DOING IT IN Style!

As part of the "style season" this issue we took ourselves off to the Parr Lane studios just to the north of Manchester. The team at Parr Lane Studios consists of Don Sinclair, the photographer; Dawn, his wife, who acts as stylist and co-ordinator at the weddings; Sarah, Dawn's PA on wedding days, and Simon who acts as technical back-up on the computing side of things.

The mission was two-fold, to introduce Don to digital imaging (he had never used a digital camera on a shoot) and to interview Dawn for our "style" issue of Professional Imagemaker. So that we had material to style and work we brought back our lovely model Jill. Dawn's pals from The Design Element, delivered a box of amazing floral creations for Don to cut his digital teeth on before the model arrived.

Although this was not quite what we did on the day, we will describe the sequence of events that Parr Lane Studios follows for a typical wedding. Although this is standard stuff for our experienced members please bear with us for the benefit of those who are poised to plunge into the wedding scene and need all the advice they can gather!

The Sinclairs meet the bride and groom many times before the actual day, preferably in an informal setting over a cup of tea or if appropriate, a glass of wine. Although the couple will be blissfully unaware of it Dawn is already collating information so that by the time the big day arrives she knows all the Christian names of the main characters plus all the brothers, sisters, parents, aunties, ex-wives, current wives etc etc. It is all part of a planning strategy to ensure that the day runs smoothly. The ground rules are established well ahead of the day, the church and vicar (Rabbi, Priest, synagogue, temple, mosque - delete as appropriate) are visited, as are the reception venue(s). Dawn prepares a schedule for the day and checks that the bride (who has usually never done this before) has allowed sufficient time for hair, nails, make-up and getting dressed. The bride's home (or place from which she is to leave) will also be visited and both there and the reception will have been checked out for the details that make things go smoothly. It is typical of the attention to detail that Dawn applies that she will have ordered-in props to "close off" the wedding party groups should they have to be photographed indoors in poor weather. Any distracting edges to a backdrop will be hidden behind pillars, pedestals and/or floral arrangements. Don in the meantime will have checked just where the power sockets are and the other male-oriented tasks! There are those who might think that some of these details are not the responsibility of the photographer but it is part of the Sinclair's befriending of the clients and everybody benefits. The clients get the benefit of advice and experience, the Sinclair's make and remain friends with them (and usually end up photographing the christenings, confirmations, Bar Mitzvah's down the line!).

On the actual day, Dawn's preparatory work starts to pay dividends. By this time she and the bride are hopefully quite good friends and the bride has both a stylist and a confident in whom she trusts. Dawn tries to allow more time than most with her bride before she departs her home. She points out that the bride has probably never worn the whole bridal outfit for any period of time and has certainly never walked around holding a bouquet with a group of bridesmaids, pages etc in tow! By the time she comes to step out of her family home for the last time as a single girl she is likely to be brimful of self confidence, poised and radiant. All this makes Don's job much simpler!

Left: Dawn’s big box contains all a gal might need on her wedding day!
Having received a report from the digital preview of a hot spot our bride,
Jill, gets her nose tickled.

Dawn's is a very special skill. She distains all the technical stuff (that's Don's job, although she does a mean retouch job with Photoshop!) but her people skills are outstandingly good. At one moment she can be a model of calm diplomacy with a stressed-out bride's mother and next she will be getting amongst a bunch of boisterous ushers. Her team talks with ushers are, like Alex Ferguson's, held in closed session - (Chatham Rules I understand is the military term - Dawn is the daughter of a Warrant Officer!). However, a little bird told us that they are quite colourful affairs. Ushers, Dawn believes, can make or break a wedding day so getting then on-side is essential. Once the rules have been explained and the threats of to the Royal Manchester Eunuch's Free Hospital have been delivered, Dawn softens them up with a chiller of cooled beers in the boot of the car. It is reported that the once boisterous bulldog ushers are now poodles, obeying her every instruction!

Having got all the man-management issues sorted Dawn is now free to style the main part of the photography. She has a build list of her groups (and the well-trained ushers are dispatched to collect any stragglers) and she has Sarah to keep the check lists updated and ticked off. Sarah also has the job of keeping the films on the move, from the bag to Don and back again. Bride getting ready

Right: “Hold it like this”, Dawn demonstrates the pose she is
chasing. Close observers will note we also changed the
bouquet!

As soon as the main groups are completed Dawn and Don take the Bride and Groom away to a discreet location for the close and intimate shots. Very much a closed affair this, nobody, but nobody, else is allowed to intrude and this often produces the magical shots that the newly wed lovers treasure above all others. With her typical attention to detail Dawn has a cool drink, snacks and cigarettes for the couple (as required) and aims to give then a 10 minute break before they quickly and smoothly complete this phase of the day's shooting.

