Hello there,
Just a quick update this week,
On Sunday I was photographing the wedding of Katie and Martyn at the beautiful Dumbleton Hall Hotel in Gloucestershire, everything was perfect apart from the weather, but the couple were Troopers in more ways than one, and sucked it up and ventured outside with me in the pouring rain to get some amazing photos.
The new toy to which I am referring is a new light, those of you who know and follow me will already be aware that I pretty much always work with an assistant / 2nd shooter who helps me create the signature images with the aid of vairous lighting techniques, well this weekend I had a new toy – Its a BIG light panel – hundreds and hundreds of tiny daylight balanced led bulbs in a long thin panel – Clare bless her spent 1/2 they day with this thing and at one stage she was balanced on an end table 6 foot up in the air giving me a downwards direction of light – the result was this photo, taken in the entrance way to Dumbleton Hall just before we left for the night, I had seen the light sconses ???? and pondered what I could do with them, well I am very happy with the results.
by moving 10 feet inside the entrance way and having Clare come back down to earth, we managed to pull off this look
But back to the couple, so what do I mean when I say it was wet and raining, well the ground was as soggy as hell, the rain was coming down fairly hard and it was windy, but as the couple said (They didnt hire me for my devastatingly good looks) they wanted something special, so we made a deal, if they gave me 10 minutes in the rain, I would get them some images that looked great and in the years to come, you would never be able to tell it was raining.
So here is a bit of an outtake photos
if you look at the water in the background you can see the as forrest gump would say – Big Fat raindrops hitting the water, Clare is holding up the all important dress while the couple get into position, The umbrella to the right is the one I was carrying over the couple as we talked to the spot and the bride is wearing my coat – yep, I got wet !!!!! – but as Dan Dan the fireman used to say all the time, Your Skin Is WaterProof !!!
So we trecked off the spot chosen and then carefully positioned the dress on the ground, just avoiding the duck poop – had the couple assume the pose and snapped a few photos, – with slower shutter speeds you manage to hide the rain and bring out all the beautiful colours, and end up with photos that look like this.
The we moved to the fire escape at the hotel, I liked this feature of the hotel on the old conservatory the very first time I saw the venue, so had wanted a picture or 2 on there, again we explained very carefully what we wanted and how the photo would look, Katie and Martyn were up for it so up the went, 1/2 way up the fire escape in the rain, you should have seen the 4 of us trying to squeeze Katie and her dress up the steps, it was pretty fun !
The floor is the only give away that its actually raining here.
Taking photos in the rain is one of the reasons I LOVE using Nikon equipment, my cameras are water sealed and can stand up all day long to being used in the rain – the lenses have special o ring seals on them that when attached to the body stop water getting in, its another reason I carry 2 cameras with me, the fire escape photo was taken on the Nikon 70-200 VR2 lens while the 2 wider angle shots were taken using the Nikon 16-35mm VR F4 lens – I didnt need to swap lenses as I had configured them before we went outside, I simply picked the right camera & lens combination to grab the shots I wanted.
Right, one more photos featuring my new toy, I LOVE this light,
As you will know I LOVE wedding dress shots, and we struggled a little to find a location for the photo of the wedding dress, after Clare and I looked around for a good while, we decided together there was only one spot to photograph the dress at, it was too wet to even suggest taking it outside (as you know I LOVE to do) so it was in the living room, in the window. I wanted the light to look natural but we were shooting up against a very strong back light, so again using the Nikon 16-35mm and with Clare JUST out of shot, she lit up the whole of the dress and let a little light spill onto Katie – I LOVE the result.
Hope you have enjoyed this sneak peek – many many many thanks to Martyn and Katie for choosing us to be a part of their big day – it was such an honor shooting the wedding and as a military brat myself, I am always in awe of the men and women who serve our country and its such a joy to shoot the weddings of our heros !
ciao for now
dp
P.S.
This was my last wedding for 2012 and I wanted to thank from the bottom of my heart Clare, Caroline, Mark, Tom and Paul G and Simon R for helping me out this hear, for second shooting, for assisting and putting up with me. I really could not do what I do without the help of my fantastic assistants and fellow photographers – thank you one and all – A special thanks to Clare who has been my number 1 assistant and has been by my side for much of the year, who has cooked me bacon butties, fetched my drinks, indulged my whims, climbed walls, trees, on top of furniture, moved tens of thousands of pounds of wedding dresses, who has taken amazing photos for me, driven me around and generally looked after me – You are a star, thanks so very much.
P.P.S - A special hello to best bird, I will be interested to see if you actually read this bit
