The Wedding Photographer’s Nightmare Dream, The Perfect Photograph

In the world of dreams they say people often have a reoccurring nightmare involving their particular type of career, hobby and/or love among other items one is close to.

Examples would be a doctor, who has nightmares about losing patients, a police officer who dreams about being shot, a race car driver who crashes during a race, a mailman who gets chased and bit by a dog, a Disc Jockey whose equipment keeps blowing a fuse during the bride and groom’s first dance or a florist whose flowers always wilt upon delivery. You get the idea. It’s very traumatic stuff, especially when you are dreaming.

Well… I had this nightmare of a dream. I’m a wedding photographer.

I was on location shooting a high end wedding. Everything had gone as planned. We were at the reception and I had a lull in shooting for a few minutes. As always I scope out the venue for awesome shots, this wedding was no different.

The reception hall was packed and everyone was eating. So I went exploring for that one awesome extra shot. I exited the reception hall through a stained glass French door with brass handles onto a deck and there it was. I don’t even know if I have the words to describe what I saw. About 20 feet in front of me was pool. It was elevated about four feet above the marble tiled floor. So from my view it appeared almost level and the water appeared to be forever in the horizon. It was almost dusk. There were the most beautiful swains and doves on the water. The sky behind the pool had the most perfect clouds you’d ever want and the sky glowed golden. The water had a warm red and orange golden glow reflecting on it. The water had a slight wave of ripples but even so the reflections of the white swains and doves stood out perfectly.

As I entered on the deck the birds did not fly off. My brain went into overdrive. Could I get my bride to stand up on the elevated ledge, was there room for her to stand there, could I keep her dress dry? What about the birds would they fly away?

I slowly walked over to the pool’s ledge, the birds never budged. The ledge was three feet wide with plenty of room for the bride. I envisioned a side shot of the bride. She would be over in the bottom left third of the photograph with her wedding gown flowing behind her as if she was in the wind. I’d just have to make sure the gown did not get wet. My mind fast forwarded to solve the problem. I’d have a bridesmaid hold the gown just out of view and or I’d Photoshop her hands out. Either way I’d have my shot, give the shot of illusion of wind blowing and keep the dress dry.

The only problem remained was keeping the birds from flying away. I mean the birds and their reflections in the water were the key to this being an awesome photograph. Now granted it would be a great photograph without the birds but we’re talking an award winning shot here. The answer was simply asking the bride and her bridesmaids to move slowly and not speak, I would position them and speak softly. I didn’t want any fast movements or sounds to scare off the birds.

Everything was set into place, the mother of the bride was inside guarding the door to keep everyone inside.

The bride was beautiful, the matron of honor held the gown and it cooperated perfectly and stayed out of the water, the birds obeyed my subliminal thoughts to them to sit, if only my dog at home would be so obedient. The light glowed perfectly, the reflections in the water was to die for, everything was stunning. I was finalizing the bride’s hands and body position, I wanted to have her looking out into the pool with her arms and hands in an “awe” position. Just as I was turning to go back to the camera I heard a swoosh in the water…

How could this have happened? The mother unbeknownst to me had let the father past the barrier so he could get a shot too. Arrrg! Ok maybe I could have lived with that but why did he have to swoosh his hands in the water to feel the water temperature …?

Yes, you know it, that’s when I was woke up by my dog barking. And yes, the birds were spooked.