We love to post full blogs telling the story of a whole wedding day, from the excitement of getting ready to all the fun on the dance floor. This Blog however is the first of a series where we will look in detail at individual moments or key stages of the wedding days we are chosen to document. In this case, we focus on Joanna and Steven’s beautiful wedding day at the Yorkshire Wedding Barn and their sunset couple shoot. Below you’ll find our favourite images from the most stunning sunset we have ever photographed. We also explain how we took the images and how we take all our couple shots. Namely, without posing. So if we photograph your wedding day there will be no posing, no staging – just beautiful natural photographs of the best day of your life.
The images above are unlike any other we have ever taken. With a sky like that – who needs fireworks? The artist J.M.W. Turner (known for painting stunning sunsets and landscapes), who visted Richmond on a painting tour, couldn’t have asked for more. Immersive and Impressionistic, the spectrum of oranges, reds and purples shimmered across the western sky like a Monet painting. Silhouetted against the swirling, layered waves of saturated colours Joanna and Steven appeared against the immensity of Nature – the very apotheosis of ‘Romanticism’ in the arts where nature reflects human feelings.
But in photographing these images, timing was everything. To set the scene: it was at the end of Steven’s speech at the beautiful Yorkshire Wedding venue The Yorkshire Wedding Barn. We glanced out of the window and saw the most amazing sunset – a blood red sky with dashes of orange and purple. Earlier, Joanna and Steven had said they would love to have a walk in the sunset if they were lucky enough to have one on their wedding day. So, the speech concluded to rapturous applause, we went over to our happy couple and let them know the sun was setting outside spectacularly. We said there was only a few minutes light left and with that, they began to run up the nearby hill towards the darkening horizon. It was worth it – we stayed at the bottom of the hill and photographed some beautiful, natural and very romantic moments as Joanna and Steven enjoyed the most amazing sunset ever. It was the perfect end to their perfect wedding day. All our images are unposed and unstaged, we just let people be themselves and enjoy the moment.
This is the same for all weddings we photograph and the same for every moment we capture. We don’t take our couples out for posed and staged ‘portraits’ that feel separate from the rest of the wedding. When we take our ‘couple shot’ images like the ones in this blog, we simply accompany our couples for a walk around their venue, it’s grounds or the surrounding area. We just want it to be an extension of the rest of the wedding day.
We don’t pose our couples or ask them to stand in a certain way – when you look back at your wedding images, we want you to see yourselves, having the very best day. We want the images to bring back memories of your wedding as it really happened – not of moments created by the photographer. As the images above and all over the website show, we don’t have to stage things to take beautiful images of our couples together. If we are photographing your wedding we really just go for a walk and let you be yourselves. We will make you feel at ease in front of the camera throughout your wedding day and your couple shots will be no different.
So, in this blog, you see natural moments capturing that walk in the sunset Joanna and Steven had dreamed of. As we ran after them, the skyline evolved in a series of images – rippling waves, great crests of fire – all changing relentlessly for five precious minutes before the light faded and the reds turned to purples and greys, as the inky depths of night set in.
Yorkshire Wedding Barn Photography by award winning Yorkshire Wedding Photographer M and G Photographic. From our Yorkshire base, we photograph weddings all over the UK and Europe. So wherever you are getting married, if are looking for a documentary wedding photographer and most importantly, if you love our photographs, it would be great to hear from you! Please get in touch here to check our availability on your wedding date.
We recently won the The Wedding Industry Awards ‘Best Wedding Photographer Of 2020’ award and have been recognised for our work by winning many other awards, including 2019 awards from Fearless Photographers, This Is Reportage, WPS and Ninedots.
We love our job and we hope you love our work – any questions at all, please do get in touch!