Travel Blog: An Indian Wedding

India, Day 9

A wedding?  In India?  I was excited when my host informed me that we would be in attendance at a wedding after our morning outreach on day nine.  Staying at a home in most areas of India means that you surrender your ability to plan anything longer than eight hours ahead of time.  It's just the way the culture operates.  In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart's Rick has a great exchange with a woman in his cafe:

Yvonne: Where were you last night? Rick: That's so long ago, I don't remember. Yvonne: Will I see you tonight? Rick: I never make plans that far ahead.

[video]

Those lines are snappy and witty to hear in a film, but in India, that attitude is more often than not a region-wide reality.  By this point, I was accustomed to surprises in my daily itinerary, and I was happy to learn that this surprise in particular was going to be a lot of fun.

Getting to the wedding took some doing; there hadn't been much rain in our area, but there hadn't been a lot of direct sunlight either.  As such, the roads were still slurries of muck, always at least five inches deep.  To make travel even more fun, we had a little competition for road space as we pulled up to the group of houses in the village where the wedding was to take place.  There was a bus parked on one side of the road and several tractors and ox carts going back and forth, and our faithful Bolero had to take the outer edge of the road to get into the village complex.  The truck got stuck for a minute or so, but our intrepid Driver was able to negotiate his way through it.

We disembarked and I took in the scene.  I've photographed a lot of weddings, but I've never photographed an Indian wedding ceremony.  I've always wanted to, but the opportunity never presented itself back home.  And now, I was at an Indian wedding, in India.  A Christian Indian wedding, no less.  Life is funny like that.

An impromptu wedding venue had been constructed in the courtyard between some houses.  An immense tent hung from poles on two sides, with the other two sides attached to the houses.  Inside, sunlight filtered through the fabric to wash everything and everyone beneath it in an electric, technicolor glow.  Musical instruments were held in readiness for the ceremony, while the pre-ceremony environment was supercharged with music from a boombox connected to a set of speakers that blared chants and songs for a good quarter-mile.

The ceremony began about an hour after we arrived, and the girls raised their voices in a chanted refrain as the musicians began making live music.  The groom entered from stage right.  He was dressed entirely in white, except for his bright ride Puma sneakers.  The bride emerged after nearly another hour of music.  The music had died down and the ceremony was underway, with a short "homily" from the officiant preceding the vows proper.  The content, all delivered in Hindi, was entirely lost on me of course, but I was content to observe the goings-on and assume that the message wasn't too different than the wedding messages I hear back home.

We had to leave before the end of the ceremony, sadly.  The wedding began a full two hours behind schedule (even in India, that seemed pretty extreme to me), and Driver had appeared at our elbows to whisper that he was only on the clock for a little while longer, and we needed to move on if we wanted him to drive us home.  So, we left early.

I was intrigued by the expressions on the bride and groom's faces.  Unlike the weddings I've attended and photographed for years back home, I saw no signs of emotion in the couple.  There are usually some hints of shyness or happiness on one or both faces, but on these two, I saw only stoicism.  I asked one of my host's colleagues about this.

"Why did the bride and groom look like that?"

"Like what?"  He seemed surprised.

"They looked sad."

He nodded.  "Ah, yes.  They are actually very happy, but they are leaving their families now, so for that reason they are looking sad."

Intriguing.

Travel Blog: India, Day 8 - The kids at the riverbank.

While at my host's cheerful home village, an oasis in the middle of abject and depressed poverty state in India, we met a group of children doing laundry in the nearby river. Let me see...

A gaggle of village kids.  India.  A river.  An open field of epic proportions.

Why, yes, a photo op was in order.

Every time I visit India, I am always amazed and overjoyed by the people's capacity for kindness, unhindered friendliness and hospitality, and their sheer willingness to participate.  Shy though they were, this group of children stayed true to Indian hospitality by eagerly smiling and waving at the camera when I started clicking the shutter.  They giggled and laughed elatedely when I turned the SLR around showed them their photos in the camera's monitor.  I took dozens of photos of the little guys.  I don't know what these children's lives are like on a normal day, but in that environment, with those kinds of smiles, they made this scene look absolutely idyllic.

Behind the scenes of air-to-air photography fun over Fairhope, AL

I took a personal day this past weekend to tag along with my buddy Sheldon on one of his projects.  Sheldon is currently working on a documentary for college about private aviators and their uncanny passion for flying.  Parts of this documentary require air-to-air photography and video footage, and Saturday was Sheldon's day to shoot it.  The location was picturesque Fairhope, Alabama. How do you shoot good footage of another airplane in flight?

You remove the door of the airplane, obviously.  A sixty mile-hour wind is the perfect wake-up call for early in the morning.  It cools you off, blows your hair back and inflates your clothing to Schwarzeneggerian proportions.

It was Sheldon's project, so naturally he took the primary position by the open door, as you will see below.  I sat in the backseat and photographed Sheldon videoing another plane, and also used the flight time to capture some nice landscape shots of the beautiful countryside in and around Fairhope.

The 5am wakeup call aside, it was a heckuva fun way to spend the morning.  I was only disappointed that we weren't in Fairhope at lunch to hit up the Biscuit King & Willie's Smokin' BBQ, which happens to have the best smoked brisket I have ever had anywhere...but there's always next time.

And now, photos!

And, as a bonus for all my techie friends, a little gratuitous gear porn featuring Sheldon's 7D and video rig...

Mr. and Mrs. White's Wedding Extravaganza

Last weekend saw me driving up to Gainesville, Georgia to video the wedding of some very special people. I met Parker and McClain on my last trip to India, McClain being the daughter of Ken and Tracy, whom I know from participating with their ministry, Net India.

Upon meeting them, it took less than five minutes for me to be convinced that if there is such a thing as a perfect couple, it's these two.  First high school sweethearts, now married fresh out of college.  I've been to a lot of weddings, but there was a joy and purity at this one that I have never felt before.  As I culled through the video footage, I found myself smiling continually as every clip reminded me of the joy of the day.  And, to make it even cooler, McClain used Pinterest to gather ideas and design the entire event.

Congrats, guys.  I'm proud to know both of you.  Thanks for letting the goofy Florida boy be a part of your big day.

Just so there is no confusion, all photography and portraiture was handled by Katherine Williamson Photography and North Georgia Photography.  Contrary to my usual job, I was the video guy, and what you see below are frame grabs from my footage.

Derrel's of Pensacola

I spent some time in my dad's place of business last week, shooting video footage for some upcoming commercials and taking photographs for general purposes.  My dad's business, Derrel's of Pensacola, is unique in the area.  Why?  We carry Bernina sewing machines. Bernina sewing machines are manufactured in Steckborn, Switzerland.  I almost went there a couple of years ago, but the closest I came was looking at it across Lake Constance from Friedrichshafen, Germany.  Needless to say, the machines come from a beautiful area of the world; I think that's one of the contributing factors to their being so well-designed.  They have built-in Microsoft Windows interfaces (and are slowly coming around with Mac support), and are possibly the most advanced sewing machines available anywhere.  Derrel's also recently started selling the Melco Bravo industrial embroidery machine.

The creative possibilities made possible by these machines are amazing, and I'm proud to help my dad market them in the Pensacola area.