Candid camera: Photographers witness highs, lows of weddings

What was she thinking?

On Saturday, June 11, several months after her daughter eloped to Hawaii, Peninsula-based photographer Joyce Goldschmid hosted a wedding reception and took the pictures.

"I'm an idiot, I'm an idiot," she joked. "I didn't actually 'shoot' it; I couldn't imagine not seeing the images. I use my camera if my family allows it. Usually when I carry my camera, my family hates it. I ignore them. But last weekend was a little tricky. My brother, who is quite good, had his camera."

Goldschmid's involvement with her daughter's ceremony underscores how weddings pack a potent emotional wallop for bride, groom, families, friends — and the people who capture the images. Wedding photographers witness and preserve the zany, poignant and tragic sides to the rites of passages as a legacy for the couple and the future.

Though weddings are a momentous lifecycle event, sometimes people take wackiness to the extreme. "I remember an April Fool's wedding held outdoors, where the maid of honor was a dog," said Larry Rosenberg of Larry Rosenberg Photography in San Francisco. "And the dog came down the aisle with the ring tied to a ribbon around its neck. The best man was a miniature pony that came down the aisle with a ring around its neck, too."

For a Halloween wedding, recalled Burlingame-based photographer Richard Mayer, the bride and groom dressed in normal attire, but switched outfits right before the reception. "That was kind of fun," he recalled.

"Years ago the bride and groom left on an old tandem bicycle to go to their reception," said Andrew Partos of Andrew Partos Photography in Berkeley. "It was fun because it was novel and unique."

Rosenberg said another time, during the hora, "They hoisted up the bride and the front of her dress fell down. I stopped taking pictures. I didn't think they'd appreciate the pictures of that."

Though Rosenberg held back on that one, photographers must have their camera poised and ready for anything.

A wedding ceremony that Partos photographed abruptly ended after fighting broke out between two sides of the family. "It seemed like the Hatfields and the McCoys," he said. "Factionalism and alcohol and the wedding degenerated into mayhem. The police were called."

The vast majority of weddings, of course, are not interrupted by such violence; they are essentially happy affairs. And wedding photographers see their mission as preserving wonderful moments in time that tell stories through pictures.

Mayer recalled a wedding where four children sat on the lawn at the reception. Mayer's photograph sweetly captured one young girl with a parasol as she stared at the cake, drooling with her tongue hanging out. "Photographs like that are often staged," said the owner of Richard Mayer Photography. "This one was not."

Another time, Mayer said, during the cake-cutting ceremony at a small, home wedding, the sister of the groom accidentally pushed the groom's arm while he was cutting the wedding cake and the bride thought he had intentionally punched her in the face.

"She burst into tears and rushed into the bathroom," Mayer said. "He sat at the door and begged her to come out," which she finally did when the sister apologized.

Weddings are filled with tears of joy and, occasionally, misplaced emotions, but few expect to encounter tragedy.

But that's exactly what happened during one wedding reception Rosenberg was capturing on film. "The father of the groom collapsed on the dance floor and was taken to the hospital. We didn't know he had had a heart attack. We found he later died."

So, wedding photographers labor amid ecstasy, sadness and bruised feelings. But their hardest work often comes in arranging particular portraits or candid shots. "Many of us are very skilled," said Partos. But for certain photographs, he said, "you need to have a good bedside manner."

Partos drew on his best psychological reserves to arrange a shot on the pier in San Francisco with the Transamerica Pyramid in the background. "The bride and the groom were there and I grabbed a fishing pole and handed it to the groom," Partos said. "In the photo, the bride has her hands on her hips as if to say, 'C'mon, we're supposed to be going on our honeymoon.'"

Life in the digital age may be easier for many wedding photographers — they can upload photos onto the Internet for all relatives to view, offer more shots per page at cheaper prices, or snap 200 photos on a single memory card in varying light and not reload — but the job comes down to sensitivity and talent.

"Photography is compelling," said Goldschmid. "It's hard to stop being a photographer."

And she should know. She reeled off more than 700 pictures within four hours last Thanksgiving on a sun-drenched beach in Hawaii when her daughter got married. For the reception at her home she planned on taking about 200 digital ones. The only problem was going to be her husband.

"He didn't know," she said, "I was pulling the camera out."