Warwickshire Wedding Photographer Image of the Week - No.3

This week's image is a particular wedding favourite of mine taken last summer. Background - The wedding of Francesca and Simon took place last August in Derbyshire. At this wedding I was 'second shooting' for Cathy of www.oehlersphotography.com. The wedding took place in St. Edmunds Church in Allestree: there was plenty of space and enabled Cathy to plan and think about the best viewpoints. Cathy decided to position herself at the front of the church for most of the service, and I stayed at the rear to have a completely different viewpoint, so we had two angles covered.

Why am I pleased with this image?

Let me explain. This particular wedding was full of emotion, like many others of course, but Francesca and Simon's was especially moving, see previous blog post last summer. Each wedding goes through many little episodes in church, and can be quite rightly serious and joyous as well. Often the Bride has hardly had a chance to see who is in church to help share her happy day. The Groom can sometimes have the odd chat with family and friends before the service, but of course his mind might be elsewhere. One of the first times the Bride and Groom together get to take in their surroundings and see their friends and family, is when they walk down the aisle before leaving the church. This is when they suddenly see familiar faces and just beam away with such excitement. Likewise you can see their closeness after their service. With this image I tried to capture more than Francesca and Simon, by including their friends and family within their church.

Technical Details:  

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Aperture: f3.5

Shutter: 1/100sec

ISO: 6,400

Lens: 24-70 f2.8 L USM at 32mm

Flash: Did not fire

Exposure bias: +0.3 step

This image went through my preferred processing in Adobe Lightroom, ie subtle adjustments to levels and curves, and this time converted into black and white. One note aimed at photographers, last summer I came across some excellent advice. When shooting at high ISO, as this was due to the inside of the church being dark, try to over expose by a minimum of a third of a stop. This will help keep 'noise' down to an acceptable level in the shadows.

One slight risk of displaying the camera technical data on websites is that the purists out there can twiddle their beards and suggest the best technique for shooting this style of photo. So please feel free to leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts. I'm always happy to continue to learn how to shoot better. That said, such events happen at such a fast pace, sometimes one doesn't have time to fiddle with buttons and dials on the camera for the ultimate technical work of art. 

Thanks to Cathy of Oehlers Photography in letting me use this image in my 'Image of the week' series this winter.

Martin