One of the best wedding photographers in Toronto taught me an invaluable tip: to save time he said, gather all the bridal details including the shoes, rings, invitations, the garter, hairpiece, the bouquet, earrings, etc. That way, at the beginning of the big day you can rest assured that you didn't miss anything.
A tip for the beautiful bride is to gather all her accessories and place them on a table in the same room where she's getting ready. That way, when we arrive on the big day, we can quickly arrange the accessories and take a few shots of them. Afterwards, we can focus on the bride and her bridesmaids, not to mention the guests were always present during the beautiful bride's preparation.
What I like about this image is the fact that all the accessories are placed along the baroque diagonal, creating a sense of dynamism in the frame.
To be able to create this image I placed all the details on the floor. Afterwards, I took my camera 35mm F1.4 lens and photographed the scene at an F3.5 aperture. While generally I use the macro lens to take pictures of the rings shoes etc., in this case my 35 mm lens allowed me to include all the details in one frame. Also, I didn't want to shoot wide open so that some of the elements of the image would be rendered out to focus. Because I wanted the viewer to be able to discern the writing on the invitations I chose a smaller aperture that gives the photograph more depth of field.
I'm a big fan of bridal shows and they usually happen in January of each year in various parts of the Greater Toronto Area. One of my passions is to look at the wedding albums and mentally critique the work. One of the biggest mistakes I see over and over again is to photograph text at a very shallow depth of field. When you combine that with taking the picture at an angle, you will see that only a few letters are in focus. It is unfortunate because sometimes the love story between the bride and groom is captured by one card that is not legible in those images. Long story short, my advice to other artists is to shoot text at F5.6 if you use a medium telephoto lens or F3.5 on a medium wide lens.
As a side note, Chateau Le Parc is a spectacular venue that offers backgrounds ranging from marble to mosaic, very appropriate to photographing this kind of details.
Location: 1745 Langstaff Rd, Concord, ON L4K 2H2.
