Picture Tales: Weddings - Image 01

I was asked to photograph this wedding at very short notice. However, I had photographed the bride on numerous previous occasions and this proved to be a significant advantage. She was accustomed to my way of working and consequently more relaxed than might otherwise have been the case. This particular type of shot always has inherent difficulties because options for composition and background are very limited. The bride's car arrives, the door is opened and there are just a few moments available to capture a worthwhile image before the she emerges for the start of the ceremony.

It is essential to use daylight fill-in flash because the brightness from the car windows and the white wedding dress deceives an automatic exposure system into underexposing the faces. However, a little too much flash can easily cause detail in the highlights of the white dress to be lost. In this case, much to amusement of the bride, the camera was held upside-down so that the flash was below the lens. This allowed a higher angle for the view into the car door than would otherwise have been the case. A second consideration was to ensure that the camera's autofocus system locked onto the bride's eyes rather than her veil which was about ten centimetres closer.