Chapter Text
You are Cordially Invited to
The Wedding of
Cato Roberts and Clove Masters
May 6 at The Hob, 2023
Being an event photographer isn't that different from hunting.
And no, it's not for the obvious reasons--that some of the terminology crosses over, shooting, capturing, et cetera et cetera. It's true that there are some skills that cross over: getting used to crouching for long periods of time. A diligent eye. Spotting moments of weakness, of vulnerability, of intimacy, and going in for--well, not the 'kill,' exactly, but you get my drift.
But the biggest similarity is how, in order to do well in both, you need to disappear completely. Hunters have to move through the brush without making a sound, without leaving a trail, hiding their scent as much as possible. In the same way, a photographer has to be unobtrusive at an event. If people see the big camera waggling their way, they freeze, try to pose or look more conspicuously relaxed and at ease than they really are, which just makes them look sort of constipated. Good photographers do all their work invisibly, so that guests think that they hadn't even been there until they see the photographs and see themselves, not as they want to appear or try to appear, but as they are .
It's not hard to disappear. I wear simple clothes--not so dressed down that I then become noticeable in comparison to all the black tie, but simple--black pants whose color hides the zippers for batteries and SD cards and lens caps, a dark green blouse. I don't wear perfume. I don't talk or smile at the guests or the wedding party, except to direct them into groups, and I don't need to smile for that. I don't use big cameras, which is in part a budgetary constraint and a redundant one. There's pretty much only one event venue in Panem, the small coal-mining town where I grew up and in which I still, despite my best efforts, live and work, and it's well-lit and small where I don't need serious hardware. Not that I could afford it, anyway.
A lot of the times the weddings are for out-of-towners, people in from the city who wanted a quaint, rustic setting for their wedding (which, so far as I can tell, means they were too slow on the draw or too cheap for a big city wedding--at least, so my listening in on guest conversation tells me.) But every now and then, someone from town gets married, and no matter who it is, they all get married at the Hob. Partly because of tradition. Partly because, again, it's the only venue in town.
The Hob used to be an old warehouse. Back in the day, it must have been properly hideous, but when it got bought by a venue company a couple years ago, and they moved what they could and sanded and shined what they couldn't and put in some nice hardwood flooring and hung some huge lights, it doesn't look half bad. I've gotten a lot of shots of some ancient-looking equipment lit by fairy lights reflecting back the luster of champagne flutes and jazz band quartets. The wedding parties usually aren't interested in those shots, unless they grew up here.
Like tonight's couple, Cato Roberts and Clove Masters. I went to high school with both, which nominally might have merited me an invitation, except I didn't know the former captains of the football team and soccer team too well. Between working as-close-to-full-time as I could legally get away with and basically raising my little sister Prim, I didn't have time to hob-nob with the popular kids at school. If I had, I might not use terms like 'hob-nob.' But they did know me well enough to pick me as a photographer. Either that, or I'm the only photographer in town.
Their wedding isn't themed--the Roberts' and Masters' are too dignified for themes. But there's still a subtle style present. The dress-code is black tie. The champagne flutes are rectangular. Clove's dress hasn't got a single stitch of embroidery on it. Get the idea? In the refurbished warehouse, the wedding's quasi-minimalist shtick is almost charming. As are the happy couple. There are few things more cliche than the happy, attractive, successful high school couple going to college down the road together, proposing the spring of their senior year, and going back home to get set up in a comfortable two-bedroom house whose down payment was a wedding gift from the groom's side (or so I gather from casual eavesdropping.) But being in wedding photography, you have to learn to stop thinking of things in terms of cliches. For one, you're in wedding photography--there are a lot of cliches. But also, looking at things in terms of cliches means you've already made your mind up about what you're looking at, which translates to lazy looking, which translates to bad photos.
So, look at the bride and groom--I can remember their casual cruelty in high school, the way they laughed at my bad clothes and, when things were really bad and we had no hot water, how I had to shower in the school gym. But I can also see how Clove keeps looking at Cato like she wants to eat him, how Cato's 'greet the guests' smile is different from his 'doped-up grin as he takes in his admittedly enchantingly beautiful new wife.' Both are faces I capture. And if I also get a couple of snaps of Cato rolling his eyes at Clove's mother who keeps telling him how to keep his wife happy, or Clove cringing away from Cato's dad's Basil Hayden-soaked breath, those are just for me.
The dinner has finished. People are ambling around while the DJ gets started. I wonder if Clove's parents will allow the DJ to play any music that doesn't have a string section or a conductor that didn't go to Julliard. Just because I don't like to dance myself doesn't mean that I don't love it for photos. People really let themselves go wild on the dance floor. Laughing, flailing, eye-fucking, and so on and so forth. I slip around the tables, capturing quiet moments, lacunae in the planned festivities. There and gone.
Towards the back of the space is where they're keeping the dessert table, with one of the caterers. Well, I say one of, but I know perfectly well who it is, who moved back to town approximately two weddings ago, whose presence is pretty hard to miss. He's there, now. Talking with some relative of Clove's, an old woman who is shamelessly flirting with the stocky, blonde-haired baker. Under these sodium-orange lights, his hair glows like a halo. In front of him is a huge array of cookies. A bit of whimsy I hadn't expected from this wedding, though maybe the baker talked them into it. Clove's…aunt? Great aunt?...is waving one around and complimenting the baker. He also made the cake, a stunningly subdued two-layer lemon and poppyseed construction with the scraped-sides effect. The scraped icing made it look a bit like a half-skinned animal, though not due to any fault of the baker.
I realize I've been pacing back and forth in front of the baker's table for about a minute now, snapping photos of everything else and glancing at him. The woman must have said something especially flirty, because he blushes beet red.
Without thinking, I turn my camera towards him and the woman, crouching low.
Before I snap the photo, Peeta Mellark looks right at me.
I fumble, but still manage to press the shutter. When I look away from the viewfinder, Peeta has looked away and is laughing at what the woman said, and if it weren't for verifiable proof that he had, I'd have thought I only imagined him looking at me.
But it's also hard to think that when, as soon as the woman leaves, he scans around briefly, and spies me in the same place and position, crouched a bit animalistically, staring up at him in perfect imitation of a deer in the headlights.
He smiles shyly, and gives me a little wave.
I don't smile at weddings, but apparently, I do blush, wave crazily, and stumble backwards into a chair at just the moment the DJ decided to have a break in the song, which makes the entire wedding party look at me.