This was a difficult Wedding to photograph. I pride myself on being open and transparent and this is no exception. Let’s take a look at what made this wedding so difficult for me to photograph…

The first half of the day was really nice. The rain made it a bit more challenging but for the most part, we could get most of the shots they wanted.

I was the first Wedding Photographer to photograph a Wedding in the new ‘official’ room; the ‘Cary Room’. Although there have been Weddings there in the past (I’ve also shot there in the past!) it is, as of the 1st of April, the new default room for all weddings. This is a MUCH nicer room! It has more windows and more natural light. It is a lovely, airy room and I really enjoyed photographing in there.

Let’s take a look a few photos…

After the ceremony, the rain stopped play for a while as we all took shelter. After a while, it stopped and we all made a dash to near the Church for confetti, and the group shot. I also took the Bride and Groom shots here. I’m glad I did as there was more rain when we got to Babacombe.

So, once we arrived at the Royal Cavery the struggles began. The entire length of the room is windowless which means it is very dark. For me, the biggest issues were cold LED lights on one side of the room and very warm tungsten lights on the other side.

In the speeches photos you’ll also notice that one bit of the white backdrop is lit with a cold blue LED light, the other bit with tungsten orange. So it wasn’t just the room, but the lights in different parts of the room also causing issues with white balance and colour casts.

Normally my solution to this is to get my two strobe lights and bring them into the room to balance that nightmare out. My next issue was I could almost touch the ceiling, so the ceiling was too low to use my own lighting.

I also had to go really low power on my speed lights because of the low ceiling. All of this meant I had to really up my ISO (This is what creates the noise in a photo).

I use the widest, most professional lenses on the market (shooting at f1.4) but even they struggled to keep the ISO below 8,000, with a Speedlight. If you’re a photographer, you’ll know how dark the room was when I say that.

My style is bright and airy but to get closer to that, I had to compromise more noise in the photo than normal, and inconsistent colour casts because I couldn’t use my lighting. If you want bright and airy photos please make sure the room you hire is bright and airy. This was the second most challenging venue I’ve shot in (The Undercroft at Torre Abbey being the most challenging). As long as I’m able to use my own lighting I can push many venue issues to the wayside. If the room makes it impossible to use my lighting, I will do everything I can but there are limits when I can’t use the tools at my disposal.

If you’re thinking of a venue get in touch. I have shot many, many venues, and chances are I’ve been there and can tell you of any problems you may face.

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