2013 - Page 3 of 6 - Wedding Photographers Cardiff

New House Wedding Photography Cardiff

Wedding Photography New House Hotel, Cardiff and South Wales Wedding Photographer

New House Wedding Photography

Here are a few of our favourite images from our latest wedding of Gemma & Matt at St Mary’s Church in Whitchurch and then at The New House Country Hotel, Thornhill, Cardiff. Gemma got ready at her Parent’s house in Thornhill, helped by her bridesmaids, who also were responsible for her lovely hair & make up!. The sun kindly popped it’s hat on which makes everyone feel relieved and adds to the happiness of the occasion. The house was lovely & light and made it easy to photograph the morning’s proceedings and the conservatory provided the backdrop for the family & bridesmaids photographs. The bridesmaids looked gorgeous in long mocha coloured dresses which were from High Society in Cowbridge, really complimented Gemma’s beautiful weddind gown. Added to the ensemble were 4 flower girls and a page boy who are Gemma & Matt’s nieces & nephews and a bridesmaid’s daughter! Matt, his best man and Ushers and his & Gemma’s Dad looked really smart dressed in grey suits with cream waistcoats and pink cravats to match the bridal bouquet flowers that Gemma’s Auntie had arranged – though Matt stood out as the only one to wear a cream cravat! The gift bouquets for the Mums and key family & friends were supplied by Covent Garden Florists. The cake was made by a good friend as was the place names. The ceremony took place in St Mary’s Church, Whitchurch, Cardiff, the service was taken by Canon Chancellor John Rowlands. Matt’s family are parishioners at the church so it was a very personal ceremony. After the ceremony we were able to take some photographs outside the church, particularly the traditional ‘confetti’ shot just outside under the litch gate. Guests then made their way to The New House Country Hotel for drinks and canapes. We shot all of the family portraits in front of the hotel, utilising the magnificent view over Cardiff which made a great backdrop. We also had time to shoot a few Bridal Portraits of Gemma & Matt before the wedding breakfast and speeches commenced in the Wyndham Suite, which boasts it’s own terrace with the amazing view. Table decorations provided by Emma Hall Designs, Colwinston. We also took advantage of some lovely early evening light to capture a few more bridals and have a bit of fun with the Hen & Stag party friends. The evening entertainment was provided by the resident DJ Alan Griffiths who got everyone up dancing the night away!!!

Our style of wedding photography is a mix of documentary photography, unobtrusively capturing moments with natural, Fine Art style bridal portraits. For a further look at our images of our South Wales Wedding photography, please have a look at our Gallery or other Blog Posts and if you have any questions about our services don’t hesitate to leave a comment below or contact us.

Wales Location Portrait Photography

The Lindsays had their first ‘on location’ Family Portrait Photography session last Saturday. Despite the wind, it was dry and sometimes sunny at the beach in Llantwit Major. Evan looked so cool in his yellow Mac’ & he enjoyed walking on the flat rocks with his Mum & Dad, Jules & Dave! We love to photograph at this beach as it provides a cool back drop for Portrait Photography and includes the element of Landscape Photography too. We first photographed Evan as a newborn 18 months ago, it is fab watching him grow and to see him running around, enjoying the outdoors! We met Jules & Dave 8 years ago when they asked us to photograph their Wedding Photography in South Wales at The Coed-Y-Mwstwr Hotel, Coychurch, Bridgend, they have just celebrated their 7 years Anniversary!

Our style of portrait photography is a mix of documentary photography, unobtrusively capturing moments with natural, fun, location portraits. For a further look at our images of our South Wales Portrait photography, please have a look at our Gallery or other Blog Posts and if you have any questions about our services don’t hesitate to leave a comment below or contact us. Also if you would like to arrange your own Family or Child or Couples Portrait Session please email [email protected]

Beach Portrait Family Portrait Llantwit Major Location Portrait Portrait Portrait Photography Vale of Glamorgan

Caradoc Court Wedding Photography Herefordshire

Wedding Photography Caradoc Court Herefordshire, Cardiff and South Wales Wedding Photographer

