Norton House Hotel weddings - Engagement Shoot

I am a great fan of supplementing natural light with studio lighting. Even on a wedding day I will do this for the main bride and groom session. Natural light can be very nice but you have little control over it on the day which can hamper the potential for really stunning shots. A typical example of this is with weddings at very grand venues like Castles and fashionable Hotels. There may be potential for a photograph with a very dramatic background, say the castle itself, but the lighting in that particular spot at that time is perhaps dull and lack lustre.

With mobile studio lighting you have the possibilities of manipulating things to produce the dramatic results you want. The secret is, of course, in the blending, just like a good whisky ;) And it this reason why many wedding photographers shy clear of external lighting and brand themselves as ‘natural light’ specialists. There is nothing altogether wrong with this, especially as external lighting, even from a simple flash gun, can be very unpredictable unless you’ve had a lot of experience with using it. However, if you really want to give your wedding images impact and have them jump off the album pages you simply cannot rely totally on natural light as it just too flat and limp to give the pictures sufficient boost. Hence, why I’m a lover of supplemental external lighting.

However, there are some situations where you can use natural light in a very similar way to studio light with the same dramatic results. One of these is the use of window light, and the photos posted today from Kristen and Glenns Engagement Shoot at Norton House illustrate this.

As a wedding photographer in Edinburgh I am privileged to work at many of our impressive and grand venues, most of these come with a magnificent array of fittings and fixtures. Huge, ornate windows are a plenty in these establishments and whilst the most obvious use of them is as impressive backdrops they can also be used as a light source itself. On the day of our shoot it was pouring with rain, so the plan for a walk around the beautiful grounds of Norton House for some photos was shelved and we had to stay inside.

I took Glenn and Kristen into an empty room adjacent to the main lounge and simply placed them at an angle to one of the large windows so that they were bathed in the beautiful light that poured in. I moved through several different poses and photographs all the while using nothing except the natural window light. Now whilst these photographs are lovely and I will always look for opportunities like this where I can utilise the natural light to its full advantage the difference is that you have to revolve the subjects around the light source when working this way, where as with external studio lighting I can move the lights themselves so I am not limited or restricted the same.

The last photograph here was taken by the hotel entrance. All Edinburgh wedding photographers enjoy using this area when photographing weddings at Norton House Hotel as it is under cover so you can still get some photographs even in the rain, as it was when I took these. Moving outside meant we were now back in flat lighting conditions. Although I didn’t use external lighting for these images I did attach a flash gun and bounced some light into the faces just to lift the flatness.

We are back in a couple of weeks for Kristen and Glenn’s big day and all looking forward to it very much. I have two more Engagement shoots this Saturday and then I am exhibiting at The Roxburghe Hotel wedding fair on Sunday. So if you are planning a wedding and looking for a wedding photographer in Edinburgh pop in for a chat.

Queensferry Hotel wedding and wedding fair

Had a great afternoon at the Queensferry Hotel wedding fair on Sunday so thought I’d post some photos from Lynn and James wedding which was held at this venue just a couple of weeks earlier.

The photo spreads here are from a Storybook album I designed in time for the wedding fair, so what you are looking at are double page spreads. The Hotel already has a Bellissimo sample album of mine but we thought it would be good to show off a really fresh and recent wedding in a different style Storybook album in time for the wedding fair.

This album is a 12 x 12 Designer Storybook which is personalised to fit each wedding. When you go round wedding fairs, particularly the wedding fairs with many photographers, you will notice that most of the albums look very much the same as wedding photographers tend to use the template software supplied by the album manufacturer.

As I do a lot of magazine and commercial work I am one of the few wedding photographers in Edinburgh that does not use the templates but creates each album from a blank canvas which allows me to give bespoke design so that each and every album is unique. You’ll notice from the pages here how I deliberately took a number of photographs on the day to use as tailored backgrounds for some of the pages. So you have close ups of the bouquets, floral arrangements, chair sashes, etc which of course personalise the album so it fits and marries with the overall feel of the day and the bride and groom themselves.

You may also notice how many page backgrounds are textured or have had a smooth sheen applied (these may not show up as well on your computer screen as they do in the flesh so to speak but hopefully it will be adequate for you to appreciate the difference) which gives the pages a nice weddingy feel. It is impossible to do this with a template system as they mostly work in solid colours only (hence why a lot photographers albums only have black or white pages).

The beauty and flexibility of this is that I can also incorporate your own ideas into the album design as well. Many couples enjoy this and give some great creative input. I send through page proofs at every stage of the design for comments, amendments and approval so your finished album is exactly the way you want it to be.

This Sunday I’ll be at The Point Hotel wedding fair with plenty sample albums including a real life wedding from the Point Hotel, too. One thing I must point out after over hearing comments from the last two previous wedding fairs is that all the photographs I use, both on my website and in my albums, are from genuine weddings that I have photographed. Some girls have passed comment that they thought the brides and grooms were models.

I view these comments as enormous compliments as it’s a great reflection on the quality of my photography but just for the record let me make clear that none of the girls or the guys are models.

If you would like to see some wedding photos where I’ve used models then have a look at my facebook page. I did a photo shoot yesterday for the newly refurbished Brunton Theatre for their wedding brochure which will be coming out soon. I was booked by the PR company to do the

commercial shots and also the wedding photographs and they brought along their own models. I was quite honoured to be booked for this as the PR company are based in England and do not know any photographers in Scotland. They simply googled - wedding photographer Edinburgh and compared the photographs on everyone websites.

I have another similar job tomorrow at The Caves in Edinburgh, another great and unique wedding venue. I will blog some photos from a recent wedding at The Caves very soon to show just how atmospheric it is. It seems 2012 must be the time for all the top venues to put together new wedding brochures. So far this I’ve already done work for Melville Castle, Shieldhill Castle, Oxenfoord Castle,

House and the Royal Terrace Hotel. After completing the Brunton Theatre yesterday and then The Caves tomorrow I’m booked to do a photo-shoot at the Scotsman Hotel. Most of these venues when the shoot is complete make me wine and dine in their posh restaurants, on the house. So it really is a hard life!

Note: if you click on any of the photo spreads it will open up the larger gallery style viewer so you can see the images better.