Alice and Matt's wedding reception was booked for the magnificent Eastnor Castle, where Alice and the bridal party also got ready in the morning. As you can imagine for such a grand venue, the room in which Alice and the girls had their hair and makeup done was vast, beautifully decorated and had the most gorgeous light.
Photography is all about light - it's literally what the word 'photography' means (photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light) and whilst with modern digital cameras and techniques you can create stunning images in near darkness, sometimes it's nice to take things old school. For this stunning bridal portrait of Alice, all I had was the bride, a dark corridor, and a window. There's no photoshop here, no fancy flash-work and no studio backdrop. With thanks to the makeup artist, Amy Laney, Alice was already glowing. Placing her in front of a north facing window as to avoid direct light, with a black hallway falling away into darkness behind her was just the perfect scene, the kind that wedding photographers dream of. Exposing the image for the bride here meant that the dark background was rendered completely black.
This setup, having light going across your subjects body, with the light falling on the 'short-side' of their face is known in the industry as 'Rembrandt lighting' after the great man himself, whose work I am a massive fan of (perhaps made obvious by this photo.)
Location: Eastnor Castle, Ledbury.
Keywords: Photographer-directed image (149).