I always enjoy photographing a wedding at Bryngarw House in South Wales. Manor houses and castles are an environment where I do my best work, and I would very much like to be a barn wedding photographer also, so if you're having one of these, let me know I would love to help!
To some brides, one of the most important elements of a wedding day isn't the people or the love or even the dress. It's the shoes! Naturally I joke here, but on a wedding day, sometimes a bride is wearing shoes that have a price tag that is far beyond what they would normally wear. And, if this is the case its definitely something that I'm not going to want to miss when rounding off the coverage of the day.
I usually start a day around 90 minutes before the ceremony if the prep is on site, or 90 minutes before the bride leaves to travel to the ceremony. This timescale is more than enough, as by the time I get there, hair and make-up are pretty much finished. I sometimes get requests to start much earlier, and my response is to educate my client that they seriously do not want pictures of themselves without make-up, and with hair looking less than glamorous.
Adding to this, I also spend a good 15-20 minutes at the start of the day warming up my creative eye with some inanimate objects. Namely the engagement ring, the wedding dress and the shoes. I like to capture these details in as much of an artistic way as possible. The bridal prep room was very busy, so there was limited scope there. We came down to the bottom of the stairs and used the light coming in from the main doors, then to add to the artistic effect, I shot through the spindles of the staircase with my trustee Nikon 85mm 1.4.
The shoes juxtaposed against the love letters makes it a little more interesting as well. I bet you never thought that this much effort went into a picture of some shoes did you?
Location: Brynmenyn, Bridgend CF32 8UU.