In less than two weeks I will be shooting my first Jewish wedding in Luxembourg city. Since it is a first for me, I wanted to thank my lovely couple, Yaelle & Daniel, by shooting their engagement session in London !
Why shooting the engagement session in London ?
Well, obviously because they live in the United Kingdom, more precisely in Bristol near Wales. But because I know London so well (I’ve lived there for 5 years, back when I was a young handsome man :p ), I though we’d just do it here. It’s only a two-hour drive from where they live and for me it was very convenient as they are direct flights from Luxembourg right to the heart of the City.
Also they are so many landmarks in London like Tower Bridge, Saint Paul, Trafalgar Square, Westminster and villages like Camden or Greenwich… It’s a lively city and I always wanted to do a shooting there.
Greenwich park and the University
What’s the closest landmark to London City Airport ? Greenwich of course ! So that’s where we started the engagement shooting. The park is huge and from the Observatory you get a great viewpoint to the Canary Wharf financial district. You can even see some of the city’s tallest buildings such as the Shard and the Gherkin !
We then headed down to the Greenwich village centre where we had a nice lunch in a pub by the river Thames (and a pint of course…) On the way back to the car, we stopped by the Greenwich University.
London city : the landmarks and… the tube.
Then it was time to head to the City and its greatest landmarks. But since we took the tube to get there, I absolutely wanted a shot of the couple inside the tube station. We chose to do it at Waterloo station, which was my idea but it wasn’t very smart… It is one of the busiest station in London, and on a Saturday afternoon it was super crowded ! It took me forever to get the right shot. I wanted a long exposure to get the blurry effect of the train passing behind the couple. I also wanted to get the tube logo from the wall through the train’s window ! And obviously I didn’t have a tripod as I was travelling light so all this was done handheld. In the end I managed to get the shot so I’m pretty happy about it, although I wish I’d had a flash with magmod to lit up their face slightly more.
We then took a (very) long walk through the city, going from Waterloo to Trafalgar Square (where there as a rather chaotic UKip demonstration…), to London eye, Tate Modern, Saint Paul and Tower Bridge.
I’m a bit frustrated with the shots at Tower Bridge because when we got there it was dark already and we missed the blue hour. It was my fault as I didn’t time it right. Again some flashes with magmod and an assistant would have solve the problem. Next time…
Oh and we also did an engagement session in Wales ! I’ll tell you about it soon 🙂
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