Here's another picture that doesn't necessarily say "wedding" immediately. Taken at dusk, I wanted to show the location using the illuminated keep of Cardiff Castle as the main subject, but still needed somebody in the picture to make it interesting. It was quite cold and all the guest were inside, so I had to wait a while for these three to go for a walk and was lucky to also get the birds flying across the frame. Even better that the little girl in the foreground is pointing up at one of them. The smallest things can take a photo from OK to great.
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When you first caught sight of this picture did you see it as the woman on the left lifting the man next to her by his jacket?
I can't help seeing it whenever I look at this picture quickly. I'm not going to pretend that I saw it at the time and shot it intentionally. Maybe it registered subconsciously and caused me to release the shutter at that precise moment. But if I'm being honest it was probably just a happy accident. I did however, see it straight away when I was later editing the day's images and making my selects.
Street photography relies on this kind of trick quite a lot. And I often wonder how many famous photos from the masters of the genre were intentional and how many were discovered later, when looking through the contact sheets.
Bouncy castles make for great pictures and this one was no exception. I've got some great, funny pictures of the bride and groom, and their guests bouncing around, falling over and generally having a good time. I like this shot too though, rather than being in close with a wide angle lens for an action shot, I stepped right back and shot it on a longer lens. This is the view that the guests up at the marquee had of the bouncy castle. It shows a bit more of the location. And its not an accident that, even though she's really small in the frame, your eye is drawn straight to the bride, as she steps on for another bounce.
I've written before about how some wedding pictures don't necessarily look like wedding pictures. For me its just not necessary for every picture to include the bride or groom, or flowers, or bridesmaids, or rings or table settings. Sometimes the best pictures happen away from the "action".
I have no idea what this girl was trying to achieve. She was in a world of her own, methodically picking up a chair from the back of the line, carrying it to the front (with some diffculty), placing it in line and then repeating - over and over again.
I think I watched her do it at least 10 times. I had to wait until she'd done it enough times that were enough chairs to fill the frame, and that when she got to the front of the line she wasn't obscured by the strapping that runs through the middle of the picture.
It was a case of watching what was happening, pre-visualising what the picture would look like, and then waiting for the right moment to capture it.
There's no getting away from it - everyone has some kind of camera at weddings these days. Whether its the keen amateur with the SLR kit or the gran with her camera phone, its par for the course that people will be competing for the best position when photo opportunities arise.
As the official photographer for the day, I could "pull rank" and ask people to move out of the way, stand at the front and get a picture, whilst annoying all the guests that were trying to get theirs.
But I don't. I let the guests get on with it and I try to stay out of their way when possible. Why shouldn't they get the chance to take some pictures too?
This picture is a perfect example. We were all crammed into the small vestry at the chapel where tea and cakes were being served - lots of people in not a lot of space. Instead of elbowing my way to the front of the crowd just to get a fairly dull picture of Aoife and her bridesmaid smiling at the camera, I used the guests as part of the frame. Standing on a bench behind them gave me this unusual angle - much more visually interesting and telling the story of the day without disrupting it.
This way everyone's happy - the guests get their pictures, and I get the interesting, unusual and storytelling pictures that I'm being paid for.