In more than twenty years of working as a photographer, I think I shot only one wedding, and that was for a friend. Somehow it never clicked with me. Maybe I couldn't shift gears, maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind—I honestly don't know. Something simply didn't align.
I delivered the photographs. My friend seemed happy with them.
I wasn't.
There was nothing memorable about that shoot. And if I can't remember a shoot, it means it was rubbish. A masterpiece is impossible to overlook. It shines like a diamond, even when buried beneath a mountain of ordinary work.
When a shoot goes well, there are usually several photographs that immediately stand apart. You recognize them the moment you see them. That feeling is unmistakable.
In fact, it begins long before you ever look at the images.
First comes the nervous anticipation, the same feeling you get before taking a leap. You run through everything in your head. Did I pack everything? Am I ready?
Being ready is a strange combination of confidence, excitement, and trembling.
Sometimes, though, you're not ready at all. Then what you feel isn't simply anxiety but a peculiar sense of being lost, when you're still searching for an answer as you're climbing out of the car. This way or that? Documentary or portrait? What style?

What language? Your head is full of noise. Where do you begin?
Even then, all is not lost. Sometimes anxiety saves you. It's like finding yourself in deep water. You begin swimming desperately toward shore, throwing up great sprays with every frantic stroke, until at last your feet touch solid ground. You still wobble for a moment, but suddenly you're standing again.
You made it.
The truly dangerous state is something entirely different.
It's the calm of overconfidence.
You feel nothing. Everything seems perfectly fine. But beneath that calm there's only emptiness, and because you mistake it for confidence, you never see the disaster coming.
That's when it happens.
The real disaster.
You won't understand it until the shoot is over, when there's no longer anything you can change. You open the files, stare at the lifeless photographs, and feel an icy knot rising in your throat.
That's it.
A complete failure.
At moments like these, your own mediocrity becomes almost physically painful. Your mind slips backward through time until memory offers up one of its favorite punishments.
"Ovchinnikov! Didn't learn your lesson again? Tell your mother I want to see her after school..."

I hadn't picked up a camera in a year. Maybe two.
Then my son, Arseny, called.
"Dad, Marina and I are getting married. The wedding's on June nineteenth."
"Oh! Congratulations!"
"Thanks. Will you come?"
"I don't know..."
Arseny lived in Moscow. I was living in Krasnaya Polyana, near Sochi. I was still recovering from a divorce and working constantly. Flying to Moscow simply to sit through a wedding reception held very little appeal. At the same time, not going didn't feel right either.
"Maybe you'll photograph us," my son said.
And suddenly everything became clear.
I'd be the wedding photographer at my own son's wedding.
I wouldn't have to sit at the table making toasts or worrying about small talk. I wouldn't have to do anything except the one thing I'd spent my entire life learning to do.
Photograph.
I bought the tickets immediately.
For the first time in a long while, I knew exactly what I was going to do and exactly how I was going to do it.
I was completely calm.
And just a little bit nervous.