Caradoc Court Wedding Photography

Here are a few of our favourite images from last Saturdays wedding of Nicola-xan & Ant at Caradoc Court, a magnificent 17th century Jacobean manor house near Ross on Wye, Herefordshire. Nicola-xan and Ant both got ready in rooms at Caradoc Court. Nicola-xan got ready in the lovely bright Bridal Suite with help from her close friend Laura and her bridesmaids. Much to everyone’s relief the weather co-operated and got better and better as the day progressed. This was great for us as the ground looked stunning with Tulips, Cherry Blossom and Magnolia out in full force. It was great fun shooting with Alan & Helen Grove of Grove Video Services, always a pleasure to have around on the wedding day. The bridesmaids looked stunning dressed in purple Dessy Collection which really complimented Nicola-xan’s beautiful wedding gown from Blue in Cardiff. Ant, his best men and Ushers looked really smart kitted out by Dyfed Menswear. The bridal bouquet and table decorations were supplied by the Florist of Cardiff whose flowers always look amazing. The ceremony took place in the spectacular Great Hall with rings provided by Parkhouse Jewellers of Cardiff. After the ceremony all the guests took advantage of the lovely weather and beautiful grounds to enjoy their drinks and canapes. We shot all the family portraits in the gardens, utilising a few different backdrops. We also had time to shoot a few Bridal Portraits of Nicola-xan & Ant before the wedding breakfast and speeches commenced in the panelled ballroom. We also took advantage of some lovely early evening light to capture a few more bridals. The evening entertainment was provided by DJ Grant Reynolds of the Boutique Disco who got everyone up dancing the night away!!!

Caradoc Court Herefordshire Wedding Wedding Photographer

Food Photography Wales

Food Photography Wales Llansantffraed Court Hotel

Here are a few food photography images recently taken of the amazingly sumptuous food being produced at Llansantffraed Court Hotel near Abergavenny. The Hotel’s philosophy is to use local organic produce wherever possible supplemented with their own freshly grown vegetables, herbs and fruit from their walled market garden. The new kitchen team is led by the very talented Head Chef Mike Hendry, formerly from the Michelin Starred Crown at Whitebrook. All the food photography was taken using natural light and environment in keeping with the organic approach of the hotel. Our main obstacle on this unusually hot day was getting the deserts shot before the ice cream melted and of course controlling the urge to tuck straight in to the mouthwatering dishes!!! The hardship in this line of work is the after shoot tasting, sheer heaven………! Can’t wait to shoot more of their food – watch this space!

So if you fancy a real great dining experience, we can thoroughly recommend a visit, check out their menu options.

For a further look at our photography, please have a look at our Gallery or other Blog Posts and if you have any questions about our services don’t hesitate to leave a comment below or contact us.

Abergavenny Commercial Photography Food Photography Llansantffraed Court Hotel

Panoramic Photography Tips

Panoramic Photography Tips

These are a few panoramic images from our recent trip to Victoria, Australia and here are some tips of the method I use of taking and stitching multiple images to make a panorama.

Tripod Method

1. It’s important to get the top of your tripod mount level so that when you pan the tripod head the horizon stays level. This saves you having to loose parts of the image later when cropping to a level horizon. You do this by adjusting the height of each tripod leg independently. Some tripods have a small spirit bubble aid at the top of the tripod legs. I also use a spirit bubble that attaches to the camera flash mount so I can double check the level as I pan the camera. I can then make any further minor leg adjustments if required.

2. It’s most important to use the camera in manual exposure mode. If the camera is using any of the auto exposure modes, each frame is likely to be lighter or darker than it’s adjacent frame, this then becomes much harder at the stitching stage. If you are including the sun in your final panorama image, take the initial exposure from the frame nearest to the one that includes the sun for a more balanced overall exposure.

3. Choose a manual white balance setting so that the white balance remains constant throughout the scene.

4. It’s also important to put the lens/camera in manual focus mode and focus manually. You do not want the focus points changing between frames.

5. When taking the images, start at one edge of the intended panorama, take the first shot, pan the camera making sure you have at least one third overlap of frame, take the second shot, then repeat until you get to the other end of your intended panorama image. I always start at the left edge of the panorama, I just find this easier when stitching. Also, bear in mind that you may often loose some information from the top, bottom and edges of your panorama at the cropping stage after stitching.

