This is St Anne’s Golf Club on Bull Island, which is an accidental island that sprang up when a wall was built to try and stop silting blocking up Dublin Bay. Now it’s a Park and a Bird Sanctuary. I’m ashamed to say though I was born and raised in Dublin this was my first time setting foot on the Island. Claire and Gav were loaned a Golf Cart and we went off and had a bit of fun with it. It was the end of March so although it looks like Barbados it was actually quite chilly and they were very patient with me. I could have kept snapping all day except Claire’s teeth were starting to chatter.

OK, you know you’ve been neglecting your blog when you start to get dubious comments like “Valuable thoughts and advices, I will become your constant reader.” The thing is I have loads of posts running around in my head including 3 weddings, some painfully cute babies, my thoughts on second shooting a wedding and I’ve also been thinking about a few more Photoshop posts. So when deciding which of these to do today it had to be Alicia and Conor’s wedding. I did a little sneak peek awhile ago but they’re back from honeymooning and have kindly allowed me to blog some more so thanks guys! This wedding was fun, the bride and groom are laid back and funny and I felt more like one of the guests at times. Plus they have brilliant taste in music and I knew when I realised that the classical guitarist at the church was actually playing an Elbow song that this was going to be a great wedding. Anyway, I’ll shut up now and show you some photos:

I love Alicia’s expression in this photo, I can feel those butterflies!:

OK, there’s this wonderful moment in most Irish weddings just after the bride and groom have had communion and the priest is down giving communion to the congregation. It’s like an intermission for the bridal party and everyone relaxes and has a bit of a joke and it’s the one chance I get to stand right in front of the aisle and photograph the whole scene:

and married!

Rathsallagh House is a beautiful venue for a wedding, you wouldn’t know it from the photos but the weather was a bit patchy that day, it didn’t matter, it was still gorgeous:

The bridal party were hilarious and we had the run of the grounds to wander around and take photos:

…and of course a few of the Bride and Groom:

Phew…take a breath…ready? OK, let’s keep going. The reception had a Beatles theme (an instant hit with me!) and the speeches were epic. I think I took nearly as many shots during the speeches as I did during the ceremony:

At one point after dinner I noticed the sunset across the lawns and had to get Alicia and Conor out for a few more portraits. Conor is into photography himself so he understood the call of amazing lighting

Then it was back inside to boogie the night away to the sound of the Classic Beatles. This shot makes me very happy. It’s pretty much straight out of the camera and I did a little happy dance when I saw it in my viewfinder:

Thanks for allowing me to post these Alicia and Conor!

I took this photograph at a wedding on Saturday while I was second shooting with Christina Brosnan of Brosnan Photographic. I definitely have more to say about second shooting and this wedding but I’ll save that for another post. I’ve got a lot of images to go through first but I really like this one of the priest in the sacristy waiting for the bride to arrive. I didn’t grow up a Catholic and I have a bit of a fascination with the ceremonies and the traditions of the mass (”Smells and Bells” as my parents would say). I wish I could show you the photo I took in my head just before I took this one…does that ever happen to you? You see a scene and it’s the perfect photograph and you have it taken in your head but your hands and camera are just that tiny bit too slow? A split second before I took this one he was staring out the window with his head tilted upwards like he was praying. I really wish I could show you that photograph.

After the group ones I stole the couple a way for a few:

Just a few more from the reception…and yes, they had a pig on a spit!

Thanks so much Ian and Tonya for allowing me to share these!

Tonya bought her dress on eBay and it was amazing, the train was so long it took up half the room and she wore a beautiful Gone With The Wind style corset under it. Her waist was tiny.

It rained all morning and then just as it was time for the ceremony the sun came out and they were able to go ahead with it under the gazebo looking out at the Wicklow Mountains:

The groomsmen all wore blue runners and so did the extremely cute flowergirl:

This is the shot I took after nearly coming to a nasty end at the bottom of the steps:

Just a couple more from the ceremony and I’ll post some more tomorrow:

This church is on Twitter! Very cool Father Trendy

Have a great time in Kenya you two!

