...but the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three on them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.Which got me thinking about my memories, our wedding coming to mine first. The immediate moments that I thought about was not the ceremony or "messy", but our first dance and a picture of us alone on the dais.
Re our dance. I got the song I wanted ("Eve" by Dream Theater), but we made the mistake of never practicing dancing to not really danceable song. There are photos, of course, during that 5+ minutes, and my brother captured it on video, but neither really capture that moment Joanne & I shared, completely alone, but surrounded by friends & family. Our most private moment of the day also about the most public. We spent a good amount of the dance (or I did) noting we should have spent more time practicing or preparing in some way.
The second is, again, us by ourselves. I'm rather certain Lindsey (Joanne's roommate the semester we started going out, who was a photography hobbiest) took the photo. It's from a distance, completely unposed. One of those casual photographs that rarely happen if you know a camera is around.
I'll add it to the post if I get around to scanning it (we got married in the pre-digital era!).
So that's a bit of a digression from the quoted passage...
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3 comments:
i know my photographer friends & i have talked about this in great length, not only do we not live in the moment -we're obsessed with capturing other people's moments... so we wonder if we are ever really living or constantly documenting or wishing we were...
it's hard for me to go anywhere without a camera-
that being said- i am happiest documenting special events for people especially on very special days.
-no matter where you are & what's going on, you should always stop & take a mental picture- so you can relive it whenever you'd like to.
The ubiquity of cameras does seem to have tilted the balance from living your life to documenting your life. I guess that's one of the nice things about paying someone thousands of dollars to shoot your wedding - you don't have to do it, so you can spend the whole time looking around & enjoying it all.
I used to shoot a lot of pictures, back in the pre-digital days. I can't imagine how many I would take now, if I was still looking through a lens. Interestingly, while I hardly ever take pictures any more, I often look at a scene or move to a slightly different angel and think "that would make a good shot."
I was at your wedding and don't hardly remember anyone saying "messy".
I remember "MESSY!!!" very well, however.
Without going into details, I find the ubiquitous photography and posing and whatnot from certain people to reside somewhere between nauseating and frightening. But that may be the petty jealousy I have of others' ability to get the most out of their digital cameras, while my current model has been an underachiever since day one.
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