Monday Moments: I Love This Shot #2

Happy Monday, everyone! I hope you had a fabulous weekend – in fact, as today is a Bank Holiday, I hope you’re still enjoying your time off!

Today’s I Love This Shot is back to my ‘day job’. wedding photography – and a peek into the bridal preparations. This time of the wedding day is perhaps one of my most favourite. The sense of anticipation, the nervousness, the excitement are all palpable in every bridal prep I attend, and it’s a fantastic opportunity to capture these key moments for the groom to see afterwards. It’s also a good opportunity for the bride to ‘relax’ into having a photographer around – plus, it adds to the general sense of pampering!

The shots of the bride’s makeup are particularly key for me. It’s a vital part of the love story that is shortly to reach a new level with the act of marriage. All brides want to look at their very best, for that precious moment when the groom sees them in their wedding dress for the first time; and the preparations for that moment are ritualistic, momentous, beautiful. It’s the time when the bride is often lost in thought as she ponders on the celebrations to come; there are so many defining moments for a photographer to capture during this time.

This particular shot was taken during a wedding at St Audries Park, Somerset which is a particular favourite of mine. With makeup shots, by necessity you are often shooting very tight shots in order to capture the intricate detail – for instance, such as this shot, where the false eyelashes are just being attached. Shooting tight adds its own complications – the most important of which being that if you are photographing skin close up, it still needs to be flattering. Even the most flawless of skin has pores, and shooting at macro level is going to bring far too much detail into the shot. So, as in this shot, using a very shallow depth of field brings the attention to where I want the eye of the viewer to be drawn to - the eyelash – whilst rendering everything else into a dreamy bokeh.

There was very little available light in this shot, but the ‘darkness’ adds to the dreaminess for me. You can see the daylight coming in from the rear of the shot, highlighting the forehead and the area that the makeup artist is working on. I feel that this shot just as much about the makeup artist than the bride in many ways; the carefully positioned fingers, the lips pursed in concentration, the beautiful swathe of blonde hair caught by the light. I find so much to look at in this image, which is why I Love This Shot.