The bride preparation is one of the most fun and also stressful parts of the big day. On the one hand, everybody's excited of the upcoming wedding ceremony yet tense for there so many things that can go wrong on the special day.
At this Liberty Grand wedding, as usually happens, things ran late. Members of the bridal party arrived late, bridesmaids wanted they are hair redone and other minor events caused delays in the timeline.
Fortunately, before I became a Toronto wedding photographer, I worked for a while in the corporate world in various pricing and revenue management positions so I know how to handle stress. These days, a professional photographer has to know not only to take beautiful photographs, but also how to handle stressful situations and reassure the bride and groom that everything will be alright.
Just imagine how many things can go wrong on the wedding day. Traffic in the greater Toronto area is unpredictable and there have been numerous situations where I had to leave two hours earlier in order to arrive on time for the wedding ceremony.
Wedding photography is becoming more and more challenging every day with the advanced of the new most sophisticated cameras that three use the need for technical skills. Combine that with trends such as the declining demand for wedding albums or wedding videography. Definitely the bride and groom today care more about the moments and the love between them then about albums, posing an complicated lighting schemes. That is also the reason why many studios whose photography style was traditional went out of business.
Artists let me have a low overhead and can deliver the bride and groom amazing quality at very competitive prices. In this day and age when everybody's wedding photographer in Toronto, we have to accept that artistry is sometimes overpowered by business aspects. While the individual photographer in Toronto puts a lot of effort in creating splendid photographs for the couples, the large studios automate everything, thus reducing the cost of processing to pennies per wedding photo.
When the bride was getting ready for her wedding ceremony, I asked the bridal party take a break, jump on a couch and have a few minutes of fun. Mimosas were flowing in the bridesmaids were getting in a good mood. It was then when I asked the girls to blow an air kiss to show their love for the bride.
After all, there is no perfect wedding unless is filled with beautiful moments of love and happiness expressed by the bride, the bridal party, the guests and the family.
That love was also prevalent during the outdoor ceremony that took place in the beautiful Liberty Grand Entertainment Complex courtyard.
Despite the fact that good cameras are becoming ubiquitous, the elements of design and composition and photography remain valid or are becoming even more important for the professional photographer who wants to stand out.
Besides the moments masterfully captured in this photograph, I also used a series of techniques to create a more dynamic photo.
First, I asked all the bridesmaids to look at the bride and blow an air kiss towards her. That, in effect, created several leading lines that emphasize the importance of the bride.
The wedding party surrounding the bride is acting as a framing device that makes her stand at. Also, the beautiful woman is the only one looking at the camera and she's dressed in a robe different from her bridesmaids.
To give the image a dynamic aspect, I employed a photography technique named the Dutch tilt. In a nutshell that means rotating the camera around the lens axis to place the subject along the bar on the baroque diagonal.
The image is balanced without being symmetrical which creates tension in the frame.
To light this room I used a flash bounced into the ceiling to create a beautiful light source that illuminated the wedding party evenly.
To post process this image I followed a few steps: colour correct, applied a lightroom preset, important the image in Photoshop, recaps the skin, adjusted the levels and curves, added a selective vignette and cropped the image.
Location: 25 British Columbia Rd, Toronto, ON M6K 3C3.
