It’s back to reality for me today as a “staycation” that took me to Cork and Wexford over the last 11 days comes to an end. Book-ending the holiday were two weddings – Sinead & Shay’s the week before last in Cork where I was a guest, and Diane & Kevin’s last Friday in Dun Laoghaire, where I was both a guest and (first and foremost) official photographer. The way the day ran I ended up getting to spend more time than I usually do with the groom and his groomsmen on the morning of the wedding, which allowed for photographs in a few different settings.
Kevin is a friend, former colleague and current tag rugby team mate of mine, and was happy for me to snap away as much as I felt I needed to. I had promised him and Diane that most of my photography during the day would be unobtrusive, save for the required family portraits and more formal shots after the wedding, although even these were to be kept brief. With some time to spare before heading for the bride’s house, I first caught up with the groom at the hotel in Dun Laoghaire where he and his family were staying, and where the reception was later to be held.
We completed a round of family photos inside and outside the hotel and there was just about time to bring Kevin and his groomsmen (and brothers) Ciaran and Paul across the road to the church, with this photo in mind. It’s the first time I’ve tried this particular pose, and quite like it as a (little bit cheesy) way of crafting a photograph of the groom’s party. It works well with three, but has potential to be expanded for more groomsmen also.
Compositionally it is built around a mixture of symmetry and geometry. The centered composition of the groom and the mirrored composition of the background are complementary, while the triangle formed by the three subjects’ heads is mirrored by that formed by their hands. People often don’t know what to do with their hands in photographs, and the pews made for easy props on which to rest them.
There are things I would change about this particular capture if I was to revisit it – I would move Ciaran, on the right of the frame, slightly further to the right, and I would ask Paul on the left to relax the clasp of his hands a little.
A benefit of doing this shot in this particular church was the availabilty of natural light that existed. I took this wide open (f/2.8 – which suited artistically as I wanted Ciaran and Paul to fall out of focus) at an ISO of 400 (quite low for a church) and still managed to use a shutter speed of 1/50s, which at 52mm focal length kept me at a comfortable hand-holding speed. In a darker church I’d have had to increase the ISO, or considered using flash. Getting a flash-lit version of this shot looking well in a short space of time would be challenging – particularly because the distance between the subjects and the camera means an on-camera-flash-lit shot would be unlikely to work.
For this church though, the available-light shot is perfect, and there’s a lovely quality to the light too, particularly in the way it gives a wrap-around rim light to the main subject.
Before this photo goes into an album there’s a little bit of further post-processing to be done, including straightening it and lifting the shadows in the main subject’s eyes; the version you see here is not straight from the camera, but has just gone through a batch processing step that I apply to most of my wedding imagery as a first cut for the slideshow. But the light and the posing have given me a nice image to work with.
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