A staged wedding photoshoot at the historic Empress Hotel in Victoria was one of the major photography projects for me last summer. Armando and I wanted to expand our portfolio beyond sports, so we approached our friends, who work at Lugaro Jewellers and the Empress, as well as colleagues, relatives and local models and makeup artists and proposed this collaborative project.
The shoot involved three photographers (Armando, Ilijc and myself), two male and two female models, and my wife, who was involved in all aspects from brainstorming the shooting list and posing ideas to coordinating the jewelry inventory. The preparations were fairly involved, and literally every aspect required multiple iterations and coordination with many people. We had to find a date that worked for everyone, contact local bridal boutiques to borrow a wedding dress (one of the models had her own dress) and visit the location beforehand to decide on the lighting setup and the shooting list.
The day of the photoshoot was quite intense, as we planned a lot for the eight hours. We shot in two rooms: first in a library, and then in a banquet hall. At each location, we had two lighting setups operating simultaneously, and the models rotated between them, changing the outfits and jewelry in the process. We used Paul C. Buff Einstein E640 studio flashes with various diffusers
As I look through the images after being focussed on other projects for a few months, I am glad that I had this pause to become a little detached from the whole planning/staging/shooting experience. Looking at the photos with fresh eyes helps me appreciate how much effort everyone involved put into this project and how much I learned from it.