This puts me well ahead as having photographed more weddings at Melville Castle than any other wedding photographer in Edinburgh. Melville Castle is now enjoying a new lease of life under its new owners and the beautiful venue is even more enjoyable to photograph at than ever before. 
I’ve also been here a couple of other times for wedding shows too, so I’m seriously thinking about moving in! lol. I’ve also been doing some magazine work too, that I will tell you more about next time, which is the reason I’m falling behind with my blogging!Melville Castle is currently operating as an exclusive wedding venue, which I really like as it makes the weddings very private and intimate. There is also a new marquee up adjacent to the castle so it’s able to cater for even the biggest of wedding party’s.
My last three weddings however have all been around the 100 mark so we haven’t needed to use the marquee. If you’ve been to Melville you will know how beautiful it is both inside as well as outside. All of the main south facing rooms have huge ornate windows that allows the light to simply flood through. Use of light is critical in photography and it is one of the key skills that set photographers apart. For my style of photography I like to exploit the natural light to its fullest extent sometimes carefully marrying it with light from a speed light, which is often called fill-flash or controlled flash. This is particularly important for bride and groom sets and bridal portraits. 
With bridal portraits my objective is to make the bride look as glamorous as possible. So I just imagine I’m shooting a front cover magazine image as the basic principals are exactly the same. Firstly I need to ensure that the 
light and shooting angle is the most flattering, which often entails manipulating the light either with a reflector or enhancing it with supplemental light from the speed light. And then, secondly, I need to make the subject feel comfortable and confident so as to get the best out of them. I also use what we call ’flow posing’ to make the session smooth and enjoyable which produces the natural, relaxed photographs that I’m known for.On Saturday we had mixed weather with sunshine and showers and blustery wind. As is often the case we were able to pop out for fifteen minutes or so between showers and grab some outdoor pictures, including all the group shots.
Anja and Daniel had booked me for 8 hours starting with pre-wedding preparations at 12.30 through until the first dance at 8.30pm. So we were going to get a good mix of around 300 images from the whole day.I first met Anja and Daniel at a wedding show here at Melville
Castle earlier in the year. I visited them again a few days later at their home for a chat and a more leisurely look through wedding albums and books which is when they booked me to photograph their wedding day. I then met back up with them four weeks ago and we chatted more specifically about the day itself going through their timings and arrangements etc. This series of meetings is the norm for couples in Scotland. For those coming from overseas or up from 
England we’ll have a series of telephone conversations instead.The day itself was fantastic! Everything went off like a dream and we got a stunning set of photographs. All the photographs shown here are from their wedding and I’ve popped in a couple of Anja’s bridal portraits to illustrate what I was saying about utilizing the light. We had a lot of fun doing the main bride and groom sets, as you can see from the ’piano’ picture.
As part of the re-decorations Melville Castle have just been getting an electronic mini grand piano which plugs in and plays itself. We could resist sitting Daniel down behind it and miming away as it played through a few tracks! 
The next Wedding Show at Melville Castle is scheduled for Sunday, October 25th. The fifth of my five-in-row Melville Castle weddings is Saturday 24th, so maybe I will book a room! Anyway, if you fancy coming along and seeing some of the changes here I’d love to see you.
0 comments:
Post a Comment