Susan & Peter had a lovely wedding despite the constant rain and the darkness of the day making it a tricky one to photograph. Susan was getting ready at The Balmoral Hotel where I joined her for a short spell before heading to St Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church on Belford Road. The church was beautiful, built in wood and I was told it had been imported from Austria…very impressive. Wedding Photographer Kim Gates had agreed to spend an hour with Craig and his friends getting ready at the house.
The ceremony at the church proved awkward to photograph in on such a dark day but with the very accommodating priest I was still able to capture some lovely pictures of the ceremony, even if the planned celebrations outside the church were cut short because of the downpour (which didn’t seem to effect the couple at all!).
Arriving at The Edinburgh College Of Physicians on Queen Street we had decided to drop straight into some portraits and group shots while we waited for the other guests to arrive by coach. The ERCP has some amazing rooms and atmospheric backdrops for photographs so the planned venture into Queen Street Gardens for photographs wasn’t missed.
As a short days shooting, all that was left was a brief interlude photographing the wedding drinks reception before guests were called to dinner in the spectacular dinning hall and our Bride & Groom made their entrance ready for a well deserved wedding breakfast. Hopefully the evening entertainment went just as well after I had left and Peter & Susan will have a long and happy married life together!
Taking photographs on dark days (all too common in Scotland…and not just the winter weddings) can cause a problem with candid photography. All too often, apart from it just being too dark to get the optimum settings on your camera, the light indoors coming from yellow, tungsten light, blueish and horribly unflattering green strip light can be the same strength as the natural light coming in the window.
That means that in these mixed light situations the original photograph off the camera can show a rainbow of different colour casts on your subject which seems unnatural.
To counter this, I’ve used a mixture of stylising Photoshop actions that reduce the dominant colours and add a vintage, warm feel to the pictures. I’ve done that, in this case, in a more heavy handed way than I might normally to counter this mixed colour cast. I’ve also opted to make some of the pictures black and white with a technique that emulates an old black and white film, keeping the warmth and organic feel of the photographs but eliminating the variety of distracting rainbow colours the different light sources cause.
It’s a technique which works well and produces a much more appealing set of pictures than the ones that would result from my regular technique.
Hope you agree!
Paul
Really like the vintage feel you have created in these images, the wedding party look very elegant and creates a more unusual look to the venue.
Amazing work & very nicely edited! Love this wedding!