This image of the bride and groom walking on Cherry Beach is one of my most requested wedding pictures by the brides getting married close to the beach or by those having a destination wedding.
This image is strikingly simple, depicting of the bride and groom walking towards Lake Ontario. In the background, we can see the few yachts and the cloudy sky.
Before I started my career as a Toronto wedding photographer, I was always placing the horizon line in the middle of the frame. Having studied the rules of composition, I do things differently now. For example, in this image, the horizon line is placed close to the top of the frame to emphasise the subjects (the bride and groom). Another interesting composition element is the triangle formed by the two yachts close to the horizon line and the newlywed couple. According to the rule of odds, odd numbers of subjects (two boats and the couple) are more appealing than even groups. Also, what makes this image compelling is the implied diagonal on which the couple is walking from the bottom left to the top right. Even more, in the foreground, the beach has a lot of texture given by the sand and rocks on Cherry Beach. This wedding photo also has depth. In the foreground, we have the couple, in the middle ground a fallen tree, and in the background the floating yachts and the picture-perfect sky.
I took this shot during the wedding day portrait session of a wedding I did at King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto. This couple was not a big fan of a posed pictures, so I gave them loose directions on where to walk, and they did the rest.
I remember this summer King Edward wedding as if it was yesterday. The bride and groom scheduled the wedding portraits at noon, which always poses a challenge for a wedding photographer. Also, Cherry Beach is a fairly busy wedding photography location, and we had to wait a few times to take our shots.
For this wedding picture, I applied a black and white processing. I did that because the colour of the yachts in the background was distracting and the vessels were competing with the main subjects of this photo, the bride and groom. Despite the fact we are calling monochrome pictures black and white, there are essentially composed of shades of grey. As a side note, the human eye can distinguish about 500 tones of grey. As a Toronto wedding photographer, I learned that the psychology of colours is critical in wedding photography. From a psychological standpoint, grey is considered a durable, refined, elegant, smart, Which represents my couple perfectly. At the extreme, the black in this image represents power. That is very appropriate because the groom was a muscular firefighter dressed in a black tuxedo. Black is considered sophisticated (think of the black Chanel, Prada logos). The white in this image is present in the dress and the beach. White represents purity, peace, good in general. As you can see, a black and white wedding photo has a deep symbolism very appropriate for a nuptial.
Location: Cherry Beach.
