The "prep" portion of the day is always one of my favorite elements of a wedding shoot. One of the very best bridal suites EVER is used by brides at Oheka Castle weddings, on the north shore of Long Island.
When planning an image, the very first thing I look for is light. Where is the light coming from? Directional light is key. In this magnificent bridal suite at Oheka Castle, I entered a room that had "too much" light all around. When I saw this beautiful light coming from this window, I turned off all other light sources so I was able to control where the light was coming from. This prompted the bridal attendant at Oheka to loudly question my competence by proclaiming "these pictures are gonna be dark" after I asked her to keep the artificial lights off. But this is typical of my style of shooting. Use the natural, directional light, and make the most of it by creating texture, dimension, and mood.
Oheka Castle Wedding photos tend to stand out for me, because the beauty of this place just provides me with inspiring compositional surroundings everywhere I turn! Quality light, as opposed to quantity of light, is what I'm searching for. The bridal attendant was just looking out for the bride, and I'm sure many photographers would have enjoyed having all of that extraneous light everywhere and even using a flash to supplement. If you're a photographer, and you have a tendency to enter the "prep" portion of the day with a flash on your camera, this image is proof that you don't need much light to create something cool.
D3S, Nikkor 14-24mm
1/800; f/4.0; ISO 800; 31.0 mm.