The wedding couple featured in this photo are Kim and Jurgen. They told me whgen we got to know each other, that they find it difficult to be in front of the camera, but that they would still like to make beautiful wedding portraits on their wedding day. They didn't like posing which turned out great, because I myself am not a great fan of the posed standard shots you often see in wedding photography. For the best results, it is required however that I 'direct' the couple during the portrait shoot. And that's how it went with Kim and Jurgen. We first took a walk through the forest where they wanted to take some pictures. During this walk I mostly asked them to ignore me and enjoy a nice walk together.

Still, a unique location was needed for this specific photo I'm talking about in this blog post; A location where I could keep a good distance and capture an image in a creative way. During the preparations it became clear what this place was going to be. In between the park where we took the first wedding photos and the wedding location itself, there was a long road along the IJsselmeer (A giant lake in the middle of The Netherlands), with on the sides, a long dike. This was the perfect opportunity to make a super cool wedding portrait from a distance.

The photo above shows what the dike looks like from Kim and Jurgen's perspective. However, the image I'm talking about had a completely different perspective, from far away and with the sky in the background. Only in this way I could make sure that Kim and Jurgen had a large cloud cover as a background, which makes them stand out in the photo. In the beginning I also focused a bit on the foreground. The long field of flowers creates some depth in the photo and leads your eye to the wedding couple.

I asked them to take a relaxed walk on the dike and of course, I am constantly taking pictures as they slowly walk to the left side. I asked them beforehand to walk up to the shed and then again to reverse and walk back. I deliberately wanted to include the shed in one of the photos because it still produces a completely different image than when I only use the dike and the sky for the composition.

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The black and white photo is ultimately the image I had in mind. Yet I am also very happy with the other photos that I was able to take with the couple at this place. I actually didn't know beforehand that there was a large field of flowers and even a shed nearby that I could use in my composition.
This is often the case when shooting the wedding portraits. There is an idea and we work towards it together. Yet there are always other factors that play a role on the spot and fantastic photos emerge from those elements. For example, it could have rained very hard that day and we could have added a completely different kind of effect to this portrait. I am very happy with the results we managed to capture together in this, at first sight, boring, but in the end, very interesting location.

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