Occasionally, I find myself at a venue with reduced options for my bride and groom portraits. One such venue is the Shireburn Arms at Hurst Green. It’s a great hotel, with extremely helpful staff, but rather small gardens at the rear. It’s basically a narrow strip of grass and small trees that runs alongside their patio.

Well, you just have to utilise what you have available.

After taking a few of the “expected” sitting portraits in the corner, using the concrete garden seats, I wanted something different and unique for the couple. As the weather had been pretty poor from the outset, the bridal dress supplier (Amelia’s Brides of Clitheroe) had kindly supplied a few umbrellas, just in case!

The fact the umbrellas were white and tastefully decorated with “Just Married”, seemed to shout use me! My initial thought was to have the bride and groom shelter under the brolly in a downpour, and as the saying goes – best laid plans of mice and men yadda yadda yadda. No rain! I still wanted desperately to make use of the umbrella, and had the idea of a silhouette, making use of the brolly as the “screen”.

The camera (Nikon D3) was set to under expose the scene by about 1 stop, to increase the perception of an overcast day. I placed a single speedlight (SB-900) on the far side of the couple, set to manual at 1/4 output which would compensate for the underexposure. The speedlight was triggered via Yongnuo RF-602 radio triggers.

Venue : Shireburn Arms at Hurst Green, Clitheroe

My wedding work can be found at : www.weddingphotographerinlancashire.com