The Second Shooter – Part 1: Golden Hour

"Don't photograph me," said Beatriz.

"I'm photographing the veil," said Rafael.

"The veil is behind me."

"It's lit by you."

She lowered her camera and frowned at him across the sunny courtyard of a Lisbon quinta, with its white walls, blue-tiled steps and long tables dressed in flowers. Guests were drifting in the garden in pale linens, laughing. A string quartet tuned in the shade of an orange tree. It was four in the afternoon, the sun was low and golden, and it was the third wedding of the summer.

Beatriz was thirty, a wedding photographer, brisk and sharp, with a long dark braid, a canvas vest and two cameras round her neck. Rafael was thirty-five, her new second shooter, lean and quiet, in a black T-shirt, with a camera bag on his shoulder and a faint, absent-minded smile.

"Focus on the bride," she said.

"I am."

"You're photographing the florist."

"She's beautiful."

"She's seventy."

"She's very beautiful."

Beatriz laughed in spite of herself. She turned away to shoot the bride walking down the stone steps, in a wash of gold light. The shutter clicked softly. At her side, Rafael worked silently, anticipating, stepping aside at the right moment, finding angles she hadn't seen. He had a gift for looking at people when they weren't looking.

By ten, the party was in full swing. A band played, couples danced, lanterns glowed along the garden wall. Beatriz and Rafael sat on a low stone wall at the edge of the lawn, shoes off, eating cake from paper plates, looking at the day's work on the back of their cameras.

"This one," said Rafael.

It was a picture of the bride laughing with her grandmother, caught mid-peal, both faces alight. It was perfect.

"Whose is it?"

"Yours."

"I was standing next to you."

"I was watching you work," said Rafael. "It's a good way to learn."

"Can I ask you something?" said Beatriz.

"Yes."

"Are you ever going to photograph the people at the weddings?"

"Green?" said Rafael, a lens, a light.

"Green," said Beatriz, with a slow smile. "Very green. Show me the one you took of me."

Continue the story: Part 2 – After the Last Dance.