Bec's Yorkshire Wedding

I was asked by Rebecca, a close friend of mine and photographer to be the second photographer for the day at one of her friend's wedding up in Selby, North Yorkshire

I was hired for the day for the shoot  and was paid a nice fee up front for my services

I consider myself to be a good organiser, so had arranged with Rebecca to check out the venues earlier in the day. I pre planned lighting, positioning, weather conditions and checked out all equipment ready for the shooting at 1pm. These checks and precautions are all paramount as to avoid any complications later at the actual wedding.

I checked out the venue of the church well before I arrived in Yorkshire on "Google Maps" on the internet which gave me a good view of the church. From this information I was able to work out certain lighting conditions  and the position of the sun at 1pm on this particular day. I also used  the"street view" in Google which enables you to view and travel along streets and roads which enabled me to build up a picture of the wedding venue

Shown here above is one of my first mistakes, "a one legged best man", even though I was quite pleased with the majority of the results these are just some of the errors that sometimes you don't see in your images. This error was pointed out to me by another photographer, I think it's always best to let another photographer view your work to eliviate these mistakes before print or publication

I was given a brief and shooting list by Rebecca of her requirements for the day which are 

shown detailed below:

Steve to photograph:

The groom and best man:

Getting ready at home

With the wedding car

Arriving at the church

The Church:

Church interior and exterior

Friends arriving at church

The bride and bridesmaids arriving at church

The bride and groom exiting the church

Flowers in the church

The wedding reception venue:

Bride and groom arriving in the wedding car

Groups seated at there tables

Flowers and decorated tables

Cutting of the cake

The first dance

Candid shots of all wedding guests throughout the day

Rebecca to photograph:

Rebecca was to take all of the formal shots of the wedding where the majority  were taken at the  reception venue.The reception had some immaculate gardens which  was the ideal location for the photography

This was my first wedding and what a challenge it was. A red hot day (26C) in brilliant sunshine.One minute full sun a few seconds later full cloud the meter was up and down like a yoyo. We were shooting from 10 in the morning until 9 at night

I used 2 camera's on the day a Canon 7D with a F2.8-17-55 wide angle zoom for most of the shots and a Canon 5D with a F4-70-200 zoom for the close ups. It is absolutely vital that you have at least 2 cameras prepared and ready to shoot on the day

Most of the shots were taken flash using ETTL,adjusting Flash Exposure Compensation to banish the those nasty shadows.

I made a whole lot of mistakes on the day but found this to be a great learning curve. On my next wedding I will be well aware of all the mistakes I made and hopefully produce some much better photography and rectify the things I got wrong

Techniques

Detailed below are some of the techniques that I used on the day to produce the photography

Fillin Flash

The shots above were all taken using fill in flash as the sun was at it's highest point of the day when the wedding started. The harsh sun light above created very harsh shadows underneath people's faces. To rectify this problem I added a small amount of fill in flash to the photo's to take away the shadows from the faces, I used only a small amount of flash, any more would have started to "wash out" the images

I metered first for the ambient light hitting the camera, then slightly underexposed for the shot. Adding a small amount of flash to the under exposed images balances up the light to produce the correct type of exposure

Available Light

The shot below was taken using available light that was streaming through the church windows

I was positioned on a rear balcony at the back of the church. I used a Canod 5D mk11 with a 70-200 L series F4 lens to record the shot. The camera was mounted on a sturdy tripod and I used the largest aperture on the lens which enabled me to let in the maximum amount of light available and to use quite a fast shutter speed to prevent any blurring of the image. Shown below is some of the meta data of the shot captured in photoshop.    

I decided to add another dimension to some of my images by adding a photography technique called  "Coulour Popping", this is a technique that I use regularly in Photoshop. The technique involves making a stack of various layers which are then masked to reveal various colours which are exposed from the underlying layers by removing parts of the mask and letting the colour "pop" through

Another technique that I added to some of the images was "Vignetting", an occurrence that is evident on some photo's which produce a dark encroachment on the edges of an image. This is produced as the light of the image falls off towards hedge of the photo

This is normally attributed to using cheap lenes or tele photo zoom lenses that obstruct the field of view which produce the dark edges unsightly edges on images

However, this type of obstruction on the image can be used creatively to produce a dark atmospheric ambience, when used wisely this produces an added dimension to various images. I have applied a small amount of vignetting to the image above together with some dodging and burning

Taken with ambient light F8 1/125 sec 800 ISO

Shown here are some of the other images of the day. The wedding couple requested a selection of various candid shots of the wedding which would depict the happiness and ambience of their special day