A wedding day is fully packed with emotional events and these One King West wedding photos prove my point. In this album spread, Payam was captured shedding tears when his mother entered the room where he and the groomsmen were getting ready. Not even the presence of the guests could stop the tears of joy falling on the groom's cheeks.
I see this normal behaviour very often before the ceremony. The nervousness culminates when the groom sees his mother or the couple sees each other either during the first look or in the church.
The three images were taken a few seconds apart and show the groom crying, then his mother hugging and kissing him.
Let's be honest! From a purely photographic standpoint, these images will not win any wedding photography awards. However, for the bride and groom and their families, they are priceless. These three images composing the spread portray an emotional groom who breaks down when he sees his mother entering the room accompanied by a couple of guests.
They capture the essence of his emotions right before the wedding ceremony and reception.
I have to admit that on the wedding day, when I saw this moment unfolding, I focused only on capturing it, not on how to create exquisite wedding imagery. After all, emotion beats technique.
Generally, I prefer a candid wedding picture where the emotion is genuine to one where the pose and lighting are perfect, but the shot has no soul. That is it is a picture of a pose and not elicits any emotion from the viewer.
Fortunately, this One King West wedding was full of candid moments that we captured masterfully.
These three images were taken using a Canon 5D mark III equipped with a 24-70 mm lens. The only source of light I used was the huge window behind the groom.
In post processing I colour corrected the photo and applied selective vignetting.
Location: 1 King St W, Toronto, ON M5H 1A1.
