Before we entered Lisloughrey Lodge, where Colette and Colin were having their wedding reception on Sunday, and after our Cong-based photoshoot, we took a detour to the waterfront just beyond the entrance to the hotel in order to capture what I hoped would be a photograph of the two of them on a jetty overlooking the water. This photo had been a last minute idea after a browse of Lisloughrey’s website the evening before the wedding, and so I hadn’t had a chance to scout out the exact location. The videographer, Pat, had the same location in mind so together we set off with the bride and groom in search of the jetty. We didn’t quite find it, but we still found a photograph. And to find the photograph I had to find a VAL. A what now?
A VAL is photo-nerd speak for a voice-activated light stand, which is itself photo-nerd speak for “someone who holds a flash off the camera and points it where you ask them to point it”. I found my VAL in the form of Colette and Colin’s chauffeur, who was waiting patiently for us to take this last photo so he could finish his working day.
In a way chauffeurs are the unsung heros of wedding photography as they, in my experience at least, do a great job of getting the bride and groom from church to photo location to hotel, all in good spirits, and wait without grumble for how ever many photos the bride and groom wish to have taken. And on Sunday the chauffeur (who’s name I didn’t get, which was bad form on my part) was happy to play the role of photographer’s assistant as a VAL. Or as he liked to call it, a flasher.
The idea of this photo is to cheat the time of day – it was taken about 4.45pm, but is lit to look later. Colette and Colin had requested a night time photo of them in the hotel doorway, which we would later get, but I knew that the timings on the day didn’t allow for a dusk-time shot as they would be in the middle of their dinner when the ambient light was at dusky levels, so I cheated by deliberately underexposing the ambient light in this photo so as to create that dusk-time look.
The light on the bride and groom is as straight forward as off-camera flash gets – one SB-800, with a CTO diffuser – not really to soften it, but to gel it tungsten – held by my glamourous assistant at camera right (as you can tell from the shadow of the groom’s legs). The tungsten gel matches the tungsten white balance I had dialled into my camera, and gives me that blue tone in the background which I have grown to like using for shots like this.
The remote flash is triggered using Nikon’s wireless CLS which prompted me to remind the VAL to keep the sensor on the SB-800 from being obstructed, and as it usually does, the remote flash fired each time I needed it to.
The power is set manually, and we ended up at 1/8th power with the aperture/ISO combination I needed to underexpose the ambient light at my max sync speed of 1/250s.
I really like the shot – even if it wasn’t the location I had in mind initially. I’m since led to understand that the jetty I sought is actually on the grounds of Ashford Castle, and so was inaccessible to us, as we didn’t have permission to shoot there.
This photo at least has Lisloughrey in the background, which is where we headed straight after this shot so that the bride and groom could join their guests for an evening of celebration.
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