6. I always use a shutter release when the camera is tripod mounted. This helps speed up the panning and taking process and stops any vibrations when shooting long exposures. I also try not to touch the lens when panning just in case I inadvertently touch the focus ring.

7. Composition is equally important in panoramic photography as any other type of photography, so know the main rules of composition and also experiment by breaking them. Sometimes points of interest at the edges of the frame often work to help lead the eye into the image and keep it there.

8. Switch your camera to live mode to aid composition and manual focus.

9. Be careful with very wide angle lenses as perspective can often look odd when stitched into a panoramic picture.

10. Watch out for movement within your panorama, such as people, transport, flora blowing in the wind and waves breaking on a beach. These can sometimes cause overlapping sections that don’t line up at the stitching process and ruin the final image.

11. Experiment using your camera in both the vertical and horizontal position while creating your panorama.

12. For very precise panoramas you can buy a panoramic head for your tripod. This head enables you to move the mounted camera back, forth, left and right so that the Nodal Point of the lens is directly over the axis of rotation of the tripod, this will eliminate parallax error. Each lens has a different nodal point and can be quite tricky to find. For anyone interested here is a link to a youtube video that demonstrates the setup.

Hand Held Method

Use the same guidelines as with the tripod method. Manual Exposure, white balance and focus. Try and keep any horizon level and allow room for some cropping after stitching.

Stitching the Panorama

I won’t go into this in great detail as it will depend on what software you use to stitch the panorama together. I usually use Adobe Photoshop ‘merge to panorama’ which I can also access directly from the RAW files in Adobe Lightroom. Here is a link on Adobe TV on how this works on Adobe Photoshop Elements.

If you haven’t got Photoshop or Photoshop Elements another excellent free programme that I can thoroughly recommend is called Hug-in.

To Summarise

Level the tripod head

Level the Camera

Use manual exposure, white balance and focus

Take the series of shots from the left edge of your panorama

Allow a little room for cropping

Check Composition

Check for movement within image

Stitch the Panorama

Experiment and print

Landscape Photography Panoramic Photography Photography Tips Seascapes Travel Photography

Margam Park Orangery Wedding Photography Wales

Margam Park Wedding Photographer, Port Talbot, Neath and Swansea Wedding Photography, Cardiff and South Wales Wedding Photographer

Margam Park Orangery Wedding Photography

Here are a few of our favourite images from last Saturdays wedding of Charlie and Ryan at Margam Park Orangery, near Port Talbot. The day started at Charlie’s parents house in the Mumbles, Swansea with her parents and bridesmaids helping with the proceedings. We met Ryan at St. Paul’s Church, Sketty, Swansea prior to the ceremony. The ushers were doing a great job, ferrying the guests into church under umbrellas. Charlie was driven to the church in the very cool VW Beetle. Ryan’s Uncle Bernard helped officiate the service making it all the more special and aided by the beautiful singing form the Dunvant Male Voice Choir. The rain was still relentless so there was no hanging about at the church and all the guests made their way to Margam Orangery for the reception. We were lucky enough to get access to the House at Margam to do some of the Bridal portraits. Charlie and Ryan even ventured out at dusk into the abbey ruins for a few shots at some of their favourite spots. Their band Perfect Day provided the evening entertainment.

For a further look at our images of our South Wales Wedding photography, please have a look at our Gallery or other Blog Posts and if you have any questions about our services don’t hesitate to leave a comment below or contact us.

Margam Park Orangery Port Talbot Sketty St. Paul's Church Swansea

Portrait Photography Wales

Beach Portrait Photography South Wales

Here are a few images of Gemma and Matt’s beach portrait photography shoot on Saturday at our local beach at Llantwit Major. Amazingly it was actually warm enough to take our winter coats off, lets hope spring is finally here! The sun was so bright, so we decided to shoot a mixture of silhouette, high key and reflected light shots. Gemma and Matt were great sports and battled the rocks, slippery seaweed and incoming tide to get their outdoor portraits. It was great fun and we can’t wait to photograph their wedding, which is coming up at the New House Country Hotel, Thornhill, Cardiff.

