When I photographed this Indian wedding at Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto I had no idea how beautiful this location is. With a five minute walk, a Toronto wedding photographer can find beautiful graffiti walls to give his clients an urban look, a pond and splendid pathways which make you think you are in a secluded area. In the fall, Evergreen Brick Works is very popular for wedding day and engagement portraits because of the foliage location boasts. I have clients who travelled from Texas for a photo shoot at this location.
Being a Toronto wedding photographer means I document events belonging to different cultures from purely Canadian, to Greek orthodox, Chinese, Pakistani and other South Asian ethnicities. As an Indian wedding photographer, I know the importance of good wedding photos for my South Asian clients. The weddings are usually very busy and often the timelines are derailed by the multitude of the ceremonies condensed in the three wedding days. For this Indian wedding, the wedding planners did an amazing job and kept everybody on track so I had enough time to photograph the beautiful bride.
I took this intimate moment of the bride during her preparation for the reception. After the ceremony, the bride and groom went to their rooms to get ready for the wedding reception. Once the bride freshened up and had her makeup and hair redone, I got a chance to spend a few minutes alone with her and take several intimate portraits.
To create this photograph, shot in a landscape format, I asked the bride to lean on an armchair and look outside the window. I vividly remember that September day when, unfortunately the weather was not cooperating so we had to shoot indoors. However, the cloudy sky created the perfect light for a wedding portrait. The huge windows cast soft light onto the brides perfect face. This pensive look gives the portrait a documentary photography feel despite the fact I posed the bride to create this shot.
To give the image an ethereal look, I use my 85 f1.2 lens and shot it wide open. In this image, only the bride's right eye, her lips nose and tikka are in focus. Because I shot this portrait from a short distance, the depth of field is very shallow, which emphasizes the brides beautiful eyes and lips. Everything else melts out of focus.
In terms of composition, I positioned the bride according to the Golden spiral. The bride is looking outside of the frame, which creates tension. The viewer of this photograph is naturally asking what the bride is seeing, which makes this wedding photo mysterious. The use of the 85 mm telephoto lens shot from a close distance, allowed me to fill the frame, a powerful composition technique which, combined with the shallow depth of field emphasize the subject. Also, by placing the bride on the right-hand side of the frame, I creative plenty of negative space on the left which brings tension into this photograph. Finally, the bride is resting her beautiful figure onto her left hand which, in this pose, becomes a leading line, drawing the viewer's attention to the bride.
In post processing I corrected the white balance, did some beauty retouching and dodged and burned this image to emphasize the bride.
All in all, this is one of the most beautiful Indian brides portraits I have ever seen and was published on an important Indian blog named The Big Fat Indian Wedding.
Location: 1 King St W, Toronto, ON M5H 1A1, Canada.
