As a Toronto wedding photographer, I always look for mutually beneficial collaborations with wedding venues. King Edward Hotel has been one of the most trustworthy and pleasant business partners with whom I have collaborated. Photographing weddings at King Eddie is always a pleasure for a few reasons. First, the five-star hotel boasts magnificently designed interiors, built for royalty. Among the most sought after features, I can list the Crystal Ballroom, the 5000 ft.² banquet hall that was the pride of Toronto at the beginning of the 20th century. King Edward Hotel invested over $40 million in renovating the Crystal Ballroom, which reopened in 2017.
Unfortunately, when I photographed this wedding, the Crystal Ballroom were still being renovated, and we could not even photograph there. However my bride and groom want to take a lot of candid photos around King Eddie starting with the unveiling which occurred minutes from the hotel in the Courthouse Square. After that, we roamed the streets around the five-star hotel in the couple took a few photos next to Tom Jones steak house, an establishment located literally across from King Eddie. Given that the bride and groom spent a few minutes at an outdoor table, I had the opportunity to take a few candid pictures of them before we headed back to the hotel for the ceremony of signing the ketubah in the Knightsbridge room, followed by the wedding ceremony that took place in the Vanity Fair banquet hall.
This environmental portrait of the bride and groom showcases them sitting at a table and sharing an intimate moment. The weather was perfect on this August day, and the sunlight was bouncing into the surrounding buildings giving us a defused, even, soft, splendid light, a Toronto wedding photographer's dream light. That direction and quality of light can only be found in downtown where the buildings are so tall that the sun does not hit the subjects directly.
To capture both the bride and groom and the surroundings, I used my 35 mm 1.4 lens shot at f4. Because the quality of light was good, I did not employ any other artificial light source.
The colours that appear in this image form two of the most popular colour schemes: blue and orange on the one hand, red and green on the other hand.
From a composition standpoint, this is a symmetrical image with a certain rhythm to it. The intense green of the first plant contrasts with the blond bride dressed in a white wedding gown. Immediately next to her, the groom is dressed in a blue suit, my which contrasts with his wife's white dress. Immediately to his right in the frame, the yellow sign provides an another highlight followed by a dark plant. This succession of highlights and darks gives the image rhythm and makes it unique.
As usually, when analysing the picture, I'm not only looking at its strengths but also at its flaws. Unfortunately, right behind the left plant, there is black eavestrough which I find distracting.
In terms of post processing, this image did not undergo any complicated operations. I only increase the vibrancy of the colours, and of course, colour corrected it.
Location: The Omni King Edward Hotel, King Street East, Toronto, ON, Canada.
