About
Hi, I'm Ray.
I'm the photographer behind Érvessa. I'm from Puerto Rico, my family is split between there and New York, and I photograph weddings around Orlando — and anywhere else you'll have me.
How I got here
I was sixteen when my older brother started shooting and kept roping me in to help. Carrying bags, holding lights, standing where I was told. Somewhere in there it stopped being a favour and turned into the thing I wanted to do.
I started at concerts. A song is three minutes long and nothing in it happens twice — miss it and it is gone. You learn to work fast or you go home with nothing. Then sports, which is the same problem with more running. Weddings came after that, and they turned out to be the same problem again: one take, no rehearsal, and the best thing in the room happening behind you.
How I shoot
Concerts taught me to shoot hybrid. In a single song I will come away with a portrait, a detail, and a wide frame of the whole room — five minutes, three completely different photographs. At a wedding that means I am not stopping your day every time I need something. I move, and the day keeps going.
I think of every frame as a movie on pause. Not a picture of what happened, but the moment held still, so that years from now you look at it and the rest of it starts playing in your head again.
What I am actually after
I want you to cry when you open your gallery.
The photograph I am proudest of is my best friend and his wife running down a field. We have known each other since we were kids. Getting to hand that back to them is the reason I do this at all.
I do this for the love of it more than the money, and I price it that way on purpose. You should not have to break the bank to have someone photograph the most important day of your life.
We are a good fit if
- You want a person, not a production. I am not going to run your day like a drill sergeant. We will talk, I will keep up, and most of the time you will forget I am there.
- You would rather be caught than arranged. I will make time for portraits and I will guide you through them. But the photographs you keep going back to are the ones nobody set up.
- You want the day back, not a highlight reel. Your grandmother in the second row. Your friend losing it during the toast. The half of your wedding you were too busy living to see.
- You want to be led, and that is fine too. Plenty of people have never been photographed properly and have no idea what to do with their hands. If you want posing, I will pose you — gently, a little at a time, until you stop thinking about it. Tell me what you want and I will shoot it that way.
Off the clock
I am usually with my family and friends. If I am not, I am probably at a game or a show with a camera anyway — the habits that got me here have not gone anywhere.
Want to talk?
Tell me about your day and I will come back with availability. Or book a short call and we can just talk it through.