Having seen Stacey’s location portfolio earlier this month, Emma came along today for some of the same! We shot in the same location but tried to come up with some different images. Remarkably, whereas Stacey was a dead ringer for Paris Hilton, I felt Emma bears a striking resemblance to Demi Moore!
Again, these are all lit with a couple of speedlites though I do wish i’d taken the Bowens down there as I really hammered those AA batteries :¬)
I called round at my good friend Richard Bell’s tonight to enjoy a glass of wine and hear about his new book “Richard Bell’s Britain Revisited”. I can’t believe it’s 30 years since he wrote his original ‘Britain’ book, since when he’s been concentrating on his series of local books as well as his other many projects. Anyway, something’s fired him up to do a sequel to his original best seller and with a chance of a TV deal in on this one, I thought I’d take the opportunity to shoot the portrait for the jacket spine :¬)
I used a 105mm macro lens for this shot and lit him from camera left by feathering the light across his face from an Easybox mounted on an SB800 at 1/8th power, complete with dome diffuser, and held in position by my trusty ‘voice activated light stand’ (13 year old daughters do have their uses!). A bit of post and here’s the finished image. A simple side lit portrait in mono. See more of Richard’s work at Willow Island or follow his nature diary at Wild West Yorkshire.
.jpg "Award winning Wakefield portrait photographer")
I was lucky enough to shoot a very small and intimate wedding today at Silcoates School in Wrenthorpe. This is probably not the best known wedding venue in Wakefield but it’s certainly an attractive one and I’m sure a great many of the old Silcoatians have used it in the past and will use it in the future! With only 16 guests in attendance, including John & Wendy, it made for cosy and romantic setting and the weather was perfect with the bright July sun giving way to the more typical dark clouds of the British summer days ~ perfect for the photography! Ha ha! No pleasing us photographers; we moan when it rains, we moan when it’s sunny, but bright cloudy days – awesome! Oh! And we were joined by the Headmaster’s black cat for much of the shoot – I’m sure that’s a good luck sign :¬)
The weather looked set to be a wet one for Kathryn and Simon’s wedding at Wentbridge House Hotel and I’d resigned myself to shooting indoors. For the bride and groom shots this isn’t a problem and in fact, I enjoy shooting indoors as much as anything (see the last image in this post!), but it can be a problem for group shots. The rain fell steadily as I arrived at the venue and continued throughout the groom shots and up to the ceremony but remarkably, on coming out of the service, the rain had stopped, the skies cleared and the ground had even dried up a little. What was even more remarkable was that we didn’t get another drop until the end of the photographs! As we headed back indoors for the line-up, the heavens opened and it didn’t stop for the rest of the day! Talk about lucky!
I first met Sylvia as a bridesmaid at her brother’s wedding almost three years ago and was very pleased to now be able to photograph her marriage to her partner Mick. Mick and Sylvia have been together for a good number of years and finally decided to make it all official with a ceremony and celebration at kings Croft Hotel, Pontefract along with all of their friends. The forecast had been for torrential rain for the whole of the day, but as luck would have it, the skies remained cloudy, though at times threatening, but clear all day with some lovely evening sunshine for the hog roast. My only disappointment was that Sylvia refused to arrive at the venue in their beautifully restored WWII Jeep! ;¬)
What a difference a day makes! The weather was so awful on Friday, with a continuous heavy downpour, that I decided to head off to Woolley Hall to scout some internal spots for Saturday’s wedding fearing the worst. During the expedition I bumped into the bride and groom, Louise and Andrew, who were there doing last minute preperations and we held a group cursing of the British weather. However, our grumblings must have been overheard by someone because the rain front moved out and gave way to bright overcast in the morning to full sun in the afternoon!
Woolley Hall is, in my opinion, probably the best venue in Wakefield for a wedding. The hall is so imposing and the formal gardens were immaculate as always and provided a superb setting for the drinks and canapes as well as the wedding photography. It was packed to the gunnels and standing room only in the music room for the ceremony but nobody minded and it was a great atmosphere throughout the service and then out into the grounds for a cooling off and some of that summer sun and the photographs!
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Rob BrookExcellent photos superbly lit as alwaysJohn
JohnThanks for the kind words Rob.