Rachel and Joe got married at one of my favourite wedding venues - Bredenbury Court Barns in Herefordshire. I could wax lyrical about how nice the light is in the Orangery (which it is) and how happy the bride and groom look (which they do) but I've sang Bredenbury's praises non-stop on my website for 6 years and instead I'm going to tell you a story (continued below...)
So it was the evening, it had gone dark, the bride and groom had done their first dance and before I left to go home I thought I'd do something a bit magical with some smoke bombs I had remaining. There's a shot I enjoy taking at Bredenbury with the band stand or pergola or whatever it's called - the little hut in on the lawn. Sometimes I like to jazz it up with some smoke in the background, to make it pop that little bit extra. I had everything set up and ready to go, and thought I'd tell the DJ that I was going to borrow the couple for 10 minutes, in case he was going to wonder where they had gone. 'I'm going to take the couple outside for 10 minutes for a photo before I go home' is what I said to the DJ. What the DJ heard was 'I'm going to take the bride and groom outside for some photos, please get all of the guests to line up at the big window and watch, just to really ramp the pressure up me.' So there I was, outside, in the dark with the bride and groom, about to pop some smoke grenades. It's chaos. The smoke might not work, it might be too windy, the wind might be in the wrong direction, the focus on the camera might fail and/or the flashes don't trigger. There's enough to worry about without 80 people watching you. The photo went fine, but I had some explaining to do. Someone had seen the smoke and shouted 'it's a gender reveal!' (the bride being a couple of months pregnant) - you can imagine their shock when I used green smoke.
Location: Bredenbury Court Barns .
Keywords: Bredenbury Court Barn Weddings (53), Pure documentary wedding photography (29).