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Preview: Paul & Sophie Wedding, Woldingham School, Surrey

A few preview shots from Sophie & Paul’s wedding last Saturday, and some tips on how to deal with strong sunshine in summer weddings. Shooting in direct sunlight is can be very difficult. Great weather is always wonderful for weddings, but strong sunlight creates hard shadows and cause people to squint, which can be unflattering.

To counter this, I found an area in the school where the building would reflect a lot of the light, making it indirect and allowing me to use backlighting with the reflected light for the group photos. I also liked how the architecture against the dark trees reminded me of Italy.

Shaded areas are ideal, but even a bit of shade, like this Pergola walk, can be useful. An enclosed space, with light walls and plants for light to bounce off also helps balance the exposure here, but of course, walking Paul & Sophie away from the sun, provided an easier time with exposure and this image below works better than the ones above in terms of lighting, due to it being slightly backlit, but with lots of reflected light too. 

When using shade, sometimes you have to place the subject very specifically, so that you don’t get hard shadows in the key areas. We used a thin piller to cast the shadow across Paul & Sophie’s faces and it was enough to give us soft lighting for a great portrait.

Finally, as it got dark we tried catching some lat evening light, but the clouds gave us too much trouble. Still using backlighting here with a softer light from the sun and a darker background worked well with the veil and I eventually got the artificial lights out to do some backlighting of my own:

Prezola

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