Dutch photographer Gabriël Scharis has emerged from a year that tested, and tortured, wedding photographers with a smile on his face despite its rigours. He learned to become very flexible in his business. And that saved his business. It began as soon as COVID restrictions were announced. He had a wedding that day and the restrictions were made public during the wedding. “It became a very strange wedding,” he explains. “During the day, all the guest mingled as usual, but in the evening they had to be split up, half in one room viewing the ceremony on a screen and the other half participating. From that point, COVID got me.” Weddings began cancelling.
Scharis was more fortunate than some, though. One of the locations at which he shoots weddings decided to continue to hold them “behind closed doors”. So Scharis continued to shoot a lot of wedding parties there, which were held as if COVID didn’t exist. “It was really strange for me, with masks and ten guests in some weddings, and then these weddings with 100 guests and partying,” he says. Those weddings were the first reason he had a good year and won a lot of awards. He was named eighth in Best Wedding Photographer in the World competition in 2020. But
