As a documentary wedding photographer I pride myself on my total lack of interference on the day. Rather than controlling the situations to suit my idea of what any particular wedding might be, I’m looking to use what I see before me and work with a scene to capture the very real moments. I enjoy this part of my style and find it both challenging and rewarding. When it comes to photographing the wedding speeches we wedding photographers sometimes find ourselves at the mercy of the gods, with the top table often positioned in less than ideal locations. At this recent wedding in the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich there was no such problem. Just look at that backdrop!

I framed this shot to include some of the incredible wall behind, keeping a line leading from the groom’s mother on the left down to the bride’s mother on the right. The table lights, whilst utterly beautiful, did pose a challenge in so much as they obscured faces from certain angles. I certainly wasn’t about to creep up to the table and move them so it was a case of finding the right focal length, the right position and then waiting for everything to fall into place. As the speech was being read, the bride’s father (who was previously looking down) turned towards the speaker. This allowed to me to catch a glimpse of his face between the candles. The bride and groom smiled and I took my picture.

For photographers: This was shot on a Canon 5D Mk3 at 6400 ISO and 1/180s with the Canon 85mm lens at f/4.