“Steve and Amy”
Alamedia: Documenting Real Life
Gone are the days when wedding photography entailed arranging guests in the stilted formations still the norm at family reunions. Weddings have evolved into a documentary or fashion shoot, where the brides and grooms are the supermodels and the A-list actors on their special day. To preserve the big day, you want a photographer with the eye of a fine artist and the timing of the paparazzi: You want someone like Douglas Despres. His Helios Images wedding photography business is based in Alameda, where he resides.
Despres earned a B.A. in studio arts with a concentration in fine art photography from the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he shot for the school’s newspaper. “Fine art was a foundation layer for everything else, so when I was shooting the photojournalism, it gave a slightly different depth or edge to what I was covering,” he says. When his sister asked him to shoot her wedding “just like you shoot for the newspaper,” the resulting images “were aligned with my core,” he says.
Depres is an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley, and his courses include documentary portraiture, where he shares inspiration he draws from American photographers Robert Frank, Harry Callahan, and Paul Strand, and Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado.
“It’s interesting how much trust the people in front of the lens give you,” he says. “It’s something I don’t take lightly. I try to honor what they’re doing and capture it with a certain level of respect.” This was key shooting weddings, photographing the Alameda Civic Ballet, the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, or, in his current project, taking portraits of Alzheimer’s patients with their loved ones.
“A lot of my training is for real life to happen and just to document it,” he says. In 2003 Despres was eating in a roadhouse restaurant with his brother Steve, and Steve’s then-girlfriend, Amy. “They were just sitting across from me with this gorgeous sidelight,” Despres says. Naturally he had his camera with him.
Then Amy leaned in, her cheek mashed comfortably against Steve’s shoulder, a dreamy contentment in her eyes. She is punch-drunk in love. “When everything seems to drop in the moment, you just snap it,” Despres says. “Some kind of emotion that will be gone one second before or after.” And when Steve popped the question, Despres shot an engagement session.
More of Despres’ work can be seen at www.douglasdespres.org. The artist can be reached at 617-285-4350.
This article appears in the December 2013 issue of Alameda Magazine
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