After a couple of years off due to the Covid pandemic, I had my first wedding of the year at Vancouver’s Brockhouse Restaurant on Point Grey Road, along the Vancouver waterfront and Kits Beach area.
Both Kristy and Leonard got ready at the JM Marriott Parq hotel in downtown Vancouver. It was a really nice spot, and having both the bride and groom at the same hotel makes my life a lot easier to go back and forth between the two rooms.
One of my favourite shots of the girls getting ready is this one with the dress backlit. Normally I would hang it from the curtain rod, but in this case it was about ten feet up, so I got Kristy’s sister to hold on to it. This only works if you have high quality lenses, otherwise shooting into the such bright light will cause a massive lens flare.
The nice part of having everybody staying at the same hotel is you can pop over to the guys room and got some photos of them hanging out.
Kristy snuck off to the bathroom to get into the dress. After a couple of minutes, I asked if she was ready for some photos. In response, she kicked the door open a crack and I was able to get this shot of Kristy and her sister. The blue door and warm interior light in the bathroom made for a pretty cool shot.
Kristy and her sister arrived at Brockhouse in this beautiful 1930’s Bentley limousine.
It was a beautiful ceremony on the great lawn at Brockhouse. The weather was spectacular for the end of April.
The old Bentley was an awesome backdrop for some bridal portraits.
We also got a chance to do less posed photos. Really a nice car.
It was a really beautiful evening for the reception.
The evening light was incredible, so I grabbed Kristy and Leonard for a couple of final evening portraits. The MC kept yelling you have five minutes, then you have two minutes. The result were definitely worth it.
We finished up the night with some dancing.
Tech Stuff
I was a little nervous to go back to shooting weddings after taking three years off for the pandemic. I’ve also completely changed my equipment, ditching the industrial grade Nikon DSLR cameras and zoom lenses that I’ve been using for the last 20 plus years for the much smaller and lighter Nikon Z6 cameras and fast f/1.8 prime lenses. The Z series gear really lets you be a lot more casual and less intrusive, and the quality of the fast primes, the 35mm and 85mm f/1.8’s are phenomenal.
Cameras: Nikon Z6 x 2
Lenses: Nikon 35mm f/1.8, Nikon 85mm f/1.8, Nikon 14-30mm f/4
Flash: Godox 860II