Brides and grooms spend months, sometimes even years planning their wedding day, making sure every last detail is perfect. From the style of the place cards to the colour of the icing on Gran’s homemade cupcakes, everything has to be just so.
As a documentary wedding photographer I am there to tell the story of the wedding day, so it’s only right I should include some of these details in the photographs I give to my clients. At a recent wedding the bride and groom arranged for their guests to each wear a sunflower. I took a picture of the basket carrying the sunflowers before they were handed out and it was a nice shot. A shot that I knew the bride and groom would love because it captured something personal to them. But my job as a documentary wedding photographer was to incorporate the sunflowers within the context of the day. As I mingled amongst the guests before the ceremony I observed the groom’s son holding an unclaimed sunflower in his hand. His expression here is just wonderful and I love the way the adults are gathered reassuringly around him, four generations in one picture.
This is very much a storytelling photograph, a documentary wedding photograph, and it’s exactly this type of image that I seek to capture.
Shot on a Canon 5D with 50mm f/1.2L, Aperture Priority Exposure Mode, 1/4000 sec, f/1.6, 3200 ISO.
Beautiful capture Carter, I love the little details that could almost be unnoticed. For example the lady in blue still holding on to a baby toy, obviously leaving one child momentarily to comfort another who looks worried that there is one flower left… I can just hear the little boy worrying who hasn’t got their flower.
A moment I’m sure the bride and groom will appreciate seeing, the behind the scenes moments that they weren’t privy to on the day.
A wonderful shot, perfect timing and gorgeous light – and will be a moment treasured forever!
Hi Steven. Love it. Your description is bang on. Also nice to see another pro using the original 5d at 3200. Speak to some togs nowadays and they’d have you believe that the original 5d sometimes struggles to take a good picture in daylight.
Hi Steven, that is a great image with beautiful colour…nice processing too. I see you included the Exif information for the geeks among us. I am interested to know your thoughts on your choice of exposure for this image.
Thanks Stephen. I wanted to use a wide aperture for subject separation. I tend to set the ISO once for any given scene, I generally don’t alter it on a shot by shot basis and because parts of this room were extremely dark, the ISO was as high as it was. I do like the tones in high ISO files and I regularly shoot this way even when I don’t *need* to. Digital images can be too clean sometimes and I always add noise to images taken at low ISO’s anyway.
That is what I thought you would say… At the end of the day it is the end result that is important… not really how we get there 🙂