As a Toronto wedding photographer I have to keep myself abreast of the latest and greatest friends and the techniques in the industry. As such, I follow trendsetters on social media and them often I look at various photography bodies or institutions if you want to learn with the new and exciting. Something that many photographers in the GTA have in common is copying each other's work.
It is very unfortunate to see such great artists being unable to create something new on the wedding day. In effect, I'm assuming that if they were to show all their wedding albums to a bride and groom, those albums would look the same, just the venue would be different. That is the reason why we started focusing on capturing the moments and the love between the bride and groom as opposed to rehearsed poses the look unnatural unless the couple are actors.
On this special day at Château Le Park I was lucky enough to pull off a few new concepts and this particular image is a completely or original idea of mine. When I photographed the couple, and placed the groom on a superior stair in the amphitheater. The result is that the bride's upper body is not captured in the frame. The beautiful bride in this case is a dancer and she has very beautiful legs competing for attention in this picture. The viewer cannot help himself divide his attention between the handsome groom and the bride's beautiful legs. That gives the image symmetry and makes it stand out.
To light my subject on this sunny summer day I use my beloved Profoto B1 ba bare bulb. At the beginning of my career as wedding photographer I we use a white reflector to bounce back the sunlight into my subjects but I learned that such an intense continuous light can make my subjects uncomfortable so I prefer the very intense burst of light that the Profoto generates.
Ideally, I love shooting at sunset so that I don't have to use any lighting equipment but unfortunately, in the situation we had to shoot that 2 PM in the afternoon whence the sun was right about our head.
When I decide whether I should include an image in an album or not, my first question is: is it an emotional image or is it any different than the images taken by hobbyist? If the answer is no then I do not included. As simple as that!
This image in my opinion stands out because you are not able to see the bride and you are forced to focus on the groom. Also, the fact that the bride's face is missing in the picture makes the image mysterious and creates tension in the viewer's mind. It is the well-known principle of Gestalt psychology that the human brain is trying to reconstruct the whole human body when a part is missing, which makes the viewer think.
The same principle of making the readers think is used by many publications, among which the New York Times. There cartoons always make one think and therefore stand out. It is in the same manner that this particular image taken at Château Le Parc makes us wonder how the bride looks like.
Location: 1745 Langstaff Rd, Concord, ON L4K 2H2.
