Below is a slideshow of images that I personally enjoy from Mwende and Emeka’s wedding vow renewal ceremony in Mauritius. It does lack a few pics to complete the story, but it’s late and I have a ton of other work to catch up on.
BTW, as a side note for photographers, especially new ones looking at buying a suitable kit for weddings. I am simply amazed sometimes at the amount of equipment that supposedly “must be had” if you want to shoot a wedding. A typical list may look as follows…
must have 2/3/4/5 cameras
must have a 24-70mm f/2.8L lens
must have a 70-200mm f/2.8L lens
must have a flash (or 4)
must have remote triggers for the 4 flashes…with light stands of course
must have a tripod
must have a reflector
must have a gazzilion batteries
must have XXX bag
must have an assistant
All the images in this slideshow, with the exception of the first one (which Cindy took) was captured with a 5D MkII and a 50mm f/1.4 lens…nothing else. Now I’ll admit, I sometimes craved a wider angle lens, but I didn’t NEED it. My kit for the rest of this year is also exactly the same, except that I added a 28mm f/1.8 to my arsenal.
If you have difficulty viewing the slideshow, please click HERE to be redirected to the direct URL.
It’s Monday morning and a very gloomy stay-in-bed-with-movies-and-pizza day indeed, but I need to get out into town to pick up a few products for my clients.
I’m going to try and squeeze in a pic or two from Saturday’s wedding before I’m off though.
Foxwood House in Houghton was the venue of choice for Derek and Fran’s wedding, and the perfect one at that for their laid back classic personalities. There are some seriously old stuff lying, growing and hanging around that property, and the only regret I have for the day is that I didn’t spend more time browsing around the old house. I’m definitely signing up to receive updates on what’s happening there in terms of theatre etc. It seems like a good date night to me. It’s romantic, after all, people get married there!
Some quick ones before I get cleaned up to face the world outside. I see it started drizzling now…so glad the English cricket team got their butts kicked yesterday already
For those who are interested/concerned, Owen (the videographer) was not in my way. I chose to use him in my composition this time as he adds some visual interest to the photograph, and also leads the eye naturally towards the bridal activities taking place in the background.
Fran, I trust that by now you know where you will spend your honeymoon, hope it’s kick-ass!!
Our passion here at Ben Viljoen Photography burns heavily on the photo-journalistic side of things, and although I do realise that we create some kick-ass portraits, it is really capturing the actual, real, un-staged moments during the wedding day that gets us going in the morning.
I often get confused looks at meetings when I mention the term “wedding photo-journalism”, and to be frank, it seems like it can mean pretty much anything, so I will explain here what it means to me and to the studio, and ultimately what you can expect to see in your wedding album.
I am already married. I had my wedding day and it was totally awesome and I got the T-shirt and I have no intentions of doing it again. I say that because once I start to interfere with a wedding day as a photographer, it sort of becomes my wedding with the couple merely being actors in my own story, which is really the last thing I want to do. Wedding times are way too special to reduce it to merely a “based on a true story” film (btw, I am not a very good film director anyway).
I would much rather that the couple get married, have the (fill in the blank with whatever you want your wedding to be like) time of their life, and we as photographers will play the role of journalists, telling the real story of the day with our mega pixel monsters, and preserving one of the news headlines of your life by means of a book.
In years to come while strolling down memory lane, a welcome friend named Wedding Album will meet up with you and greet you with some honest moments from special times gone by, and usually so with a firm handshake of sweet nostalgia.
The boys anxiously waiting for the 
Those who have photographed at St.Columbus, Parkview before could agree with me that I was rather lucky with the light.
