When the call came through from Carl's father to book I was really excited to shoot our first Halloween wedding!!
As soon as I heard that Carl & Clare had EVERYTHING themed including all the guests being asked to wear red and black I knew it definitely wasn't going to be your average wedding especially when I found out Metallica was on the cards somewhere along the lines! BRILLIANT!
They arrived together at Bridgwater Registry Office in a beautiful 1963 Rover 110. Clare was dressed in a tight, body hugging black, ankle length dress with black roses and detailing around the neck, her hair curled with a black fascinator, a stunning red rose bouquet, her custom Dr Martin's and a black Metallica emblem necklace.
Carl was in a black suit, red shirt and black tie, contrasting with his Bestmen in black shirts and red ties.
Clare's Maid of Honour, Tara, was dressed in a red and black dress and silver and red necklace, matching earrings and a red rose corsage.
The Bridesmaids were Carl & Clare's daughters, dressed in knee length red dresses with black swirly rose patterns, black tights, black cardys, red shoes, red mini rose bouquets and cheeky smiles!
Walking down the aisle to "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica with her father and her 2 girls in front, Clare looked as calm as when they arrived to the venue. Carl, stood at the front with his 2 Bestmen definitely looked the more nervous of the couple!
After the Ceremony the couple walked out to "For Whom The Bell Tolls" again by Metallica.
As the couple's wedding reception was at the Castle Club in Bridgwater I had suggested we shoot the group photographs in Bridgwater's King's Square, a beautiful square of Georgian buildings with a small park in it's centre which I knew would look amazing at this time of year with its abundance of autumn leaves from the ancient chestnut trees.
After the group photos it was starting to get a bit chilly but Carl & Clare were still game for some photos so I grabbed some relaxed shots of the happy Halloween couple walking through the park in the autumn leaves and around the side streets of King's Square as they walked to the Castle Club for their reception.
The reception was done up with Halloween decorations, carved pumpkins on all the tables as well as sweets and treats! I especially loved their cake, again in their theme - very dark chocolate icing and red rose petals topped off with awesome and very accurate models of Carl and Clare handmade by Tara the Maid of Honour.
These are test photos from my Vest Pocket Kodak (c.1925) mounted (as per the previous post) on my modern Canon 5d mark2.
I have to report that these photos are disappointingly good quality! It works for everything from portraits to macro & arty abstract to landscape and focuses by sliding the lens on the rails forward and back.
I
was hoping for ghosting, light leaks, flares and at the very least ridiculous
vignetting! None of which are apparent to the extremes I was hoping for :-( The worst thing about this lens is I've cleaned the glass and I can still see black spots and various marks on the photographs.
For me this lens' strongest feature is
it's ability forclose up portraits and macro shots. The aperture is controlled by
spinning a disc on the front of the Kodak lens that literally has 4 different diameter holes in it (1-4 although I'm not sure what
these reference to regarding f#). What I can see is that due to round
apertures the bokeh is really quite nice as it's not dictated by the
number of blades as per more modern lenses.As
it was pretty dank and grey out today I kept the
aperture wide open on #4 but I still had to crank the ISO so that's why
some of the darker photos might look noisy if you're pixel peeping. Ctrl Click (MacOS) or right click (windoze) to "save as" to view the Shutter and ISO on each photograph.
None of these photos have been near photoshop (apart from to go through my droplet to make them a more web friendly size). The photo of my daughter to the right was an in camera sepia effect.
All in all this lens actually works very well if you can manually focus and definitely got a few odd looks and started a couple conversations when in town and in the coffee shop.
I think I might have to try fitting another of my vintage
cameras to the 5d to see what happens. STAY TUNED!
In the mean time, if you have any friends or family getting married, anywhere inthe world don't hesitate to get in touch (I promise not to use this setup ;-) )
I had had this thought when I first started collecting the vintage cameras a couple years ago. I then saw someone had done somewhere else and thought I'd give it a go when I had 5 spare minutes. It took me a while to figure out which camera would fit best. I wanted to use the Butchers No.4 (c.1915 I think - correct me if I'm wrong) to the left but I couldn't get the shutter to stay open also the Butchers' body would have needed mounting further away from the 5d's body to allow me to get it off and on. I finally decided on the Vest Pocket Kodak Model B (c. 1925) from my little collection. Sure, it's worth some money, not a massive amount but the cameras are just sat there in the studio.
I wondered what it would be like to shoot through a near hundred year old lens...which then led me to thinking about all the things this lens might have shot and bearing in mind what the world has been though in the last hundred years I was sat daydreaming (and cringing) for quite some time... I'm going to test this out this afternoon so more pics to follow!
Sitting, usually £15.00 NOW £12.00 INCLUDING ONE 9"x6" Print
Sitting Package, usually £35.00 NOW ONLY £28.00 INCLUDING THREE 9"x6" Prints
PARTY PACKAGES, usually £10 Per Person, NOW £8.00 Per Person INCLUDING one £9"x6" Print Per Person
FULL RESOLUTION IMAGES of your whole shoot on CD (print what you want, when you want) in Colour & Black & White, usually £135.00, NOW £108.00.
Due
to the high volume of Photographs I have to edit and the volume of
prints that our Printers have to deal with our last date for sittings to get prints in time for Christmas will be Sunday 9th of December.
UK Special Delivery £6.00 for Prints (Envelopes) & Rolls (Large prints are sent in tough cardboard rolls) International Signed For™ with Airmail (Europe) £11.00 International Signed For™ with Airmail (rest of the world) £16.00 nb:
International Signed For™ with Airmail delivery, Royal Mail's target
time is three working days to Western Europe, five working days to
Eastern Europe and seven working days for the rest of the world.
