First, let me say ‘SLAAAAAAAY!’ Jade, the bride here is a long-standing Farmer and one of my mentoring students. I feel like I had the inside track on her wedding planning and love that she booked fellow Farmer Sophie Alexandria as her photographer. I was watching for the sneak peeks, especially after Jade told me that she would be wearing some of our Don’t Be A Dick socks with her wedding DMs. Swoon!
So of course I adore this image because it is our Jade as a beautiful bride. However, I also love it for so many other reasons. First of all this pose, don’t they just look fierce? But also completely at ease with each other and with the camera. There’s a little play with gender roles and it’s the bride who has the more power, she is almost using her groom as a prop which makes this a dynamic take on the idea of a bride and groom portrait.
I also think it makes use of the setting very well. We feel a sense of the wedding from the floral arrangements around them, echoing the bride’s bouquet but then beyond that is the natural location. Sophie has been careful with the positioning so that the row of trees behind, sit comfortably around them.
This is classy, sassy and it makes me want to be a guest at this wedding.
Sony A7III | 35MM G MASTER 1.4
ISO 100 | F 1.6 | 1/1600
RC Presets
What Sophie said…
“Although chairs are having a moment being used as props for portraits right now that is not what inspired me for this shot. It was the way Jade and Jake were listening to their Maid of Honour’s speech. Jake was sitting down on the rustic benches they had hired in and Jade was standing next to him with her arm around his shoulder, it just looked so lovely and I thought what a nice portrait this would be next to the bed of flowers they had at the top of their aisle. So really they did it themselves without even knowing and I just put it together again at a different location and told them to relax their faces to make it a little more editorial but we also did some cute smiley ones too just to make sure all bases were covered.”
The Tech Talk
“People’s body language is so interesting to observe, sometimes two people just fall perfectly together without them realising. I really think you can learn so much when this happens you just need to pay attention to it and see how you can develop your own techniques from it.”
The Tech Talk
“For this image, I was concentrating on finding a strong background. The shadows were creating beautiful leading lines that I could really emphasise by how I positioned the couple. By directing the bride to lead, it meant they were walking parallel to the lines on either side of them, making it look as though they were walking into the sunlight, and drawing the eye to the centre of the frame.”