Wedding is a unique union of tradition and modernity. From the dawn of history, or rather from the moment when wedding ceremony came into the life of Europeans for good, the wedding decoration and the costumes of the young couple are full of multidimensional symbols. Maybe an inspiration for a modern bride could be a costume of a woman from the Roman Empire in the 1st c. AD and preparations which she subjected to? The day before the wedding ceremony bride set her hair and adorned it with a red hairnet. The next – wedding – day bride’s head was adorned with six artificial plaits and orange veil (i.e. flammeum), which covered the upper part of her face. On the veil the bride wore a flower wreath, originally made of verbena and marjoram, then it was myrtle and orange. In the Christian tradition a modest veil has become an inseparable attribute of bride’s wedding dress. The wedding dress itself consisted of a tunic - not hemmed at the bottom, and bound with a woollen girdle with a double knot. The next element of the wedding clothing were a cloak and sandals, both of saffron colour. The bride adorned her neck with a necklace. And now let’s get back to modern times... Happily we live in the 21st century, which gives us an exceptional ability to immortalize the wedding ceremony (something that Roman bride didn’t have for certain). Photography. Probably everybody had an opportunity to see in the gallery or in a magazine (maybe in the photo album of a close person?) a photo that spoke something special, something magic. A photo that hooked your attention and didn’t let you forget about it for a long time - because it was so unique. And yet our impressions are very subjective, simply: “I like mountains, you prefer sea”. It’s worth to know some secrets that will allow us to understand photography better. I’ll tell you about my two favourite topics. First of all: the light. There’s a magic time during the day, just before the dusk, when the light seems to wrap the object of the photography. It’s warm, soft, golden. It’s the most pleasing hour for taking photos – they will seem to be an illustration from a fairy tale. Similar properties has the light very early in the morning, at dawn. But then the light is more brisk and rosy. And you have to get up early. Definitely I recommend the magic hour of twilight. For most I prefer to take photos before the dusk. Secondly: decentralization of the composition. Most people put the main object in the middle of the photo, symmetrically composing the frame. This is not a mistake, but it limits a lot your creative capabilities. A picture captured this way, can be static, or just dull. If we put it a little bit aside, then some sort of dynamic will form, and often this itself can be interesting. Building your composition on the basis of the rule of golden section can really bring wonderful effects to your photography. The ancients must have known that "something good is in it" when they invented the rule of golden section. And they knew something about what beauty was; if not them - who did?
