After the Wedding

The photo below is a dream-like image of what it may feel like after the wedding is over and bride and groom face reality a/k/a the descending spiral of an endless stair. Of course, there's a ton of photography of weddings, brides, and grooms. But wedding photography is seldom as apparently unintentional as this photo. Even "candid" wedding portraiture is likely to be stylized and mannered, far from truly candid or unintentional.

After the Wedding, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

City Hall in San Francisco is a beautiful building from the 1930s in the classical mode. I spent some time photographing the interior of City Hall the other day. It's also a popular venue for getting married. While I was photographing, a number of these small, secular, and pragmatic ceremonies took place.

As readers of my blog know, I have a fixation on spiral stairs. I found the spiral staircase shown in this photo off to one side of the building. The photo was taken using a wide angle lens, and the real stairway is surprisingly narrow.

I got permission from building maintainence to go up the blocked-off top of the stair (I think it led to the engine room for a bank of elevators). I was photographing straight down the narrow spiral with my tripod precariously balanced.

The couple in the photo must have just left the marriage registrar's office when they wandered into my photo and were rendering dream-like by the 2 second time exposure and their own motion.

The story of this photo also makes the case for the photographer with the prepared mind. I was ready to take the photo, so when the happy couple wandered into my frame an exciting exposure was the result.

[Nikon D300, 12-24mm zoom lens at 12mm (18mm in 35mm terms), 2 seconds at f/22 and ISO 100]