Melville Castle Wedding Weekend

What a busy weekend it was at Melville Castle! To launch and promote their new pavilion they held a Wedding Weekend Saturday and Sunday, and despite the wintry weather it went off superb and I met some really great brides and grooms looking to get married in the near and not so near future.

The new pavilion was laid out and set up as it would be for a wedding breakfast with about a dozen exhibitors around the periphery. Many of the exhibitors had been brought in from outwith the Edinburgh area, but the main Melville Castle recommended suppliers, which was myself, Zena from Ivory White Events and Rhona from FlowersbyRhona and gocrafty (yes, she’s the posh one with TWO businesses!) got the most prestigious spots right by the main entrance so it meant we were the first people visitors met when they entered. It also meant, by extraordinary coincidence, that we were right by the champagne table too! :D

I got there around mid morning Saturday to set up, having had to call into Costa Coffee on the way for energy supplies. Zena however had been there since half past seven (Melville Castle that is, not costa, in case you were wondering!) as she sets up all the chairs in the Castle Ballroom, which is where the ceremonies are mostly held, the Castle Dining room and also the new pavilion. She was on the last lap by the time I arrived and the place looked stunning adorned with her chair covers and sashes and table decorations! Rhona provided all the finishing touches with floral arrangements throughout the castle and also on the wedding breakfast tables in the pavilion.

There was a fairly steady stream of visitors throughout Saturday even though it rained for most of the day and Sunday was even busier! I met quite a number of couples who had booked Melville Castle for their wedding for dates in 2010 and also a few for 2011. Two couples I met have booked me to photograph their wedding, one next year the other 2011, and I’ve also got several meetings to arrange this week with couples who’d like to get together for a more leisurely chat away from the hustle and bustle of a wedding show. I also had chats with a few couples visiting the castle as they are currently short listing possible venues. One of the advantages with being a wedding photographer in Edinburgh is that because I spend the majority of the wedding day at the venue I get to know not only the venue itself from a photographic point of view but also I experience how friendly it is, what the staff are like, how well organised they are, how well they look after their bridal parties and even what the food tastes like, so I find my views and opinions are often sought for on this topic at wedding fairs and open evenings. I enjoy discussing absolutely anything wedding related so the time seemed to fly past!

I also had a couple of bizarre requests too which I must admit I’ve never encountered before! There were two women doing the rounds of the exhibitors who stood for a while at a distance looking at my stand, deep in conversation. In time one of them approached me and took out a small digital camera. She asked if she could take a photo of the two large gallery prints I had up on display as well as some pages from a wedding album. She went on to explain that it was for her daughter who lived down in England but was getting married at Melville Castle next year. She’d already booked a photographer, the mother continued, but they weren’t too confident in his abilities and she’d like to show him the photos of my work to give him some idea’s! Errrrrm…I don’t think so, lol!

The other funny incident involved a solitary man of about 40 who seemed very interested in the stands of all the exhibitors. Eventually he arrived at my stand and became engrossed in looking through my albums. I struck up a conversation with him and in time got around to asking him if he had a date and venue for his wedding? “Oh”, he replied, “I haven’t got a girlfriend yet!” I think that’s the first time at a wedding show where I haven’t known what to say, lol!

Anyway, all in all it was a great success and I’m looking forward to photographing many weddings here again next year. There were a few times when my stand was so busy I was unable to speak with everyone so if that was you, you are more than welcome to give me a call and I’ll be happy to come out and see you and have a chat and look through some albums with you.
Images shown here are from the wedding show and previous Melville Castle weddings.

Babies and weddings

Baby photography for me is something that has followed on naturally from wedding photography. I photograph a couples wedding day and then when they have their first baby they book me again to do their first baby set of photographs. With being an Edinburgh wedding photographer as you would expect most of my baby photography is carried out in and around Edinburgh itself. However, I did have one couple who came up from London to marry in a Scottish Castle book me to travel down to them for their babies christening followed by a photography session, which was a delight!

Funnily enough though, a baby shoot was my first professional solo assignment and it was this that led me to my first wedding booking at the age of 16! My very first job was with an established photographic studio in the north of England. This was run by two brothers who having a very good reputation were always kept busy with work. They were largely old school photographers and although I found there approach and way of working a little old fashioned it gave me a good grounding in the basic skills and rudiments of wedding and portrait photography.