Beach Portrait Engagement Portrait Llantwit Major Location Portrait Portrait Portrait Photography Pre Wedding Portrait Vale of Glamorgan

Bohol Philippines

The Island of Bohol Philippines

We met up with Christian, a friend from our Tao Philippines trip and had a great day trip discovering parts of Bohol. We started at a statue commemorating a 16th century blood compact between the Spanish and Bohols. Nearby is the Church of Immaculate Conception in Baclayon. Completed in 1727 and made of coral stone it is considered one of the Philippines oldest churches. We had a short stop at a butterfly farm before heading off to see the islands infamous Tarsier. The tiny cute Tarsier is one of the worlds smallest primates. They are nocturnal hunters feeding mostly on insects and apparently can jump between 3 and 5 metres! We then travelled through forest, paddy fields and small villages to the Chocolate Hills, Bohol’s best known tourist attraction. They are very uniform grass covered hills between 30 and 50 metres in height, geologists think they are a weathered Marine Limestone that sit on top of impermeable clay. I prefer the legend that they came into existence when two giants threw stones and sand at each other in a fight that lasted for days. When they were finally exhausted they made friends, left the island and left behind the hills! We decided not to wait at the main viewpoint for sunset as the direction of light wasn’t great so we headed off-road into the surrounding Paddy fields. A very friendly local farmer guided us to a perfect spot to watch the sun go down, he even went off and got us some fresh coconuts for us to sip! In the meantime Sacha had met all the local children and sent them out to make sure we weren’t lost, it was such a shame it was too dark by then to take any pictures. Running alongside our taxi they gave us a great Philippine sendoff!!!

Asia Bohol Landscape Photography Philippines South East Asia Travel Photography

Panglao Island

Panglao Island Central Visayas Philippines

We flew from Puerto Princesa in Palawan to Cebu City, the second city of the Philippines. We had an overnight stop here before getting a 2 hour ferry trip to Tagbilaran on the island of Bohol. From here it was about a 40 minute transfer to Alona Beach on Panglao Island. We had a great week staying at the Alona Northland Resort, highly recommended if anyone is going that way. Alona Beach is another big diving centre of the Philippines. We had a great daytrip to the nearby Balicasag Island, watching the sunrise and spotting some dolphins as we travelled out on the boat. Balicasag had some of the best snorkeling we had seen in the Philippines, so many fish, it was like being inside a tropical fish tank! We also stopped off at Virgin Island, a beautiful sandbar – shame about the hawkers selling shells, corals and urchins! We had some great sunsets on Panglao, the best when we got a local tricycle driver to take us to the end of the island. There is no way we would have found the spot if we went ourselves so it just goes to show you can’t beat local knowledge.

Asia Landscape Photography Panglao Island Philippines Seascapes South East Asia Travel Photography

Palawan Adventure

Our 5 Day Voyage of Discovery through the beautiful Islands of Palawan

We joined 24 other intrepid explorers on a 5 day voyage through the totally unspoilt archipelago between Coron Town and El Nido organised by the amazing Tao Philippines. The group consisted of nationalities from Wales, England, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, USA, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Canada & the Philippines. We were split into two outrigger style boats with A-Mazing crew on each headed by Johan and Jimboy. We all had our main bags stowed on the boat and had daily access to a day bag which housed your essential items, including a change of swimwear and a toothbrush – what else do you need??? It was so refreshing not having access to any outside communication for 5 days, something we take for granted in our modern lifestyle. This trip was not about first class travel and luxury accommodation, it was about sleeping on pristine beaches, adventure, deserted Islands, amazing snorkeling and swimming, drinking Rum and making new friends – not necessarily in that order! We ate lots of bananas, rice and fresh fish which was expertly prepared by the onboard chefs. The crews of both ships were superb, such good fun! They did soooo much for us, nothing seemed a chore, always smiling – a huge Thank You goes to them!

Asia Landscape Photography Palawan Philippines Seascapes South East Asia Travel Photography