Lawrence & Kelly
A lovely all in one venue set in the heart of Rochford near Southend.
The day started well with very fine weather, blue skies with broken puffy clouds and from the couple’s point of view a perfect day, from my point of view, I was looking out for the bright sunlight and shaded areas because as all photographers know direct sunlight is a killer to us.
First shots were Kelly getting ready for her wedding accompanied by her daughter for support, a bedroom in the hotel with no natural light as to speak of and horrible brown walls, set up was d700, 24-70 and sb910, manual meter reading and bounce the flash off the ceiling minus two stops, couple of test shots and we were off.
Bridal completed on to see the guests arrive, by this time the sun was breaking through in strength and with no cloud cover I had to be very careful of sunspots on faces and this was where the sunny 16 rule came into play albeit in a modified form, varying between 1/400 – 1/500 sec at f8/f11 with high-speed sync on the flash.
Guests have done back to the arrival of the bride who looked stunning in her dress although a little nervous and by the time of reaching the alter was in full-blown tears. Ceremony shots completed and signing of the register of which we got really excellent images.
The confetti shots I knew may be a problem as little or no shade and it was very sunny outside now by this time and I knew I would have to seriously judge the right aperture and shutter speed, full manual 1/640 ISO 500 between f8 and 11 and a bit of strategic positioning to offset the direct sunlight as much as possible, and the shots turned out well with just a few shots burnt out the majority of the key confetti shots turned out well, with the informal post-wedding gathering in the garden we were able to position people under trees and use fill flash to bring out the shadows at minimal power and as with the formal group shots the same again fill flash minus two stops and great fun was had by all in getting the formal and informal jokey shots. little did I know why were guests asking me what I was going to do with the images afterwards? , and found out that most of the Charlton football team were at the wedding and were afraid I was going to sell the images to a tabloid, I assured them that this would not happen as I have no interest in football and wouldn’t be able to tell one famous footballer from bugs bunny which helped put everyone at ease and assured everyone the images would only be available on the couples wedding gallery ( mind you I did look up the faces on Google images afterwards). I had hoped to be able to use off-camera flash but with the speed of the day this would not happen and so opted for a rogue large flash bender and diffuser mounted on Nikon sb910 on camera.
Wedding breakfast and speeches completed, the evening party went very well and the booze really started to flow and as this lot were quite buzzy I knew the evening do would be full of characters and lots of fun to be had with lots of random natural images and a few quickies posed, as it was quite dark on the dance floor settings were d700 24-70 iso 1250 100 f4 with bounce flash off white ceilings and wall at minus 1 stop.
And so a wonderful wedding with a very outgoing crowd, bride and bridegroom which added to the atmosphere, decent weather and lots of excellent images, back home to base loaded into LR5 catalogue backed up to hard drive and secondary hard drive and so the process begins…..till next time.
