I agreed to act as a second shooter for my friend Peter McDonald on the wedding of Amit & Manjit which was a very modified Indian wedding.

We started on the Thursday shooting the Henna party which unfortunately I couldn’t attend the whole event and ran a lot later because the bride was late.

On the Saturday I went to the hotel where the groom and family were staying and got shots with him. That was very easy going.

The venue for the wedding was the Pines Cabaret in Houghton Bay, and the starting time was advertised as 4.00pm so I made sure to leave the groom in plenty of time so that I could scope it out. The moment I arrived I saw problems. Firstly the wedding was take place in a small conservatory on the corner of the building with glass on every wall. To make matters worse this part of the building faced directly into the afternoon sun. Only one row of seats was placed for old people and the rest of the congregation would be standing so there were no nice aisles to shoot down.

I decided that the best thing to do was to get a meter reading of the place where the wedding party would stand and not worry about the background blowing out, so I grabbed a willing guest and did just that. The problem was that rather than arriving at 4pm the bride arrived an hour later by which time the sun had changed positions dramatically. There was nothing I could do. I just had to shoot and hope for the best.

We had planned to shoot the formals on the beach below the venue. With the main ceremony late our time was severely shortened so it was very much a rapid fire affair.

At the end of the day I was exhausted but the bride and groom were happy with the images and that was the main thing.