All portrait session, including baby shoots, were carried out in the studio. However, one day they had a client request a photography session at home. Now for me this sounded like a great idea. I have always thought, and still do, that studio photography tends to have a kind of ’rabbit in the headlights’ look. Even the most creative studio photographers, and I know a great many, cannot really avoid that staged and formalistic feel. But working in a babies own environment, or for children their garden or on location, really lends itself to creating completely natural, relaxed and fun images. Due to my enthusiasm for the idea, and the studio owners lack of, I was given my first solo commission!

I was allowed to take along as much gear and equipment as I wished. But to be honest a lot of the old fashioned gear is so heavy and cumbersome I really felt it would hinder the type of natural pictures I wanted to shoot. So much to the brothers horror I elected to simply use a light weight 35mm SLR.Now after the shoot I returned to the studio to process the film. The brothers were not happy at all with the results! They were nothing like what they would have produced if the client had come to studio. I tried pointing out that that was the whole point, I was producing something different. Anyway, they moaned and complained sufficiently so that I ended up considerably apprehensive about how the parents were going to react upon seeing their proofs! However, I needn’t have worried. When the parents came to view the proofs they absolutely loved them and it the studio obtained one of its largest print orders of the year!

A couple of weeks later the mother returned with her sister who had just begun planning her wedding and they wanted to book me to photograph the day. Up until then I had never photographed a wedding, and indeed no one except the two brothers did so for the studio, but the sisters were adamant that it was me they wanted. So there I was at 16 years of age with my first wedding booked!

After discussions with the bride and groom we decided that I would photograph the wedding day predominantly photojournalistic style, which was pretty much unheard of at the time, and we would endeavour to get through all the formals in under half an hour as they didn’t want a two hour chunk of their day spent on them, which again was the norm for weddings back then (and still is for some today, lol). As with my first baby session we ended up with a great set of natural, relaxed photographs which captured the emotions, feelings and atmosphere of the day perfectly.

Although I had learnt the art and technicalities of photography with the studio it was quite apparent that my individual style did not match so it was not long until I left and set out on my own. Today I find it interesting that with both weddings and portrait’s the 21st century preference is more for modern, contemporary lifestyle photography rather than the old formalised pictures.

Anyway there’s a few examples here from my last baby session with five week old Jack last Saturday and a couple of wedding images from albums I’ll have out on display this weekend at the Melville Castle wedding show.

Back at Melville

Well the last two weddings at Melville Castle have been fantastic! Being in the middle of autumn means the colours in the trees and foliage are just about at their peak and also the sun sets right over the trees in the south west corner of the grounds creating some superb textured light across the south facing façade of the castle. I did all the formal group shots on the front lawn adjacent to the fountain and used the stunning backlight as a gorgeous background as the sun rays split and filtered through the trees cascading over the bridal party and family. I cant wait to see these images in the albums!

Marguerite and Gordon’s wedding was the last of my “five in a row at Melville Castle” that I was telling you about previously. Marguerite’s family had come over from southern Ireland and Gordon’s had come down from the Outer Hebrides, so I was pretty sure it was going to be an exciting and fun affair! I was booked from 1.30pm through to 7.30pm with the ceremony at 2pm. I arrived about 1pm and spent a few minutes catching up with Geoff from Watchthebirdie, which is the company I always recommend for videography. There was going to be a string quartet in one corner of the ceremony room and an enormous floral display in the other, so things were fairly tight. Good job I’m slim, eh? lol. Anyway, Geoff got his tripods positioned and we worked out how we’d work things to ensure neither of us got in the others way.

I popped along to Marguerite’s room at quarter past one just to say “Hello” and check she was alright. Marguerite had been feeling rather nervous on the run up to wedding day and was particularly concerned about the photography as she hates being photographed. This is not uncommon at all. I would say well over half the brides I photograph tell me this. I’d done quite a bit of coaching with Marguerite prior to the wedding and I was confident she’d look fantastic in her photographs, which proved to be the case!

I met Gordon in the lobby at half past one and we got a few quick photographs of him by himself and then with his bestman. Marguerite’s father had recently been very ill and was not able to attend the wedding so her two brothers were going to fill in for him. So Marguerite was escorted down the staircase by the oldest brother and then up the aisle by the youngest. I discreetly ducked and dodged my way around the string quartet, Geoff’s tripods and the flowers through the ceremony and then as well as shooting the signing of the register ‘live’ I also was able to have a couple of minutes to set up half a dozen different shots too. I ran to the back of the room to photograph the newly weds coming back up the aisle, making sure I was down on one knee so Geoff could film it too, and then we were back out into the foyer for the champers.

