Getting married in Bath?

Posted on February 15, 2012 by piersmacdonald

Last night we returned from another trip revisiting some of our favourite wedding locations in the South East. This year we have decided to look closely at the destinations outside London that we have really special connections with. We have shot weddings all over the South East. I love my Devon Weddings as much as Gloucestershire weddings or anywhere else. Last week we were in Arundel in Sussex and this week we were back in Bath which has to be one of the most beautiful cities in England.

Bath Weddings are always a bit of a visual feast. The architecture and the stone work are amazing. Its one of the places that whilst there we always have the inevitable ‘could you live here? ‘conversation. The answer is always a resounding, yes!

This time we stumbled upon Iford Manor outside Bath just up the road from Freshford and only a short drive from Norton St Philip (with the lovely George Inn). We had other places to visit so I snatched these images quickly with the iPhone and moved on.

Its a treasure to find this place. The drive down to it is steep and narrow but the reward is sensational. This kind of setting is something you can only get near Bath and we are so glad to have spotted it.

Arundel Wedding Scouting (for boys)

Posted on February 13, 2012 by piersmacdonald

Here is a really simple blog. No lessons, no stories, just five images pulled from a day out snooping around in Arundel Sussex. We are planning several Sussex weddings this year in and around Arundel and a very unique wedding in Petworth. Although I was under strict instructions for it to be a no camera day (as if !) I had my iphone close at hand. So here I have culled just a few images from our all too brief lunch stop at The Horse Guards Inn at Tillington. If you ever get the chance to go there, then eat! The food is excellent, the setting is gorgeous and the beer is nice. Nothing more to want! Enjoy

South London Wedding

Posted on February 7, 2012 by piersmacdonald

A little while ago I promised to upload some images from a South London wedding in Tooting. What I wanted to show with this post is how effective colour, or lack of it can be. Why one image looks better in black and white and another in colour is something I am yet to understand. However it is often indisputable that one image shines in all its lovely colour whilst another glows perfectly in the warm tones of black and white only. Yet try it the other way round and the same images simply are not the same.

Being a bit more perceptive about the probable outcome of images as I shoot them is something I have learned. Sometimes I am behind my camera thinking ‘yes, thats a colour one, or yes these are definitely black and white.’ but there is no real way of knowing until you actually look at them on a big screen. That is the digital equivalent of the darkroom and there is a tiny bit of that magic left in the way I process the images and bring them to life.

One reason I supply my clients with both colour and B/W versions of all edited images is that this decision making is completely subjective. And this is the great thing about blogging. Here are the things I like, done the way I like them. But I hope you like them too..

Image of the week 04

Posted on February 2, 2012 by piersmacdonald

Wedding photography London, Piers Macdonald London wedding photographer

Getting Ready for Tower Bridge Wedding London

This weeks image is from an Indian wedding I shot at Tower Bridge in London. Putting two images together is a way of telling a story which suits my blog very well and really seems to inspire my clients. When shooting now I look for things that I know I will be able to use later. This is not just running around thoughtlessly shooting details but a considered approach to documenting the day and creating a sense of what is happening.

One of my favourite parts of the day is the bridal preparations. Often hectic, often emotionally charged with parents, friends, children dropping in to say hi etc. But there are always moments of calm. Being there to witness them is special.

Whether its a bride sat waiting for the car to arrive or a moment to shave a hug with their closest friends, or simply in this case a reflection of a reflective bride and a pair of Manolos waiting to be worn, there is always something great to capture.

iPhone images

Posted on February 1, 2012 by piersmacdonald

Today saw me shooting a launch for one of my clients. We had a great space to work in and whilst shooting with my normal Canon 5D Mark 2′s I found a few moments to experiment with the iPhone. My version isn’t the latest one and doesn’t have the best lense but I thought I would share these pictures anyway. Its easy to see though how the Hipstamatic effects can be quite seductive.

Lots more images coming up this week, including my 4 page spread in Grazia Magazine, a new image of the week and the beginnings of a new project that will be reinvigorating my website. Lots to do..

Image of the week 03

Posted on January 31, 2012 by piersmacdonald

: Wedding in Tooting South London

This weeks blog is a portrait image for a change. When shooting documentary style weddings it is second nature to stick with landscape images as it is almost a pre-conditioned way of thinking and shooting. But sometimes we see something that can only be captured as a portrait.

At this wedding in South London I was in a large dance hall above a pub that has always been a mecca for dancing. (Instead of the normal first dance the bride had decided to break with traditional and have all her guests join her in a salsa lesson. Some of you may shudder at this point and think a first dance is tricky enough but mass salsa…! Well, I will upload some photos from this during the week which will show how much fun it actually was. Everyone got stuck in and it was great fun.)The venue had hung heavy drapes over all the windows but the internal light source was an immense wall of rope lights. At the top table everyone was bathed in light from this but on some of the other tables further away things got a little darker. I found a position in the room during the speeches where I saw this lovely image of a young girl sitting on a family table with her Grandad. The light fell on both their faces in such a way that only their expressions seemed to be highlighted and all other details fell away into darkness.

Speeches can be full of fun and laughter and mutual glances of delight are often exchanged between partners and family. This is great to capture and a rich source of images from the day. However there often comes a time in the speeches when the grooms words crank up the emotion and everything seems to go still. We are all paying attention. In this image we have two very different generations both intently listening at that ‘gulp’ point when a husband is telling his wife about his love for her.

Everything we need to know about what is happening is held in their expressions. The light picks this out wonderfully but I especially enjoy the way the shape of the flowers in the girls hair are echoed in the table decorations on the right. Formally it makes this image very stable and we can read it left to right as their gaze takes us.

