Are you Sure?

There is a delightful dissonance at work in this photograph, taken on Venice’s docks. We expect wedding portraits to be carefully curated affairs — romantic, timeless, perhaps even a little clichéd. Yet here, the scene unfolds against a backdrop of a bright yellow, graffiti-stained container, with stacks of bottled water and the raw brick of a church wall behind it.

From a compositional perspective, the frame is well balanced. The groom, positioned to the left, strides toward the bride, who stands slightly off-centre to the right. The eye is drawn naturally from him to her, and then to the small entourage of photographers and onlookers who appear more amused than awed. The horizontal lines of the container, juxtaposed with the vertical presence of the couple, provide a subtle structural rhythm to the image.

The exposure is well handled considering the strong midday sun — a notoriously challenging light for both skin tones and contrast. The whites of the bride’s dress are held without blowing out, and the groom’s dark suit retains texture. The shadows are sharp, but they serve to anchor the subjects in their environment rather than overpower them.

Technically, the choice of depth of field is astute: enough sharpness to render the background details — the graffiti, the bricks, the bottled water — which are essential to the humour and tension of the scene, but without distracting from the central human interaction.

What makes this image successful is its refusal to romanticise. It captures a candid, almost absurd juxtaposition between a formal life milestone and the mundane, even gritty, realities of a working waterfront. It invites the viewer to linger, to question — perhaps even to smile at the layered meanings behind that title: Are you sure?