Halloween Wedding !!

 

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.

 

Congratulations to Carl & Clare!

Test photos!

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 for close 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 got the EXIF data from Simple EXIF Viewer - available for free.

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 in the world don't hesitate to get in touch (I promise not to use this setup ;-) )

Old meet new (ish)

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! 

WET WET WET, but BEAUTIFUL WEDDING!

I'm SO SO grateful to Canon that the 5dm2 and my L-Series glass has epic weather sealing. That being said I'm fairly certain Canon didn't design them for use submerged under a storm cloud that had flooded the surrounding area at the aptly named Anchor Inn, Hillfarance (near Taunton) for Hannah & Paul's wedding a couple weeks ago...the Bride & Groom came prepared though... they brought a boat along...no seriously!

 

It had been hammering it down all night and by the morning it was clear. 'BRILLIANT!' I thought. I got the gear ready and jumped in the car for the trek down the M5 with the weather looking sunny.  I pulled off the motorway and the skies began to darken….Uh oh….I got about 2 miles from the wedding venue and the heavens opened.


But this couple and their families were so awesome and never once let the weather dampen their spirits! We had a couple of dry spells which we made use of for the boys photos and luckily by the time Hannah arrived the weather was having another dry session. 

The ceremony was beautiful. Only family and very close friends with lovely readings by the Bridesmaids with the venues wedding rooms elegantly decorated by the family.

As soon as Hannah & Paul's ceremony was over it was all sunny and a mostly clear sky which meant we could do the groups and other photos in brilliant sunshine!

Congratulations again to Hannah & Paul and I'm so happy you guys love the photographs. 











Thankyou to Paul & hannah for the lovely message:


 "They are amazing! Thankyou so much. Was a pleasure having you there. You are one hell of a photographer! The lead up to the ceremony pictures gave us the same feelings we had on our wedding day! Honestly, great job Justin!"

Apologies for the complete lack of posts...

Apologies for the complete lack of posts the last few weeks. We've been utterly flat-out with a couple weddings and LOTS of shoots in the studio in time for Christmas and of course just hangin out with our now 9week (!!!) old baby Matilda. 

Time is seriously flying by!

Myself and a mate, Mark, put up a new backdrop support roller system in the studio last week. 

Apart from looking so much more professional than the previous backdrop support its also means we can roll up the white backdrop and have the black drape in the main shoot area and ALSO have photoshoots up against our bespoke "RUBBADUBDUB" Graffiti artwork (bolted to the wall behind the black drape) painted by a well known southwest street artist. It's a fully awesome, unique piece of art that we commissioned as part of RUBBADUBDUB's 1st Birthday a couple years ago and we're pretty certain no other photography company in the area have a 2.5m sq custom graffiti backdrop in their studio, making us OFFICIALLY "the coolest studio around" haha (one of our customers words, not mine!). Above you can see me being "gangsta" haha !

South West Tweetup!

We are pleased to announce that we are the event photographers for the 5th Southwest Wedding Tweetup! 

Organised by the Marry Me Group it's a chance for wedding suppliers from all around the southwest to come to an informal, social evening giving everyone the chance to mingle, put faces to names and to have some fun at this beautiful Venue.

Photographs from the evening will be on the Marry Me in Somerset Blog after the event.

www.marrymeinsomerset.co.uk

twitter.com/marrymesomerset 

FREE PhotoShoot when in HALLOWEEN Fancy Dress !

This year is just FLYING by !! Since Matilda came along time seems to be vanishing right before our eyes, she's already a month old and it's mad, she's so amazing and I love having her fall asleep on my chest when I'm back from the office but anyway, I digress.

I KNEW it was September and KNEW Christmas was only around the corner, hence getting the Christmas Offers all sorted out, flyer designed and promoted everywhere but I completely forgot about ALL HALLOWS EVE !   Here in the UK Halloween is still nowhere near as massive as it is in the USA but it's getting bigger so why not jump on the marketing bandwagon? So I designed a new flyer, bold and concise and here it is!

Halloween Offer for kids ( or BIG kids ) who want to come in fancy dress with up to 5 friends (more can be accommodated but we need a bit more planning).  

See the Special Offers page on our website for the selected dates.