No rain, no rainbow
This time last week I was preparing to photograph Jenny and Chris’s wedding at St James’s Parish Church in Staveley near Kendal.
A glance at the weather forecast indicated that the soon-to-be newlyweds were due a large helping of luck; there was going to be rain, lots of rain. Happily, many cultures including ours see rain as a sign of good fortune for the marriage. Sposa bagnata, sposa fortunata (a wet bride is a happy bride) say the Italians. Mariage pluvieux, mariage heureux (rainy marriage, happy marriage) for the French, and “Ēka gīlā gām̐ṭha khōla karanē kē li’ē kaṭhina hai” (a wet knot is harder to untie) from Hindu tradition—hindi speakers, please forgive the Google translation.
Lucky bride arrives in the rain
Luckily for me, my assistant had packed a large umbrella. But we do need to arrange a “keep the cameras not the photographer out of the rain” training session for her. No matter because the two Nikon D700s seemed not to mind the rain at all, and not having to change lenses in such soggy and humid conditions is a real advantage of two-camera shooting. Having said that, dripping wet inside the Church, I had swiftly to remove and clean a steamed-up viewfinder glass from the older of the pair. That camera is now in a sealed bag with lots of silica-gel sachets having any remaining dampness removed.
Purrrfect wedding shoes!
Jenny and Chris had requested informal reportage with a few set-piece but relaxed family and friends group and portraits outside the Church. But the luck-bringing deluge rained on that parade. Instead, we concetrated on reportage and, later in the day, we comandeered a couple of Stonecross Manor’s sofas and I improvised with two off-camera SB800 speedlights with on-camera CLS commander for some family group shots in the dry.
Sunshine in the rain
I shot the wedding breakfast speeches from dynamic distance through a Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 VR with the help of an on-camera, black-flagged, bounce-but-no-direct-flash-on-the-subjects Speedlight SB800. I have been thinking of adding an SB900 to make up a flash threesome with a bit more oomph, but the two SB800 are doing quite nicely—we’ll see.
I just knew he was going to bring that up
Leaving Chris and Jenny’s guests in un-photographed peace to enjoy their celebratory meal, I downloaded my 8 GB Lexar Professional cards to a Mac Book Pro and backed that up to my handy, small enclosure external 350 GB drive. I stashed the latter seperately from the computer—can’t be too careful with people’s most important memories.
Dance!
The evening reception/party was great fun captured through a nifty 50 mm f1.4, a 24 – 70 mm 2.8 and, just for fun, a 14 – 24 ultrawide—again all with lighting assistance from flagged and bounced light from a single on-camera SB800 flash.
No rain, no rainbow. Thanks and lots more luck to Jenny and Chris.
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