When I started my career as a Toronto wedding photographer, if I remember, the church selfie wasn't even coined. Nowadays, every wedding including this one at Liberty Grand is also captured by the guests through selfies, most of the time including also the bride and groom.
While the bride was getting ready for the wedding ceremony, the bridesmaids were having fun taking selfies. The room was filled with laughters and this image catches one of those moments when the bridesmaids, followed of the work by some of the guests, surrounded the bride and took a few photographs with her. I manage to capture those moments and even though the are not award-winning photographs, for the bride and groom they can constitute precious memories they will cherish or the years.
Often on the big day brides forget the most important thing: the most important thing is the love between the bride and groom and the fact that all the guests and friends gathered to witness the birth of the new family. Documenting those moments freely exhibited on the big day is in fact the essence of wedding photography.
In the Greater Toronto Area I see often professional photographers forcing the bride and groom into an endless series of poses the couple obviously dislikes. Often the wedding becomes a prolonged photo shoot and I think that is wrong. My photography style is slightly different. While I love creating epic photographs, I also built my business around the experience I offered to my couples. In other words, sometimes the experience is even more important than the final product. Who cares if you create splendid photographs but the bride and groom feel miserable during the photo shoot?
I want my bride and groom to remember their wedding day as a fun, romantic, special event, not as a photo session.
Photography technique is one of the most subjective aspects of the craft. Often, it is photographers experience that dictates what last choice, aperture, composition is used to create an image.
Because we were shooting indoors a fairly large group of bridesmaids, I chose to use a 23mm lens shot wide open on a Fujifilm XT2 camera. Too many the scene I used an on camera flash bounced into one of the walls of the bridal suite.
To match the colour temperature of them tungsten bulbs, I used a CTO gel.
The composition is balanced and symmetrical. In this image, the bride is surrounded by her bridesmaids and everybody's taking a selfie.
While at the beginning of my career as the professional photographer I placed a lot of emphasis on post processing, recently I realized that shooting the images right in camera reduces post processing time. In effect, that makes me more productive and allows me to pass my cost savings to the couples.
To be more specific, in this image I applied a preset to give to photograph a film look. Next, I colour corrected the image, performed basic retouching on the brides in her bridesmaids, cropped the frame and finally, I applied selective vignetting.
One of the questions I asked myself when I select the images for the bride and groom is "what is the meaning of this picture?" In this case,the candid photograph depicts a perfect moment captured during the couple's special day.
It is fair to say that this particular image will not win any award, but for the bride and groom that is completely irrelevant. What couples want first is a clean coverage capturing the atmosphere between the bride and groom and their family and and guests. Sadly, I know plenty of professional photographers in the Greater Toronto Area who, in a selfish pursuit of photography awards often neglect the most important part of the couple's special day: the images that document the presence of various members of the family, or to be more specific, group photos. Yes, as incredible as it sounds, I know photographers who refuse to take group photos because it is beneath their "artistic integrity."
Location: 25 British Columbia Rd, Toronto, ON M6K 3C3.
