Catherine and Dean’s wedding on Saturday started with a ceremony in the Unitarian Church on St. Stephen’s Green. Their service really was very nice, punctuated by musical contributions from family and friends, meaningful readings, and even a contribution by a school choir and the organ, conducted by the father of the bride. In many ways it reminded me of my own wedding ceremony.
A lovely ceremony then, in a venue that makes for a nice setting, albeit photographically quite a difficult one. Firstly it is dark – normal for many churches, but more so here due to the neighbouring buildings which overshadow it. Darkness can be handled with the use of flash (for the bride’s arrival) and the use of high ISOs and wide apertures for the rest of the ceremony.
Another quirk is the lack of any altar, and the fact that the bride and groom, as a result, end up sitting relatively close to the end wall. This means getting in very close to get any wide angle shots of the bride and groom with their guests behind, but it’s all a matter of timing and of choosing the right moment to move in close.
What difficulties the interior presents are balanced by the lovely doorway and entrance hall, from which steps lead up to the church. After Catherine and Dean exited the church, their guests came down those steps to greet them and that area of the church made for a nice backdrop for photographs of that part of the day. The addition of bubbles was wonderful for the photographs and this shot – showing them sharing a joke as they prepare to greet their guests – is one of my favourites from the day, partly because of the bubbles in it.
Later in the day Fran, the father of the bride, required two shots from me for inclusion in a very funny slideshow that he presented during his speech. The brief was to supply two shots of them outside the church, the first for inclusion in the middle of the slideshow to take it up to the present day, the other to stay on screen for the rest of the speeches.
While dinner was being served I pulled this image off the memory cards and processed it quickly for inclusion as the first of those shots. During the speech its appearance on screen got a great reaction from the guests and, I believe, prompted a few tears from the bride. While no one wants to make a bride cry on her wedding day, I’m pretty sure those were happy tears and they suggested this particular shot was a good one to chose for the slideshow.
Recent Comments