Wood Norton Weddings Night Photography
Wedding Photography by Lee Webb

If you've stuck with me thus far you're doing well, because I realise this has become quite a long wedding write-up (but what a wedding it was) but it would be remiss of me to not speak about what's certainly the most well known wedding photo taken at the Wood Norton.

I knew that I wanted to take this photo - the image idea came to me earlier in the day, when I was photographing the bride and groom in the exact same position, only in daylight. I think it was taken at around 10pm - you can see that the sky still has an inky-blue to it, so it wasn't quite properly dark yet. I set the image up, took a test photo (when you're shooting at night using lights, it's hard to picture what the image will look like until you actually take it) and when I was ready, I placed the bride and groom where I wanted them and took a single photo. The lights had worked, everything triggered as it should, so I took a look at the camera screen to see what I had got...

'oh my god... the camera is broken' I thought to myself, as I was kneeling there in the dust with the bride and groom some 50 metres from me, not aware that something drastic had just happened. As I looked at the screen, the image was covered with these white spots. I looked to the bride and groom to see if I could see what was causing it and there was seemingly nothing there. I could only assume that my camera's sensor had developed a fault. I took another photo using the same settings and the white spots were still there - only they had moved a little. I took a third photo and they had gone completely. It wasn't until I zoomed in to 400% magnification on the back of my camera that I realised that I had captured a one-in-a-million photo. Just as I had taken the first couple of images, a swarm of bugs had silently been passing over head. The bright light from the flash had illuminated them perfectly, but of course when I looked to see what was causing it, without the flash light I couldn't see anything. Relieved that my camera wasn't broken - and that I had captured something truly special, I ran over to the bride and groom to show them the image. They were as speechless as I was. What a wonderful way to bring a close to both their wedding, and my 30th birthday!

Location: The Wood Norton.

Keywords: Photographer-directed image (149), Wood Norton Weddings (129).