Moments like these that surround the main event are of equal importance. One of the joys of standing back and watching a scene like this unfurl is to be able to capture things that otherwise go unrecorded. That’s an amazing part of my job.

M.A.C. Cosmetics Trends SS12

Posted on January 26, 2012 by piersmacdonald

With London Fashion Week on the horizon I have spent some time today looking back at the last job I shot for my client M.A.C Cosmetics. Since starting working with them back in 2005 I have shot all manner of amazing events, parties, shows and presentations. When shooting for M.A.C they utilise different aspects of the variety of trades within photography I have learned along the way. Backstage is reportage or documentary photography. The ‘Final Look’ images are portraiture, using specific beauty lighting techniques and groups of models together need proper studio lighting, styling and direction. This is usually done at speed and if I am told I have ten minutes then that probably means five. Hard work but great fun. Whilst I am shooting I know when I have got something good but often its not until I look at the images properly on my computer later that I realise what exactly I have. The make-up artists I work with at M.A.C are the very best and I am often amazed at their work. For my part I have to give my clients a professional, high end product, that looks like it was shot in a studio but in reality is taken anywhere from a hotel corridor to a portacabin. Doing this whilst surrounded by hair stylists,dressers, backstage crew, journalists, and the ever present fashion pr’s just adds to the …er, atmosphere! Like I have said before it is lots of fun and one thing I really enjoy about this work is that I get to spend time looking at it afterwards and I am really pleased to be able to share it here with you all. Lots more to come…

Wimbledon Common in London today

Image

Taking my new wellies out for their first walk on Wimbledon Common gave me the perfect opportunity to try out uploading a blog post on foot. Essential to do this… Well perhaps not but it worked and here is the proof. As the sun drops behind the horizon silhouetting the windmill we saw a lovely deep blue sky broken only by the sight of Jupiter appearing. How did we know it was Jupiter? Well that was thanks to another essential app. A geek-tastic day indeed..

Image of the week 02

Posted on January 13, 2012 by piersmacdonald

Three Cliff Bay Wedding Wales

This week my new wellies arrived from The Muck Boot Company. What prompted me to buy them was being caught out recently at a Gower Peninsular Wedding which saw me wading out into a stream to get a really lovely set of images of my clients crossing this stream. The wedding was at The King Arthur Hotel in nearby Reynoldston and with the bride having grown up in the area she was keen to take some time out of the day to have some shots taken down on the beach in Three Cliffs Bay. What a treat! I had never been here before and was not prepared for quite how beautiful it was. I arrived on the Friday and met up with Libby and Iain who are a really down to earth and friendly couple. We spent a good hour on that first day driving around a choice of locations and being generally nosey. Most of that time was spent walking along cliff paths wandering how we would be able to do this with Libby in her wedding dress.

On the day of the wedding the weather was touch and go and we had a plan A and a plan B in case of rain or cold. As it was we had fantastic low winter sunshine and when the moment came we raced off after the ceremony back to our chosen spot. If you havn’t been to Three Cliffs it is well worth a visit. Its just the other side of The Mumbles in the Gower Peninsular and is spectacular. A ten minute walk down the cliff path (in a wedding dress) leads to a stream that has to be crossed by the concrete stepping stones and then onto the vast beach. A photographers dream. With our journey time and having to take the paths and the stones a bit carefully our shooting time was limited but we managed to get all we want.

Something I love about shooting portraits is that whatever idea you start off with you always end up with something different. You have to be open for the unexpected and allow certain events to happen. Being too rigid will only take you so far when it comes to shooting a couple in a location as stunning as this. I cant say exactly what was going through Iain’s head as he stood on the stones in this image but I’m glad I was ready to record the image for posterity. Shortly after this and in borrowed wellies I was standing mid stream crouching low to the water and shooting images of Libby on her own as she took the stones one step at a time.

Its moments like this that I think I have the best job in the world and that perhaps I need a decent pair of wellies.

Image of the week 01

Posted on January 7, 2012 by piersmacdonald

Rachel arrives at St. Brides Church in Fleet St London

With the first week of the year having slipped by within the blink of an eye you could say my first post on this new blog is a little late. So what better way to mirror my own lateness than by posting an image that I captured in my last wedding of 2011 taken on a cold day in mid December with the lovely Rachel dashing into St Brides Church post haste. She was not actually late. Despite a slow crawl through road works all along Fleet St she managed to arrive ahead of schedule, only to find the guests still taking to their seats and a nervous verger rushing around calmly herding everyone into the church.

My last wedding of the year was also my first at St Brides. It was here in Fleet St that my career started and where I began to learn my craft. Working as a documentary wedding photographer in this space was more like a homecoming and any pressure from the day evaporated with the first click of the camera’s shutter.
Mid December could have given us anything weather wise. Snow had been forecast, as had rain. And cloud. But we were rewarded in the end with a beautiful full blue sky which lasted the afternoon until we were safely back in the warmth of London’s Haymarket Hotel. As a London wedding photographer I get to see and shoot in all sorts of locations but The Haymarket has become one of my favourite venues. I have worked there on events with all of my beauty clients, most often with Clinique and earlier in the year for the Estee-Lauder Christmas Launch.
There are some great pictures from this wedding and it was a lovely way to end a fantastic year for myself and the company. Just in the last four weeks of the year I had weddings in Scotland, Wales, Devon and London, all of them entirely different from each other in almost every way. I will be able to share many new images from this last year with you as a new web gallery is currently under construction. But here for now is a single image which says something about the fun, tension and speed at which many of the weddings I get to shoot occur. And I cant wait to get back shooting again.

Piers Macdonald Photography

London Wedding Photographer