I set out at 8 am in the morning with the aim to reach St Andrews for 10:30 at the very latest. With the wedding starting at 1:30 I thought that would leave me plenty of time to get to know the for me unknown venue - The Old Course Hotel. At 10:30 I've not even made it out on the Edinburgh City Bypass and a feeling of dread was setting in quite nicely. Despite getting phone calls from all sorts of people telling me to turn around I thought I'd try to push through for wee bit longer. Eventually after crossing the bridge into Fife the traffic eased up a little and I was able to drive as fast as I dared on the icy snow covered Scottish roads. My driving adventure resulted in a couple of near accidents and a close to 6 hour drive to St Andrews, a journey that normally takes just over an hour. This is the first time in my career I've been late for a wedding and as I sneaked into the church at 1:45 I was hoping my pounding heart was only audible to me... Anyway show must go on, so with trembling hands I started snapping away at what was left of the church ceremony. It is not easy shooting at low light at the best of times so I really had to fight a peculiar urge to run away and perhaps phone my mother...
After having calmed down a little the picture making went quite smoothly, and the wedding party itself was the complete opposite of the freezing cold outside - warm, happy and full of Italians (didn't see any of those on my way up) Lorna's vail was particularly amazing and after having worn it as a vail for the first part of the day she turned it into a shawl towards the evening, more couture than wedding in fairness - It was stunning. Lorna's parents also made me feel incredibly welcome and they got me room for the night in the hotel since there was no hope of me making it back that night. Their warmth and hospitality will definitely stay with me for a while.
In this wedding I broke one of my number 1 rules about photography - I shot a large number of pics with the camera tilted to a wee bit of an angle. Normally I think that is the ultimate tacky tackling of having no compositional angles, (when in doubt lean camera type of thing), but due to the chandeliers in the ceiling I thought it framed the pictures quite nicely. All images are shot on a 5d and a 1ds, lenses 50mm 1.2 & 85mm 1.2. I shot one or two on my 24-70 2.8, but it really wasn't a lot.
Below are a few of my favourites from the day. Njoy!
