The father daughter dance at Château Le Parc was one of the most touching I have ever documented and both the bride and her father cried during that song. I'm not only a wedding photographer, but also a father and during the wedding receptions and always touched by the love between the parents and the children.
During the bride and groom special day they were very busy entertaining the guests and making sure that everything went perfect. However, during the reception there are plenty of opportunities for the professional photographer to create masterpieces of documentary wedding photography.
The speeches allow the artist to create visual essays in which he can capture various emotions such as happiness at participating in such beautiful event and sometimes sadness because a few loved ones are no longer among us.
Besides the parents' speeches, my most favourite event of the dinner is the parents dances. I love the mother son and father daughter dances because in a way it is a symbolical farewell to their child. As a father, I understand the relationship between the bride and her father is special. Often, during the father daughter dance I see big men break down in tears like babies when they realize that their little girl is becoming somebody else's wife and she will leave the parents house to start a life of her own.
This image portrays an emotional moments when the bride, hugs her father during the father daughter dance. Her eyes are in tears and the emotion makes this image stand out. The couple is placed on the left-hand side of the frame and is visually balanced by a group of red globes of lights that frame the couple and draw our attention to them.
To create this photograph I used a Canon 85 mm lens and I shot this image at F3.5 so that only the bride and groom are in perfect focus while the background is slightly out of focus. I chose this particular aperture because I noticed that some of the guests were not paying attention. That was also the reason why I used my trusted string of Christmas lights to hide those particular guests.
Somebody said wedding photography is a beautiful lie and that is true. Often, the photographer sees things through his own lens and I believe it is our duty to document the date the way the bride envisioned it rather than it really was, especially when things didn't go according to the timeline.
Often accidents happen on the wedding day ranging from a late officiant, the hair and makeup being late, the rain ruining the photo shoot and so on. However we, as professional photographers need to create the perfect wedding illusion like a magician who makes the audience even more reality in order to create magic. We can do that through lighting, composition and often in post production.
I met artists in the Greater Toronto Area who consider themselves purists and dislike the usage of Photoshop. They deliver their couples images straight out of the camera to remain true to reality. In my opinion, that is a big mistake because the couple hires us to deliver a dream. Yes, most of the coverage is documentary but or images have to stand out from those the guests take and often, post production is the key.
It is true that a professional photographer has to create a beautiful imagery in camera. Yes, there is no way you can make an average image outstanding unless you are a digital artist and you are going to re-create the whole scene in Photoshop. However that is not efficient and the studio who doesn't have good shooters will go bankrupt in no time. Still, in some particular cases, when an image has a great potential, it is worth spending time to create a picture worth of hanging on the wall in the couple's home.
Location: 1745 Langstaff Rd, Concord, ON L4K 2H2.
