it is photography or graphic design, architecture, cooking etc... deserves a certain salary. Because your passion is your life, and it keeps on expanding, and you keep on improving.

Today everything looks the same. And amazingly a lot of stuff looks truly great. But if you know how to read an image like I have been taught, you realise that most productions out there are fake. Most photography and wedding reportage included is heavily retouched. Most photographers nowadays rely on the retouching to make their visual look appealing. A good journalist should be someone who doesn't almost touch the photograph. Look at most website and you see some kind of ideal world, clean, pure, isolated like in a bubble. This is not real life. Our lives are messy, contradictory, complex, certainly not perfect. But this is the wedding photographer's duty to capture the essence and beauty of each event within that chaos. We have to try our best always and remain invisible. I see reportage photography like being a juggler. You know the pattern and you know the tricks, everything can collapse at any time and you always want to add this extra ball.

To aim at delivering consistent quality and quantity is a risky game but truly exciting. This a lot of hard work and practice - practice is the secret - nothing new?! To handle your camera to a point that it becomes invisible to even yourself, that it becomes a simple eye extension is the real price that people should be aiming at. To capture an emotion, a tear. Being at the right place...has nothing to do with devices and technology but it has to do with your eye, your brain and your experience. You can show me the most amazing landscapes and venues where the couple is standing straight tiny in the middle, you can show me crazy effects from the flashy to the soft poetic, that doesn't turn me on. Effects are here to disturb to attention and to hide that the material is actually not so interesting. In true reportage there is no trick, no effect. Not true in fact there are some, but they are set beforehand, a split second while dancing with the action in order to immerse you in the best possible way, but never after. To manipulate after shooting is simply not right in a reportage term. This is personally not the way I understand this genre of photography. By doing so you simply prove that you missed the shot, you missed your intention and have not much to say, and you try to cover it up.

As we can see a photography doesn't cost much anymore. Compare to few years ago where a certain investment, raw dedication and time were needed. A decent camera, a zoom lens and a computer is the minimum required nowadays. In fact you could actually say that we are all photographers. But unfortunately we are not. Like any other trade, quality has nothing to do with the tool used but with the brain who is in charge. Because this brain will take you much further than any tool. And scientist are here to remind us that fact.

PHOTOGRAPHY DOESN'T COSTS ANYTHING ANYMORE, BUT GREAT PHOTOGRAPHS ARE PRICELESS BECAUSE MONEY CANNOT REPLACE THEIR MAGIC. THEIR TRUE VALUE LIES ON THE EMOTION CAPTURED IN THE EPHEMERAL, SOMETHING THAT CANNOT BE REPLACED, LIKE ONCE WE WERE YOUNG.