Brian & Chris' Wedding

In a word, last Friday was 'Superb'. I was over at the Frimley Hall Hotel, Camberley, Surrey photographing the Wedding/Civil Partnership of Brian Whyte & Chris Rivett. The weather was just incredible; beautiful clear blue skies and plenty of sun and we couldn't have wished for a better bunch of people.


Being Brian & Chris' Photographer was a huge honour; to me it meant a heck of alot to be asked to capture their Civil Partnership for a whole host of reasons, some that maybe to them weren't relevant or they'd even considered.


Anyone with a camera can photograph two people together, but to photograph an emotion, a connection between those people is something else. It was incredibly important to me to get this right. Brian and Chris are life partners, lovers, and it was vital that I could portray this in their photographs rather than them just showing two men stood together.

I blogged earlier about their 'pre wedding / engagement' shoot and this to me proved invaluable. Maybe I didn't need to show this to the guys, but I felt I need them to see that I wanted to photograph them as 'lovers' and that they shouldn't hold back when it came to showing their feelings towards each other.


It wasn't long at all into the 'shoot' that everyone relaxed to the point where we were taking more than portraits but were photographing that 'connection' between two people who have such strong feelings for each other that they're prepared to commit for life.



Brian & Chris' Thank You so much for asking me to be part of your Big Day; a day packed with emotion that I'll never forget.

Technical:
As with all Weddings when it comes to photography, being organised is vitally important, because without it time will literally fly by and before you know it, the day is coming to a close and you've not got the shots you need.


On this particular occasion for my lighting set up I decided to use a Nikon SB800 Flash and Tri Grip Diffuser rather than a shoot thru umbrella and light stand; main reason being it's portability and speed in setting up a shot. All that was needed was for me to position Brian & Chris how I wanted them in each shot, and then get my good friend Dave Gurnhill who was helping me on this day, to step in with the SB800 and Tri Grip. Obviously the closer in he brought the Tri Grip the softer the light, so long as the flash was held far enough back to allow the light from it to spread onto it's surface. I opted to use the Nikon CLS (Creative Lighting System) to trigger the SB800 so to do so I put another flash on my D3's hotshoe and set it to Master. I could have maybe opted to use the SU-800 controller but as we were working in bright sunlight I didn't want to risk it not triggering. Using the CLS allowed for quick adjustments of the ambient light and flash power from the camera itself rather than having to shout out to Dave any adjustments that I needed, and so long as the Infra Red 'eye' on the flash was pointing in my general direction, we were 'Good to Go'.

More Later ;o)