Renegade

The bride wore a simple empire waist gown with a bow tied in the small of her back. As she walked down the aisle with her father, her train swept the rose petals with a length that was elegant yet humble. Despite wearing the same black suit with gray stripes as his three groomsmen, the groom differentiated himself with a pristine white shirt, a baby-blue tie, and an anticipating smile.

The wedding on Saturday was a small affair in Atherton. The couple got married under a white gazebo surrounded by soft green leaves eager to contribute to the ceremony. As the bride and groom began reciting their vows, the girls in the audience flattened their curls as they rested their heads on their boyfriends' shoulders, as if to say, "That'll be us one day, my love."

Even I, a cynic of love, will admit to a moment of tenderness—a moment that made me reflect on all whom I have loved and will love.

But amid the ceremony that turns skeptics into acolytes, there was one renegade woman, untouched by the circumstance of the occasion: the wedding photographer.

Among the muted cell phones, the photographer's camera noticeably clicked during Paul's Letter to the Corinthians. When we were seated, she was standing. While we stood back respecting the cutting of the cake, she encroached on the fondant.

The servers don't bring the chicken till the appropriate time. The bartenders stop clinking ice into glasses once the toasts start. Only the photographer can make noise in silence, turn darkness in light, and improvise action in confinement.

The photographer is the renegade, the outlaw, the dangerous one who not only challenges the structures of the wedding but has permission to do so. The photographer's job is to hold a camera and move with anarchy. But in that anarchy, there is a noble cause.

The wedding photographer may seem obliviously selfish by obstructing the view of wedding events, but in truth, the photographer is ultimately self-effacing: none of her wedding photographs snapped in self-reliant individualism show her own face.

For all her obtrusive camera flashes to wash-out subtle dusk, for all her disruptive dashes across the reception to catch a spontaneous image, she will be the forgotten attendee of the event, a blank line in the guest book. The wedding photographer, paradoxically, disappears in her own individualism. The renegade of society blends back into anonymity because our images often rewrite our memories.