You see then elegantly framed and proudly displayed in people's homes. Wedding photos. Images that crystalize the happiest moment of life, to be preserved and cherished, then passed down to future generations. Photos like this:

But wedding photography, especially professional wedding photography, takes careful planning, coordination and a prodigious amount of effort to pull off. As anyone who has employed the services of a professional wedding photographer surely knows, that beautiful photo which ends up framed on your wall is often the result of many many takes and a lot of expertise behind the scenes.

And then there are "tricks of the trade," some of which involve a lot of off-camera action...Action which is thankfully cropped out of the final product...

But what if you had a chance to see what happened off-camera?

This is precisely what Japanese Twitter users were treated to in a post which went viral earlier today by ちぃずちゃんねる Cheese Channel (@0321Haichiizu), representing the camera-wielding duo of wedding photographer Yudai Nakamichi 仲道雄大 and his wife Haru はる:

While the happy newlyweds pose blissfully, we can see a woman on the left who looks like she might be in the middle of some kind of interpretive dance. In fact, some commenters on Twitter jokingly suggested that she was the dancer in the music video for the popular song Kousui 「香水」, the TikTok-generated hit by indie singer-songwriter Eito 瑛人.

As it turns out, that's Haru, and she was in the middle of doing a special move which adds a dynamic flourish to the wedding dress for the photo. We reached out to Haru through her Twitter account and she revealed that it's not just a question of lifting up the dress haphazardly to achieve the effect. The movements you see her making in the photo represent a special technique, developed through trial and error, to achieve just the right effect, as she lifts up the dress then quickly moves out of the frame before the dress settles.

So, now you know.

Apparently these kinds of photos are kept for laughs, showing them to the couple after reviewing the final shot. Haru and her husband Yudai originally put the photo as a Story on their Instagram account since they felt that Haru's expression was so funny, but in a moment of spontaneity, after sharing some laughs one evening, they decided to post it on Twitter as well, and the tweet went viral, garnering 250,000 likes and 53,000 retweets at the time of writing.

Revealing not only the finished photo but also the "action" happening off-camera in the same shot inspired them to post the photo with the tongue-in-cheek caption: "The dark side of wedding photography"

By the way, when she's not in the middle of doing one of her dress-lifting acrobatics, this is what Haru usually looks like:

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And if you ever need a wedding photographer, please consider Yudai Nakamichi. He has quite an amazing story to tell too. Having survived cancer, he was inspired to become a wedding photographer to bring happiness to people's lives.

They look like a great couple and Yudai's photography is amazing. If you're interested, visit his website here.

You can also follow the Cheese Channel on YouTube here.