I’m drawn to post this one from my catalogue for this year’s 365 series because I simply enjoy it’s reality. Wasing Park is a venue I know well as I’m a preferred wedding photographer supplier for the estate. I’ve never asked David (the gentleman pictured holding the door open for the bride) what his official job title is, but he’s been at Wasing since the day the first wedding vows were exchanged on the estate. David with his wife Cathy are Wasing’s ‘super duo,’ and I genuinely mean that. If one hundred chairs need moving for an outdoor ceremony, David’s there. If the long drive needs snow clearing and salting, David’s there. If a car needs digging out, guess who will turn up? They make breakfast for guests staying over. They check guests in, and of course out. Having shot the best part of 70 weddings at this Berkshire wedding venue, I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve witnessed Cathy gently ‘mother’ a bride during those vital hours leading up to a ceremony when a calming influence is needed for the day ahead. It rains, you’re shooting portraits, and one of them will appear with an umbrella, from nowhere. Uncanny. It would be unfair to say they run the day alone, because it’s undoubtedly a superb team effort, but I’m setting this photograph up with a para or two about Wasing’s ‘super duo,’ because, well, that’s what I do. I tell stories by photographing people and I’m genuinely fascinated by the characters within my captures. Pictured above, the final few frames before the bride, Emma, makes her way toward the ceremony barn. It’s a blisteringly hot day at this point, sharp and very contrasty light threatening to rip up the composition. Look at the stark difference in light between shade and open scene. A good four stops of difference, perhaps more. The make up artist needed a little more light for final touches, David obliged. I rounded the corner to find this composition. I come back to a word I used at the start of this piece; reality. It would be easy to capture this bridal make up composition in portrait orientation, far closer, cutting out the exterior, the contrast issues and ‘man holding door open,’ but then the story would be half told. It’s David’s presence that makes this a far more intriguing and interesting frame. Some of my favourite images in photographic history introduce characters slightly off of the main subject that make you look twice. They have their own secondary narrative. Their own David, I guess.