Having run a professional kitchen herself, Dawn always has Sarah ring on ahead to the reception hotel to let them know the status and give them sufficient warning that the party is on its way. This is a simple courtesy, which recoups huge rewards, the hotel feel that everything is under control and that they are dealing with professional people, who understand their side of the story. One of the greatest discourtesies a photographer can commit is to run ridiculously over time and throw the whole catering thing out of skew, nobody wins in that situation. A hotel will unhesitatingly recommend a photographer who looks after their interests, the reverse is hardly likely.

Amongst all this activity, Don modestly claims that he has the easiest job of all. This is only partly true, but there is no doubt that having a skilled stylist looking after the details of hair, makeup, posing and arranging, leaves him to concentrate on the front of house stuff. As an aid to smooth running, Dawn has the most amazing toolbox with her. It's a bit like B&Q, Selfridges and Boots the Chemist in a box. There appears to be nothing that she does not carry from spare knickers and bras to make-up stuff, to the more mundane safety pins, belts and gaffer tape.

Onto the Set As part of the task of introducing Don to digital cameras, we moved into the studio, complete with studio flash and both film and digital cameras. It is "on set" that Dawn kicks into tornado mode- up until this point she tends to be only in whirlwind-mode. One the shoot starts she is constantly in and out of the scene, adjusting poses, tweaking clothes, arranging bouquets and coaxing the poses from the model. Her wicked sense of humour comes in very handy here; it is quite impossible for the sitter to remain inhibited or nervous for more than a few minutes. It is quite remarkable to stand behind the camera and watch it all unfold - all the photographer has to do is keep the settings correct and wait for the word. It certainly speeds up the rhythm of the shoot, we clicked our way through just short of 500 digital exposures and 7 rolls of film in about 2 hours.

After a wedding shoot, the Parr Lane Group always take the time to sit and relax for 30 minutes while debriefing the day. Back at the party, the guests are unlikely to forget their stylist, the Sinclairs are their own best advertisement. Some of their thank-you letters are very touching and it is obvious that the clients regard themselves as having made some new friends rather than employed the services of a photographer (even though in reality they have done both). This relationship building brings the clients back with their pets, family and relations at future dates.

And What of the Techie Stuff? A secondary objective of the shoot was to familiarise Don with digital shooting. For this we used both a Nikon D100 and an Olympus E20. We spent the morning setting up the software, then adjusting the lighting and getting used to moving digital camera images about. Although Don was very much at home with the D100 quite quickly, the computing side was a bit of a shock at first gulp. We actually shot 493 frames in RAW, JPEG and Tiff format getting baseline settings from a Macbeth Chart for most but not all of the lighting set-ups. We used two Compact Flash cards of 128MB and 256MB capacity. This gave 25 shots in RAW mode on the larger card and so images were downloaded, while Don switched back to film for the interval. We ended up with about 12 folders of mixed format images occupying 3.2GB of hard drive space. Frankly this was a bit of a nightmare to sort out later although we eventually sorted the files in the Photoshop File Browser using the Batch Sorting and Renaming facility. This eventually brought all the files into one location, sorted on the time of exposure - important therefore to synchronise the clocks if you are using more than one camera. Quite obviously, a number of 500MB cards of even perhaps one of the newer 2GB cards would ease this problem for out of the studio working.

The other lesson we re-learned was that you do need to be very familiar with your equipment. With a Blad or Bronica, an experienced pro will know intuitively which settings he requires in all circumstances and even the light meter will only be used for tricky situations and an occasional comfort check. A new digital camera is more like setting the video - and we have all got back from the party late at night to find we have goofed on recording Corrie for the lady of the house! While it is a bit of an obvious thing to say, you do need to fully understand your camera if you are going to take it into battle. This means knowing what to do when the settings have moved off the ones you thought you were on as well as knowing how to set the ones you needed in the first place. With a Bronica or Blad, once you have set your shutter speed and f-stop, you can see at a glance that you are in familiar territory and you have to make quite an effort to inadvertently shift those settings to something else. With an unfamiliar digital camera you can easily switch a setting while you are searching for some other feature.

Thank You's

A special thank you from Professional Imagemaker to the team at Parr Lane. Last issue's front cover was a bonus we had not budgeted for! To the guys at the Design Element (as we reported last issue, they went on to take Gold at The Chelsea Flower Show) - thanks lads, we hope you like your pics. Finally to Jill our model, who was secretly quite chuffed to get back into her posh frock and remained patient, good natured, amusing and quite stunning throughout a frantic photo shoot!

Bridal Portraiture Left: Dawn’s big box contains all a exposure check
gal might need on her wedding day!
Having received a report from the
digital preview of a hot spot our bride,
Jill, gets her nose tickled.

Right: Dawn coaxes the bride into the perfect pose to show off herself, the bouquet and the dress. The photographer should use these slack moments to grab an exposure check,
change film or whatever - just don’t waste a moment!

develop your own style.

Find more articles on wedding photography here

Photo Quote: Mysteries lie all around us, even in the most familiar things, waiting only to be perceived. - Wynn Bullock

There are 227 days to get ready for the SWPP Convention and Trade Show at The Hilton London Metropole Hotel ...
which starts on Tuesday 8th January 2013