I really love this photograph. It’s s simple little shot made at the end of my nephew JJ’s party. The cousins (Zak my son is the short one). It’s these type of photographs that get my mind going a million miles an hour. It’s like the little snow ball at the top of the mountain that once it gets rolling turns into an avalanche (of thoughts). I have a thought in my head of them in this same “guy” pose at their graduations from high school, college and when they get married. What will the look like? What will their lives be like? What moments in their lives will have lead them to the moment where I capture them with arms around each other? Will they be as close as they are now?
I have some photographs like this with my cousin Donnie and we are still that close after 42 years and I remember many pictures in old albums with us with fish in one hand and arms over each other shoulders. My most memorable thought associated with a picture is when my mom and aunt went and got us monster t-shirts and we all posed on the back deck of their house on Crystal Lake in CT. We all went into our monster poses and looked ridiculous, but I remember it like it was yesterday. Just looking at that photograph brings back a million memories.
This is why I shoot weddings. I love being their one day one of a new life. Two individuals starting a family and I’m fortunate enough to have been invites in on that day to document it and to start creating photographs that mean as much to them as the shot of my son and nephew in the above image.
My favorite images from weddings are always the subtle moments or the off hand portraits. I wonder what the toddler brother and sister dancing will look like 20 years down the road. Will the little boy and girl be close siblings? Will one be on the West Coast in college and the other in the military overseas? Will they talk everyday?
It’s these type of crazy thoughts that keep me charged and motivated on a ten hour wedding day. My feet may hurt at 11 PM, but I sure as hell don’t want to miss the shot of the day which could be on frame one or frame three thousand and one.
