This is a favourite moment of mine from a recent wedding. Watching the interaction between a father and son on a wedding day is something that never fails to move me. Having grown up without having my dad around, these are just some of the special moments that I like to watch unfold and capture for the groom and his family.
Unsurprisingly, a good part of my time on wedding days is spent watching people interact and looking for those defining moments to document for the couple. My main way of working at this time is to ditch a lot of the equipment that shouts “photographer!” so I can pass relatively unnoticed and catch people being themselves. Consequently, flashes, long lenses and the like stay in the bag and I just go with a short, fast piece of kit that can help me move about unobtrusively amongst the crowd. I find that, otherwise, people tend to notice me, stop what they are doing and play to the camera. Not good!
In this picture, the sun had set behind the trees that surrounded the lodge and so the easiest thing to do would be to stick a flash gun on the camera and go about my business. The problem with that approach here would have been that it would have totally ruined the moment that was developing between the groom, his dad and his groomsmen. As such, I went with a 50mm 1.2 wide open to obtain the shutter speed and depth of field I needed (1/750 at ISO 400) . The only trick then is to compose properly in order to isolate the groom and his dad and leave the groomsmen in the background to tell the story. It’s a great moment and one with a lot of atmosphere, which is brought out by the B&W processing, which was done in Lightroom using my own presets with some finishing touches.
Thanks again to everyone who follows this series. I appreciate all your feedback and comments!
