The happy couple were married in All Saints Church in Catherington, which was a brilliant venue with loads of space outside and a very pretty church to photograph as well.http://www.allsaintscatherington.co.uk/
They both had a really good eye for the look of the day and I did my best to record a mixture of the wedding details and the atmosphere of the day.
It was the reason behind buying an Alpha 700 and the Sigma 24-70 EX DG finally proved it's worth. They're a great match-up if you're looking for reliable kit and pictures taken outside were tack sharp. Indoors, the fast f2.8 lens and decent iso were very useful as I wasn't able to use the flash during the service. Inside a big church with few reflective surfaces the flash could have resulted in fairly soulless photos anyway. I can handhold down to about an 1/8 second with 'Super Steady Shot' anyway and combining some long exposures with faster high iso shots got the ones I needed.
They had great flowers for the day and used a florist who also works for the church and did the flowers for the service as well. It's always important to get some good pictures of the flowers, they can be one of the big expenses of the day, but I wanted to make sure I recorded them individually as they knew the florist quite well (the groom's mother was the vicar of the church!).
The shoes were Rainbow Shoes [http://www.rainbowclub.co.uk/] and very well colour matched to the bridesmaid's dresses. It was a good colour for the bridesmaids as well!
I've often worked as an second photographer so I'm used to taking the 'less-stressful' photos such as the details and guests laughing and joking around. Getting photos such as the one above involved a lot more running backwards than I expected! As a picture though, I'm very happy with it, it had just started to drizzle a little bit so the light had dropped of and I was worried that it would come out dark. Thankfully, because I was shooting on manual, the shutter speed stayed quick and the camera coped very well.
There were a few minutes at the Groom's house but we didn't have very long until he was needed at the church, there was enough time to head into the garden and try a few different group photos. The one above was the most successful out of a few fun photos.
It was great to take some photos of Camilla and Simon away from the guests, we went for a short walk around the churchyard and took some pictures around the side of the church but it's the picture above I'm most fond of. Pictures taken whilst walking can often look unnatural, people spend more off balance than you would expect! They look really relaxed and I think I got a good angle.
Finally on to the confetti photos, always very tricky to get looking natural and relaxed but luckily, as well as the weather turning up trumps, they had more confetti than I've seen at any wedding yet! The photo above shows why I like to shoot in raw, I was on manual and as I walked backwards into a porch it became dark and the photos off the camera looked too dark to use. With an exposure boost in Lightroom it turned out well and turned into one of my favourite photos.
The whole day had an excellent atmosphere and it was an honour to be part of the event, this made getting pictures of the guests and family enjoying themselves so much easier because everyone was having such a good time.
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