After the busy summer madness it feels like a while since I did a pre-wedding meet with a couple!  But last Sunday I joined up with Rob & Rita at Bagden Hall in Scissett, West Yorkshire for their venue recce & practice photoshoot.  It was an ominously misty autumn day and my subjects were suitably nervous about being snapped!  But it was fun getting them behind my lenses for a bit of a play in the fall leaves.

We met at their church, essentially to see where satnav thought it was.

I wasn’t 100% surprised when the official church postcode took me way down the road from the church.  It’s important to check these things!

Autumn is a funny season – it comes and goes so fast, like natures very own firework display.

If you’re not looking it’s over before you found time to get the camera out.

We drove to Bagden Hall, their wedding venue and somewhere I’ve never shot before, and in spite of the misty conditions, the colours were amazing!

To get up to the hall you have to drive over this ace old bridge, spanning a wooded ravine.

If you could just scramble down and climb up on that strut… I’ve got an idea for a picture!

Bagden Hall itself, buried in mist, looked like the location of an Agatha Christie novel.

This one’s shot from Bagden Hall’s 9-hole golf course, so I had to keep my ears pricked for distant cries of ‘fore’

So, after a warming cafetiere and a chat through their day plans & ideas, Rita & Robert got out infront of my glass and we played loving couples!

Geek chat: the hedged arch wasn’t quite complete (see the background of the hall shot above), so I tried Photoshop CS5’s infamous ‘content-aware fill’ healing brush feature, and it was actually impressively intelligent at filling in the gap & matching the surroundings!

As well as the natural smiles, I love the oranges/greens & the fore/background blur.

In the lake is a tiny island with an old derelict building, approached by bridge that I rather liked.

Yeah yeah, I know it’s wonky.

I once decided to ‘serious up’ my photography & swore never to shoot at jazzy angles again.

That didn’t last.

I like this one with the lake & hall behind.  The colour palate is really interesting

We also had a mosey round the woods on the way up to the hall for a few snaps.

Though I doubt it’d be easy to get up there in white heels in December!

I really enjoyed our visit to Bagden Hall & poking round the autumnal grounds.  Rita & Robert did great in front of the camera & although it’s always a bit of a weird experience, it’s so valuable to have done it before their big day.

Keep your peepers peeled for their On-The-Day highlights slideshow in early December.

B

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