I've ummed and ahhed about if, and how, to post this set for a while. Apologies for the quantity, I concluded it had to be that way or not at all. (Apologies also for the intro, it needs a bit of explanation.)
This was without doubt my most interesting and most loved wedding of the year. Dan & Nicole are great personal friends of mine and have been together for 11 years. I was confident that mutual elopement was on the cards one day but then earlier this year Dan took Nicole to Venice and it became clear that he'd finally decided to make an honest woman out of her.
Dan and Nicole are without doubt the most artistically gifted and creatively talented people I know. I feel like a geeky lab technician in their presence. They are also tremendously funny and nearly incapable of seriousness. Nicole is an illustrator specialising in pen and ink work. Dan studied under Ron Mueck before working on films (Batman Begins, Harry Potter) and then moving on to Madamme Tussaud's. These days he's a keen photographer in his own right - the guy is an analogue alchemist - and the two of them run an awesome shop in Port Issac called Hooper & Shaw. Extra credit for those who can figure out the etymology of the name.
When they asked me to shoot their wedding I was supremely excited and somewhat scared. Dan's brother Fred is a world class cinematographer and a great photographer in his own right and I figured he'd be shooting the day. Negotiations ahead of the day we're unusual. Dan & Nicole HATE to inconvenience anyone and there desire to be extremely polite and unpushy led to getting a handle on what they actually wanted being quite drawn out. They wanted me to be a guest, but also to shoot some pictures. Tricky situation! In the end, we beat it out. The brief was something like this:
Produce a small, tight set of images, probably all in black and white, with a gritty analogue look. Shadow should not be vilified, it was acceptable and not something I should fight. The focus should be on the quirky, the unusual, the guests, the setting. No overblown images of the 'happy couple', zero cheese and an absence of cliché. Minimal posing, all PJ.
I was pretty much in heaven. If only all my couples talked like this.
Initially Dan asked me if I wanted to borrow is Contax/Hassy/Land Camera and shoot some of the day on that. With minimal experience of those I said no to that avenue but said I'd shoot a combo of 5DII and my A1. I figure that working to my best in a PJ manner requires intrinsic response rather than a "hmm, where's that shutter button" approach. Dan also talked about a set of just 50 images. I said I'd do my best, but that I reckoned that even the most stripped back, tight set would be around the 100 images mark.
Come the day, as is the way with EVERY bride, Nicole did actually show an inclination for some of the more 'middle of the road' pictures. We even took some 'formals'... if you could call them that. So, when I sat down to edit, I decided to do as follows. I'd create two 'cuts'. A short tight, 'on-message' cut to fit the originally discussed brief, which I called the "Noir Collection" (Pretentious, moi?) and a second, more standard cut called the "Colour Classic" which would be longer and contain colour. Despite being in Cornwall in October the wedding had glorious weather and deserved some colour.
As a wedding in it's own right it was amazing. Dan's folks own a great wedding venue just outside Tintagel and after the wedding we all headed back there for the reception. Dan was originally a school friend of my brother's so, he, my mother and my girlfriend were all in attendance. It was a funny experience because normally mixing work and play is an unusual one. This however really worked and I had an incredible time. I also danced - a super rare feat for me.
As this set was already so stripped back, I found it hard to cut down further. Here are 75 from the day on a collection of 5DII, X100 and TMAX 400/3200 through the A1.
I know this is far from a regular set, but I'd love your feedback nonetheless. I'll post some of the colour set at some point in the future.
The set's incredible. I just find the grain to be inconsistent. I would actually say the non-grained images look the best. You should consider just cutting out the grain altogether.
Amonline - The grain will differ a touch between the film shot and the stuff on the 5DII though I did add grain using Alien Skin Exposure to the digital stuff. It's there but it may be less visible at web sizes.
The groom is a big fan of grain so that fed into my decision in this regard.
tonyhart wrote:
...I did add grain using Alien Skin Exposure...
The groom is a big fan of grain so that fed into my decision in this regard.
Well, that's understandable of course. Are you taking advantage of ASE's selective grain, or are you using a preset? Some of them look like an overlay that could be improved upon if using the custom sliders to control where the grain is placed.
amonline wrote:
Well, that's understandable of course. Are you taking advantage of ASE's selective grain, or are you using a preset? Some of them look like an overlay that could be improved upon if using the custom sliders to control where the grain is placed.
I can't be sure exactly what settings I used, it was a month and a half ago or so, but from memory I started off with the grain preset that I felt worked best before tweaking the settings to my specific requirements. I actually tried all the digiital images with three grain variations. I wanted a uniformity across the images but found that some settings worked well for some images while less well for others. In the end I settled on the variables that I felt gave me the closest look to the one I had in my mind's eye while working successfully across the whole set of images yet offering the uniformity I was after. VERY subjective though, this was just my personal point of view.
Oh yes, quite so, I can see the Hugh Grant resemblance now you mention it!
no apology fo the quantity. edit better, think straighter. didnt read your long explanations. looking at your pics: nothing special, much pp, pp not really professional. dark. wouldnt guess thats a wedding until #17. oddly cropped, cut-off bodyparts, too much DOF, oof. some are funny, few emotional. lots of backs, you cant capture a wedding when youre shy. watch your shadows...
