A moment that stayed with me

An email came into my inbox. “You have a new print order!” it cheerfully read.

The print order was a candid moment of two people sitting at a table, laughing at something out of the frame during Sarah and Alexander’s small backyard wedding in 2020. In the photo, Karen has her hand up towards John and their smiles are so large and radiant you can hear them laughing in the image.

10 months after getting that print order, I photographed Sarah and Alexander’s larger reception. A man came up to me and I immediately recognized his face (After photographing hundreds of images from a day, editing for hours, being fully immersed in the images and getting to know my couple and their guests’ faces so well, seeing them again in real life brings out the kind of awe as seeing a movie star on the street). It was John from that print.

He told me how I took this photo of him and his wife in the perfect candid moment that they loved and had printed because it encapsulated their relationship so well - he would say the silliest things and she would always feign exasperation with him. I can’t remember exactly how he described it but I think it’s equivalent to “I can’t even.”

From this small moment I captured for Sarah’s Uncle John and Aunt Karen, they have a tangible representation of what their love looked like and how they recognize each other. I can imagine how many other times they laughed exactly like this throughout their years together.

This is the gift I hope to give to others whenever I take a photograph - for people to see themselves and their loved ones exactly as they are. I am a quiet collector of moments, not quite knowing which ones might turn out to be someone’s “That’s so us,” so I continue to observe and simply tell the truth.