My post in regard to this wedding is a little different this week.
Normally, I struggle to whittle a finished set of over 500+ finished images down to ‘just’ 150 or so (for the blog post) and it’s an agonising process as every image that makes the final cut, is an integral part of the story.
A question that is sometimes asked is “can you tell a story in a single picture” and the answer is both yes and no.
Yes in that it depends upon what that ‘story’ is and if it’s a single image that defines a moment (or short period or event) in time, it can be done, but in many cases, only to the photographer or the client/subject.
In regard to a wedding day, I’d say no, it cannot be done.
For instance, I could define Fin & Dom’s Castelnau Des Fieumarcon wedding in a single image…to me, but it almost certainly will not define it to anyone else for the simple reason, you (unless you are the B&G or a guest!) were not there and so do not have your memories to add to this single image.
But this single image could define their wedding for me:
How does it define it for me? Well quite simply because weddings in France are both a destination and a journey for me and in the case of this particular one, a road trip (hence the roof box).
We (that is Julie and I and our daughter Honey) made a few days in La Rochelle under canvas fit in prior to shooting this wedding it being half term.
The inclusion of the car define’s the time & miles made to be there and the time of day (sunrise) my dedication.
The dedication bit is getting up at 4.45am in the dark in order to drive the 10 minutes to the foot of the hill below the village venue in the SW corner of France in order to capture an hour and a half’s time-lapse photography resulting in 12 seconds footage for the filming side of things. Dedication!
But to anyone else who was not there, does it tell the story of the wedding day? Well no…
So how few pictures could it be done with? Where was it, what did it look like, what did she wear, what did he wear, who was there, what happened…?
I made a list of ‘essential must have shots’ that I aim to capture and define every wedding and that number was between 30-35 depending on the wedding type, but still falls well short of the typical 500+ I would provide from most wedding days…so I decided on 50 for the purpose of this post.
These 50 are below and later, when I have finished the filming side of things, the full post with a much more extensive set of highlights (200) will be over on my other site dedicated to weddings in France, firehorsephotographyfrance.com
Update. The filming side of things is now complete and here is Fin & Dom’s ‘Macro-Film’ that combines photography with filming with soundtrack plus ambient sound capture. The option exists for audio highlights also at client discretion.
