Photographer: Dennis Orchard
While event photography almost always requires some posing or staging, Dennis Orchard truly thrives on the challenge of simply letting things happen—going with the flow rather than trying to control the action. With his skilled powers of observation and ability to respond quickly to every opportunity, Dennis reveals moments of beauty and genuine emotion.
On the Stairway
Windsor Guildhall, where Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles got married, is a small building with two narrow staircases. The image to the left was created when the bride, accompanied by a flower girl, was on her way up to the hall where the service was about to take place.
“I went up the left staircase and the videographer went up the right one,” says Dennis. “My assistant, Mandy, followed me. In the narrow space, she was in my way for the shot I imagined—but that gave me a wonderful chance moment with the bride backlit. I got myself into a beautiful position I didn’t expect! You could try for an hour to pose this and never get it like this, with her dress perfectly pulled up and the painting to set the scene.”
No More Facebook Smiles
Notice that the bride is not looking at the camera. “Many people automatically see a camera and do a Facebook smile,” says Dennis. “What I do now is simply tell them this (and I ask them to pass it along): if I point my camera at you and don’t call your name, carry on like I’m not there. If I call your name, look at the camera. So she saw I was there, but I didn’t call her name, so she didn’t look at me—she looked toward the area where she’d be getting married. It was simply chance that the flower girl was looking right at me.”
Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxford has beautiful grounds that suited a classic pose like the one Dennis created for this couple. Initially, he had no plans to add colors to the image—but the wedding was on a gray day and he felt the shot needed something to make it stand out. After masking out the couple to preserve their skin tones, bumping up the saturation yielded the strange colors seen here.
I’m Late! I’m Late!
On a cold February day, the bride below spent the morning getting ready at home. She was running a bit late, though, so Dennis headed off to the church to wait for her. Because she wasn’t ready when he left, he knew he still needed a nice shot of her—and hoped her arrival would present the right opportunity. “I usually try to get an attractive looking-down shot of the bride getting out of her car, but Brenda was too late. She hopped out of the car saying, ‘Aidan’s waiting for me!’” Dennis recalled. “I told her that was fine—if she just walked, I’d shoot as we went. We did two shots walking backwards, but this one shouted out to me.”
The one problem was a bridesmaid in the bottom-right corner. To conceal her, Dennis applied a zoom effect. It was one of the rare cases where he chose to add such an effect, but it instantly brought the focus to her eyes and the wind in her hair as she hurried to her groom.
