Don’t drown the bride!

I used to believe that photographers should never ask their subjects to do anything that they are not willing to do themselves.   For instance, when I visited Cong a few weeks ago to scout out locations for Colette & Colin’s wedding photographs, and when I looked at a narrow (and damp) ledge over the water on one side of Fisherman’s Cottage and thought to myself “it looks a bit too narrow for me to walk out there”, my instinct was to rule it out as a location.  Afterall, if I wasn’t willing to walk out along it in reasonably sensible shoes, I couldn’t exactly ask a bride in her wedding dress and high-heeled wedding shoes to do so.  No really, I couldn’t.  Could I?

Skip forward to last Sunday and the day of the wedding itself.  The weather forecast looked good – too good even.  Temperatures of 20 degrees (good) and sunny blue skies (actually, for photos, not so good) but neither really transpired.  Instead we had not-too-hot not-too-cold teen temperatures and an overcast sky as a morning mist failed to clear entirely, but it made for perfect conditions for wedding photos at Cong.  That overcast sky made for nice soft even lighting that proves to be very flexible in post-production.

So, perhaps a little bit giddy due to the favourable conditions, I eyed up that ledge once more, telling myself that really it wasn’t that narrow, and so what if it’s a bit damp from the earlier mist.  I’m sure Colette (and Aoife, her sister and bridesmaid), would be fine.  What’s the worst that could happen.  Pat, the videographer, must have been a little bit giddy too because he was all in favour of the idea – in fact, as I thought it he suggested it.  If two of us didn’t see a problem, what could possibly go wrong.

And so we got this:

I have other frames of this scene, but I like this particular frame, taken as the two families arrived from camera left in advance of the family photos behind Cong Abbey, with Aoife and Colin momentarily distracted by what must have been a slight look of horror on each of their mother’s faces.  Meanwhile, at the edge of the ledge the best man Conor is looking very chilled out, but I’m not sure that he really was!

The photograph I prefer is as they made their way back from the ledge (and where the risk of someone falling in was at its greatest) as Conor wonders who’s going to help him.

All’s well that ends well though, and no one did fall in (phew!) although we did stay on safer ground for the rest of the shoot.  We could have spent hours around Cong Abbey and the Fisherman’s Cottage, but there was a reception in Lisloughrey Lodge to go to.  Not before a quick detour to one last waterside location, though, where I found myself an assistant.  More on that tomorrow.