“These photos are glorious! A huge and heartfelt thank you for capturing the day so brilliantly!”
Last month I had the pleasure of photographing the wedding of Andy & Sophia in the stunning grounds of their Gloucestershire family home.
Theirs was a beautifully intimate ceremony of close family and friends in which everything came together just magically: the couple are just lovely and an absolute pleasure to be around, two of life’s real diamonds; the grounds were stunning, bursting with life and colour, guests were radiant and the sky had that wonderful quality of light – what is sometimes referred to as ‘God’s own soft box’ – being uniform and avoiding what can be the challenge of harsh highlight and shadow areas.
I was equipped on the day with my favoured 35mm and 105mm primes on each camera body, allowing me to work quickly and discreetly in any conditions to capture those oh-so-wonderful candid moments that my photography is renowned for.
For the above image, I selected the portrait photographer’s dream lens – the outstanding Nikon 105mm f1.4 ED – and positioned the couple in the opening of the woodland canopy: the focal length of the lens allowed me to give the couple plenty of distance for them to be entirely natural with each other, yet close enough to gently direct them if required. With my photography assistant gently filling the lower shadow areas with a soft silver reflector just out of frame to pick up the canopy light, I was able to balance the lighting to fully illuminate Sophia’s face without the need for an external flash or soft-box: shooting nearly wide open at f1.6, the couple were captured with beautiful detail whilst being separated from the background which was rendered with a beautifully dreamy and almost ethereal quality. So comfortable and lost in such a loving moment with each other, Sophia and Andy made this image just perfect: all I needed to do was to press the shutter and the moment was captured…
