Sunday Read: Shooting a Winter Wedding

Sunday Reads

Laura Currie 
23rd October 2022

To have and to hold…

Are you staring down the barrel of an upcoming winter wedding booking and feeling a little fearful? Are you fretting about the light (or lack of) and the prospect of letting your clients down? You may be a seasoned wedding photographer, but if you’ve never shot a winter wedding before, you can be forgiven for feeling a little apprehensive. Hopefully this article will help you convert any feelings of dread into excitement and anticipation, resulting in a sublimely happy couple!

It's easy to assume a winter wedding won’t have that same excitable buzz as a vibrant summer wedding – it’s unlikely there will be colourful bunting or bright summer flowers, but winter weddings offer all sorts of visual and atmospheric treats of their own! Think candles, fairy lights, and everyone cozied up round a roaring fire at the end of the night drinking hot toddies – proper hygge vibes.

Another ace up winter’s sleeve is the beautiful evening light. The sun is at its lowest point in the sky in winter, meaning ‘golden hour’ lasts longer and is even more dreamy. This can make for utterly gorgeous couple portraits; you are free to take your time and it gives them the chance to relax. Sidenote: for all your kit, bring as many spare batteries as is practical as they will hold less charge in cold temperatures.

When the sun does set it will still be early in the day, and you’ll be able to play with all sorts of lighting techniques, such as light painting or dramatic backlighting. This brings us to the kit…

First things first, which camera do you choose? While nowadays, pretty much all mainstream digital cameras are excellent, each still have different strengths to offer. Obviously a key priority is competence in low light – if you can help it, it’s best to stick with natural light wherever possible so as not to be a big glaring distraction. The Canon EOS R6 really excels in this department, the level of noise-free detail it can capture in low light is astonishing. It can ramp up to ISO 102,400 and offers 8-stops of image stabilisation, which is invaluable when longer shutter speeds are required.

A large dynamic range is another thing to consider, with bright candles and fairy lights against dark backgrounds, you’ll need every stop of dynamic range you can get; the Sony a7 III boasts 15 stops making it a great choice here, it is also a bit more budget friendly than the R6, however it doesn’t cope *quite* as well in low light.

Before you get started for the day, head into your settings and ensure AF assist lamp is enabled, this will let the camera emit a small beam of light when focusing to help it grab on in low light.

In terms of lenses, it pretty much goes without saying that the bigger the aperture the better – let more light in and you use a shorter shutter speed. A minimum of f/2.8 is essential.

Whilst staying in stealth mode is best wherever possible, sooner or later you will need to introduce additional light. Constant LEDs are perfect for this and so much less obtrusive than an old-fashioned flashgun bobbing about blinding everyone. A constant light source provides more ambient feel, both for you and the people around you. The Rotolight NEO III is ideal, it can sit on top of the camera, on a stand or even just be propped up somewhere to add the light you need. It’s SO versatile, the brightness is adjustable up to 5,443 LUX and it wields 16.7 million colours and both functions are precisely controlled using the handy dials on the back. If even more power is required, perhaps for some dramatic couple portraits outside, then the Rotolight AEOS II – the big brother of the NEO, offers the same features with even more oomph and will do you proud.

So in conclusion, as long as you have the right kit for the job and are confident when using it, it really will remove a lot of the stress and panic you might be anticipating. That’s not to say that all you need is amazing equipment to succeed, you will need to know the kit very well before the big day, but it certainly helps! Ideally, you’re best off hiring the kit a few days before the wedding to give yourself time to get to know it, by doing this you will have the best chance at delivering the best possible quality to your clients and giving them a wonderful collection of images that they will no doubt cherish for years to come!

We have a dedicated category for wedding photography in our Solutions section, you can browse it, HERE.