Rain rain go away...

Yeuck! What grotty weather for the wedding in Cornwall for Charlene & Rob - it rained non-stop all day - horrendous weather from nine in the morning until the time we left at eleven at night. I guess that is the one thing no amount of planning can change - we are literally at the mercy of the elements and it doesn`t matter at what time of year one plans to get married, there is always a chance that the heavens will open and it will tip down. However as always we rose to the challenge and shot pretty much the entire day indoors - not always the best option but you do have two options available to you.

1. Shoot using the available natural light - this always looks better (in my everso humble

opinion) as it gives a shot depth and texture, the only downside is that one has to crank up the sensitivity of the cameras sensor (also known as ISO or for you people who have used film, ASA - similar to using a fast film in days of yore) one of the side effects of this is that it can introduce a lot of `noise` to the image at the higher sensitivites which whilst the average viewer would never notice, us pixel peepers who view the images at 100% on wide gamut super resolution monitors will always shake our heads in dismay. This can be cleaned up to a certain degree in photoshop afterwards but can somtimes give plasticy skin textures if not controlled correctly.

2. Use flash - not my favourite option is natural light is available - and when I do use it I would generally try to bounce the light off the ceiling or a wall, which is OK as long as the walls/ceilings are relatively close and quite reflective (white walls are great, dark walls are not). I

guess we could use direct flash but that can make shots rather snapshotty. There are other techniques available such as shutter dragging, but I wont bore you with the details here.

We did get a few quirky umbrella shots though!

Oh well, I guess thats what my customers pay me good money for... Until next time.

Adiós a todos!

Charlene & Rob - July 2009

Off to Cornwall we go!

A wedding in Cornwall this weekend so my assistant Kevin & I hop in the old jalopy and head west. Weather report for the weekend is rather poor but we will scout out the venue and find some wet weather areas `just in case`. After two hundred and twenty (or so) miles of motorway down to Exeter we decided to take the scenic route through the moors for some photos and lunch. After stopping off at `The Warren House Inn` in the middle of Dartmoor we found a herd (or sometimes known as a mob, band or harem) of feral Dartmoor Ponies. Unbelievably we managed to get very close to them and get some great shots - one of my favourite is displayed here. Unfortunately we didn't have as much time as we would of liked so had to cut our expedition short and headed across the moors to the Saltash Travelodge... Nice. ( I did get time to grab a shot of the ST as it sat majestically on the moors though!)