U Got The Love - 'Classics' Ali & Dan photo - Tavistock wedding

This is the first of a series of ‘U Got The Love’ classic wedding photos; where I go into some depth about how the picture came about and some further thoughts.

Ali & Dan, from my very first wedding.

Ali & Dan’s wedding in 2013 was the first wedding was the very first commission on my journey to be Devon wedding photographer. They asked a friend to do it… the friend was me… it’s not something I would ever advise! *

Being a professional wedding photographer comes with so many pressures and really is best left to the professionals. Having said that, where do we start if we want to have a go? My advice would be to shadow someone or try for an assistant, second photographer position.

*The caveat here is that Dan studied BA Photography at Bournemouth, and he knew that I knew my way around a camera. I was teaching at London Met at the time, and whilst I’d never photographed a wedding, I thought I’d be okay… ‘the rest’, as they say, ‘is history’…

The photo >

The wedding took place at Brown’s in Tavistock, Devon. (not sure what’s there now).

This pic of the newlyweds on the dance floor smiling and holding one another’s hands is typical of my style; often quietly meandering in an effort to cover the angles, or in this particular case, getting amongst it on the dance floor. (One of my fave aspects of the day!!) It’s a photo that would never have come about in the age analogue film as I don’t think I’d dare to have been so speculative and carefree.

Serendipity is such a great ally; especially when you know your camera* is set up properly and you know you can shoot ad hoc bursts. That is one of the many advantages of digital; by taking an abundance of photos you can throw your net out, it’s more than likely you’ll catch a good’n! It’s not a photo you can plan, more reactionary and immersive. Though there is a LOT to be said for the kind of intuition one hones after doing it with many years of practice.

Applying the Capa** sentiment, ‘If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough’, which I take to mean not solely regarding the physical proximity, I’m never really ‘at’ a wedding so to speak; more so that I'm part of the wedding! Enjoying and soaking it up in my role as a participant observer and getting close. I don’t mean physically – though sometimes that’s the case – but emotionally invested.

*camera settings will feature in a future post.

** Robert Capa (1913-1954) was a very famous war photographer / photojournalist. (the photo of the soldier shot on the hill 1936, is probably his most well-known).

Technical details >

Personally, I'm never overly fussed about lens and camera technical details but for those that are, here are some deets + some thoughts about post-production and so on…

-        Canon EOS 600D

-        Flash did fire / (the camera’s flash)

-        ISO 400

-        Lens – EF-S18-55mm

-        1/60 at f3.5

With regards postproduction, I've given it some ‘U Got The Love’ post-production love and the image has been cropped, as seen in the previous slide (slide 5), which along some heavy vignetting helps accentuate the couple as the central aspect of the photo. The uncropped image does ‘work’ and provides a little more context, but I think the tighter crop just pips it, if I had to choose between the two.

Also, the saturation of the red in the top right has been reduced to tame it’ll a little… (after all, colour is super important and such an integral part of the psychology of our reading of an image).

Thanks for reading!

Andy :) x