With her room on the ground floor, Nicola spent quite some time spying on her fiancé (thanks to Jonathan Ryan for pointing out my faux pas!) and his friends prior to the wedding.

I had initially thought to light her with a number of speedlights to help separate her from the background, but changed my mind.

Sometimes, the blindingly obvious can actually take a few minutes to register.  It can sometimes become all too easy to slip into a comfortable routine, walking into a situation where you are expected to perform certain tasks in a certain manner. I tend to be contacted by potential clients for a number of reason, but the main two are regarding the way I choose to light my subjects. Either additional lighting in a number of styles and techniques such as strobism, or actually not using any additional light at all at such times as the evening reception.

I have occasionally caught myself slipping into an expected routine rather than assessing the situation on it’s own merits, and here is a good example. The room was quite dim, with the main source of light coming from the sun outside via a medium sized window. The only other source was a rather dim overhead tungsten light fitting. My initial thought was to add a speedlight at low power (say 1/8th) behind Nicola, to light the curtain and separate her from the background.  A second speedlight would have been placed camera right and used as a fill to balance the sunlight on Nicola.

However, as I looked through the viewfinder to visualise the end shot, I realised the additional lighting would actually kill the atmosphere of the image. Her face is softly bathed in sunlight, softened by the voile against the dark background of the curtain. Nicola’s left shoulder is lit well enough, with a nice fall off to the background shadow.

Nah, this image really didn’t need additional lighting, it just needed the light managing, to bring out Nicola’s beauty and emotion.

My wedding work can be found at : www.weddingphotographerinlancashire.com