Ray of light in the ice plants

More from today

A great morning spent with Callum at school, mummy and me, then circle time, then swimming with his schoolfriends in their therapy pool, then home and back to finish work on last Saturday's wedding.

I'm touched here by Reuben nestled in the ice plants and then raising his head to wave at passersby. Reuben is 4 and I'm making a little collection of images to celebrate his birthday last week. Callum in the same spot and here, the empty corner lot of ice plants a year ago this week, when the plants are at their most gorgeous bloom.

A few things have struck me this week about wedding photography after last week's wedding, its challenges:
- try not to schedule international flights just a few days before, jetlag's a bummer and requires copious Red Bulls
- only meeting the bride for the first time the day before the wedding
- having full creative freedom in the brief
- shooting between 4 freeway distant locations I didn't know, Google maps in hand and sometimes following the wedding party in front, resulting in jumping out and shooting upon arrival at each (bride's home, church, park, reception venue)
- the challenges of not having a second shooter to help
- capturing the bride going down the aisle from behind and in front along with capturing the groomsmen and bridesmaids independently
- hair and make up running over by 2hrs thus limiting my shooting time
- finding missing participants such as the groom for formals!
- later the bride's parents going missing during the formals so I needed to recapture them at 10pm in fluorescent light
- posing and directing the couple, young kids, and a group of 150 guests for a formal shot
- never missing a moment
- the candid captures of the water sprinklers starting up behind the bride which I quickly captured
- creating a Sneak Peek within a few days whilst focusing on the larger proofing gallery for release within a week
- protecting the disks at the wedding by backing up
- shifting between different lenses swiftly (but thankfully aided by the shootsac)
- mastering the technicalities of the camera and swiftly assessing the right exposure
- searching out the right light in very different environments, from bright sun to candlelight
- thinking on your feet of new and creative ways to express what you see and despite carrying a crib sheet of shots, knowing that most of the opportunities will be captured spontaneously where beauty lies
- balancing the additional camera round my neck ready to go in an emergency
- workflow management at home such as reviewing 2000 images efficiently, rating, creating smart albums, colour coding and flagging
- backing up and archiving in several locations
- signature editing special images

and most importantly, capturing what the bride and groom really want when they feel they have no idea what they want. It's absolutely not a natural progression from portraiture. It holds very unique challenges, a full scale project management which often dominates the reason you are doing the work, for your love of both the creative and technical challenges.

I started thinking too about different approaches to editing. I have always been attracted by beautiful things, especially in nature and found Spring to feel a lot like love. I developed a strong love for colours which left me feeling serene, soft often desaturated colours, bleached by the sun. At university in the 80s, I had my Atlas open on the same page continuously because I adored the pastels of the map on those particular pages. I would colour block my clothes in my wardrobe to be more aesthetically pleasing and each colour would carefully graduate to the next. Well, that's when I had a great city working wardrobe complimented with a vast array of cocktails: now it consists of jeans and run down clothes.

I digress: What someone finds pleasing in editing won't work for me at all. The colours have to leave an emotional print upon me for an image to be pleasing to me.

I can't say the week's been less than exhausting, but it's also been immensely rewarding, even dragging my iMac to school so I can work away whilst Callum's playing in the classroom alongside me. It's also a true honour to witness as it was here, the great love between a couple renewing their vows after 25 years with a full scale second wedding.

Thanks to the boys for giving me time this week to work and the weekend of fun lies ahead. Needless to say Blip has taken a bit of a back seat, but I'll be back.

Techy: captured with the 50/1.4 at 1.8, my new go to lens.