The Love Story – GF50mmF3.5 impressions

07.18.2019

Written by... Javier Abad

Javier Abad was born in Mieres, Asturias in 1975. He became interested in photography just before starting his Chemistry Degree.

For 10 years, he worked as a freelance photographer for national sector publications, such as Surfer Rule, Solo Snowboard and Snow Planet, and for other international publications, such as Skiing and Playboard. He has also worked for brands like Nike ACG, Quiksilver and Nitro Snowboards.

He has also won action photography competitions, such as the Malamute Challenge by Salomon Snowboards. Little by little, he began to balance field work with his job as photo editor for Spotmag magazine.

Before long, he published two books, along with his fellow forum contributors: Cazadores de Luz: Las mejores fotografías de los grandes fotógrafos españoles” National Geographic/RBA 2008), with a foreword by Steve McCurry and “Cazadores de Luz: Secretos y Técnicas” (Alameda Editorial, 2010)

In 2011, he created the f2 wedding photography studio and shortly afterwards he won second place for new photographers in the BodaF Europe 2013 awards and was also included on the list of the world’s 180 best wedding photographers, according to Delicius Presets.

Over the next few years, he was considered one of the Top 10 best Spanish wedding photographers, as chosen by Unionwep.

He has taught at international wedding photography workshops, such as the Wolves Workshop, and has made presentations on several occasions at conferences such as BodaF Europe. His wedding photography has also been published in magazines and blogs around the world, such as Green Wedding Shoes and Junebug Weddings.

He is currently balancing his work at f2studio with a new adventure photography workshop project called Proyecto Nature.

As a wedding photographer, I have always had a fascination for love stories. For this project, I came up with the idea of doing something different from what I normally do, which is to document the stories of couples who decide to get married.
So we looked for an elderly couple and decided to document their love story after many years of marriage.

Hans and Marianne are a German couple who, a few years ago, decided to give up their jobs and move to France. They bought a truck, learned to make crepes and started to go from event to event selling their delicious crepes.

They live a simple, quiet life, and when there are no events on, they live in their home, where they enjoy their day to day activities, along with glasses of wine and good food.

When they have an event, their lives are completely transformed and they may have to work for up to 12 – 14 hours, making more than 1,000 crepes a day. Nonetheless, they always have a smile for their customers and a few minutes to talk to them.

As Hans told us, since they bought the truck, he and Marianne have spent 24 hours, 365 days a year together, which is proof that true love does exist.

To take these photos, we spent a whole day with Hans and Marianne in Nantes, where they have just finished an event and are getting ready for another one that will take place in three days’ time.

Our idea was for this report to be the first of a series of five, in which we portray the love stories of elderly couples across the world.