The theme for Konstantinos' christening, was about a gingerbread house with four walls, a chimney, and a door, decorated on the outside but empty within, waiting for someone to move in and fill it with stories. That's what this day was, the beginning of the stories that would fill the house.

The christening took place at Agios Georgios in Karytsi, an 11th-century church at the heart of Athens' historic shopping district, almost destroyed during the 1821 revolution and rebuilt between 1845 and 1849. Its carved wood iconostasis, marble, and hand-painted hagiography give the interior a quiet, layered sense of history.Inside, the church stays dark, with light entering only through the small circular stained-glass windows in the dome, falling in narrow shafts across the room. We used that light for the family portraits and a group photograph of the attendants, an image that reads closer to a Renaissance painting than a photograph. Afterward, we photographed a portrait session outside the Ilisian, formerly the Hilton, using the building's architecture as a backdrop in the center of the city.

There's no responsibility quite like being trusted to photograph a child's christening. Children are unpredictable in the best way, and we stay alert for the moments that would otherwise be missed, a reflection caught in the eyes, an expression that passes in a second. Parents often assume they'll remember every detail of the day, but memory fades as children grow and new milestones take over. Photographs become the bridge back to that day, carrying the same familiar eyes and expressions forward in time. Finding the right church also meant finding a priest willing to include godparents in a civil partnership rather than a church marriage, a restriction some parishes still enforce. It took looking beyond the first few churches, but they found one willing to make it work, and that mattered as much to us as it did to them.

For more of the studio's christening work, visit our christening photography page.