I nipped out to check the weather while everyone was enjoying their drinks as it had been raining all morning. Fortunately it had stopped and the sun had even come out so we decided we’d make the most of it and have a Big Group shot outside in front of the fountain. It didn’t take long to get everyone in place and positioned, much to Marguerite‘s surprise as she thought it would take all afternoon getting her side of the family organised., lol. And then we ran through their bridal and family group shots. I don’t mind either way whether the couple give me a list of group shots they’ve worked up or want to leave it to me on the day. For this wedding Marguerite and Gordon were happy to leave it all down to me, so I did all the usual groupings that are important to have on the wedding day and then a few different combinations of friends and family that would complement the main photographs.

And then we came to the part of the day Marguerite was dreading - the main bride and groom photographs! Now I had promised Marguerite that she would look fantastic in all the photographs. I’m not 100% sure she believed me because she replied that if I really did do that she would tell every single engaged girl in Ireland to get married in Scotland and book me for their photography, lol. Anyway, I told her that it was a deal! So, now I’m looking forward to the many, many Irish brides I’ve got coming my way in the next few years! :D

I spent around 20 minutes or so on their bride and groom set. I use flow posing techniques as well as my charming personality (don’t laugh!) to run through quite a number of different shots and poses in a relatively short space of time. This helps them relax and look natural in the pictures rather than the ’rigidly standing to attention’ type of photographs. I get a mix of classic and contemporary photographs, as well as some informal fun pictures too, and I’ll even do a few fashion shots depending on individual personalities.

There’s also a couple of photographs I have to take at every wedding I photograph here because they’ve kind of become my Melville Castle signature images. Melville has one of my showcase wedding albums which is often out on display here during the week and which prospective bride and grooms looking to book the castle for their venue can browse through which helps them to visualise how good their own wedding photographs will look at such a beautiful venue as Melville. Well there’s a few photographs in the album that couples have never before seen from Melville Castle weddings and when they book me for their photography they beg me to do “Ante-room window” shot or my display print shot, which refers to a large Gallery Print I take to all the Melville Castle wedding fairs and put up on display. This is the first photo you see in this blog post and I’ve posted Marguerite and Gordon’s version at the end so you can compare them. For this image I position the couple on the south east corner with the Castle looming up right behind them. The most dramatic picture is created by moving in close and laying prone on the floor so that the low angle accentuates the castle backdrop. I now take three versions of this, one at head height, one at knee height and the one lying on the floor.

The Ante-room window image refers to the huge ornate window of the Castle’s ante room. This is a very technical image as the large window has so much light streaming through it that a normal photograph will throw the couple into silhouette, much to the consternation of the many amateur photographers I get standing behind me trying to obtain the same picture. The secret of course is simply hitting the perfect balance of natural light and fill light from the camera‘s speedlite. With Marguerite and Gordon I shot this one quickly while all the guests were being escorted into the Dining Room for the wedding breakfast. After this the remainder of the day was all photojournalism photography which included the cutting of the cake, a big Irish/Gaelic sing song and a few informal fun shots of everyone enjoying themselves.

I’ve mentioned in previous blogs this year how Melville Castle has taken on a new lease of life under its new ownership, which a beautiful venue such as this definitely deserves. But the next big thing on the Castle’s calendar is the Wedding Show on November 21st and 22nd to profile the new pavilion and all the refurbishments. This is going to be one huge wedding weekend and it’s a must for anyone interested or planning a wedding in the future. All the top wedding service providers are clamouring to be involved , although I believe its only going to be a carefully selected few who will get opportunity to exhibit, which at least means you wont get bamboozled by dozens of Edinburgh wedding photographers all under the same roof, lol!

Anyway, if you get chance to come along you’ll definitely have a great time. I should be set up in the new pavilion so go into the Castle first, because you want to make sure you don’t miss out on your free glass of champagne ;), and then pop across and see me for a chat and a look through some albums and books. I’ll have the above mentioned showcase album with me too so you can to see the images I’ve been talking about, which always look far better displayed in a high quality album than what they do on a computer monitor. If any of you are going to be coming from the direction of Kinnaird Park and want to bring me a latte from Costa Coffee (medium with six sugars please) I’ll do you a free engagement session! :D