Take this shot for example, it was taken at a brilliant wedding I got to shoot in Ballybeg House (fast becoming a favourite venue for me) at the end of May and the ceremony took place outside where the sun was shining down from a deep blue sky. This section of the day is probably the most intense, there are so many shots you have to get and you almost need to be in a few places at once. Either that or have some kind of telepathy to know exactly what’s coming next and so where you need to be to catch the best angle. In this wedding, instead of the traditional walk down the aisle, the bride and her father walked through the old house down a narrow dark hallway and out into the blazing sunshine. As it’s happening here’s a sample of how my mind is whirring:

OK, they’re getting ready to start walking, will I expose for her dress or do I want to try something different? Maybe if her dress was backlit (the light coming through the lace could look beautiful) and if she and her father are silhouetted against the light from the doorway ahead of them, yea I can see it in my head…how do I expose for that!? OK, I need silhouette but not completely blacked out, so underexpose the dress but not too much and click, click, click because they’re walking and the hallway’s not that long and I need to be ready to quickly change exposure when we hit that sunlight, so I’m clicking and crouching and walking and trying not to step on the dress and spinning the shutter and some of it is probably blurry but maybe that’s ok. And we’re out.

All that in a matter of seconds and the whole day is kind of like that.

And I love these two photos, I know the second one’s got movement in it (yea, yea, I mean it’s blurry) but I kind of like that and it’s what I pictured in my head in those seconds beforehand and that makes me feel good. Happy accidents are wonderful but to actually get a shot you pictured…there’s something satisfying about that. But what would have happened if it hadn’t worked? I couldn’t ask them for a redo, not to mention that when we did get out into the sunlight I was still looking, clicking and walking so I tripped on the door jam and only just stopped myself from tumbling all the way down a flight of concrete steps taking the bride and her father out like skittles and landing in a tangled heap at the groom’s feet. Thankfully I somehow managed to stay upright and although my heart was pounding the ceremony was only just beginning so I had to keep shooting. And therein lies the rush and the stress of shooting weddings, they wreak havoc on the faint of heart…and the clumsy.

Canon 5D, 17mm, f4, 1/80, ISO 3200

One of the challenges (and fun parts) of wedding photography is coming up with different angles and different viewpoints on similar events. Every wedding is unique, but it’s still easy to get a bit comfy and take the same shots that were successful in previous weddings. This is my attempt at mixing up the traditional reception line at the end of the ceremony from a wedding I shot a few weeks ago.

In other news…we’re heading down to Cork this afternoon for the massive geek party Blog Awards. We’ll be child free for the first time in years so I plan on letting my hair down (translation: drinking one cocktail and promptly dozing off in a comfy chair in the hotel lounge).

Canon 5D, 17mm, f4, 1/200, ISO 400

Some more photos from Joy and Stephen’s wedding. The preparations were all at Joy’s family home and her 3 sisters Claire, Dawn and Gayle were her bridesmaids. I think at one point Joy’s mum was pinning the veil into Joy’s head You have to suffer to look this gorgeous!

Canon 5D, 85mm, f1.8, 1/160, ISO 400

I vaguely remember days as nice as this one. The ceremony was in Howth Presbyterian Church:

Canon 5D, 17mm, f13, 1/125, ISO 200

OK, the photo on the left is my favourite from this wedding – actually it’s a contender for my favourite from any wedding I’ve done, but (proving my favourites are never anyone else’s) Joy prefers the one on the right:

I loved the dark wooden rafters:

Canon 5D, 17mm, f4, 1/200, ISO 3200

Just for a bit of fun, I was playing with this sequence in Photoshop. I’m still an animator at heart

Mr & Mrs:

Canon 5D, 17mm, f4, 1/200, ISO 3200

Canon 5D, 28mm, f/2, 1/80, ISO 400

A favourite from a wedding I’ve been meaning to post for ages. This is Joy (and she really lives up to her name) being helped into her dress by her Mum and her sisters. I was laughing so much it was hard to hold the camera still, it was such a fun wedding.

This is also the photograph I sent in as my submission to the excellent Homepages project by Catherine Brodigan (which is still on sale from Lulu.com if you want to nab a copy).