Bridal Fashion Shoot: Winter and Summer

This morning as we all shiver our way through the day I have some more winter bridal inspiration to share with you. I loved this shoot, with beautiful images by wedding photographer Brett Symes -with help from make-up artist Tora Young and stylist Natalie Dale. Brett has photographed numerous bridal fashion shoots, many of which have ended up in the national wedding magazines. He told me, "it's incredible how these shoots start in influence and spill over into the way in which I photograph a wedding".

Winter wedding look one: ethereal lace

Lace is a huge trend in 2012 weddings. Kate Middleton made a big statement with her beautiful lace sleeves (the story of which still brings shivers up my spine: lacemakers having to wash their hands every 20 minutes, the lace so very delicate and fine) - but there's none of the formality of Kate's dress here. Lace is beautiful and ethereal, a fabric so intricate spiders could have made it for the queen of the fairies in a forest...

I used to make lace, by the way! Nothing like this...

Winter wedding look two: effortless elegance

My mum's wed­ding dress was a lit­tle like this — my par­ents were mar­ried in Decem­ber 1971 and she made her own wed­ding dress. The dress is beau­ti­ful with almost seam­less white fab­ric, beau­ti­fully tai­lored and exquis­itely ele­gant — for any bride proud of her fig­ure, be she curvy or wil­lowy — I adore this dress… there’s some­thing com­fort­ing about the ruf­fles at the end of the sleeves here too!

Sum­mer wed­ding — sim­ply pretty cot­ton look

I adore the sim­ple cot­ton dress this model wears — it’s lovely: proof that you don’t need a big designer wed­ding dress (if any­one needed proof!) to look beau­ti­ful for a sum­mer wed­ding. This for me is the ‘girl next door’ look: pretty, sweet and inno­cent… yet there’s some­thing alter­na­tive about this look and I’d say this par­tic­u­lar girl next door is a free spirit: she doesn’t fol­low the crowd. She wears what she chooses, she knows she’s beau­ti­ful inside and out.

About wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Brett Symes

I asked Brett a lit­tle about his pho­tog­ra­phy. He said, “I don’t think my style fits neatly into any of the boxes such as reportage or vin­tage. Per­haps I aim for a bit of a mod­ern twist on clas­si­cal but with­out the for­mal­ity. I like to cap­ture the pro­ceed­ings of the day as they nat­u­rally unfold but I also love to add some input on the couple’s por­traits to infuse them with style and glamour.”

Brett’s own story is a fas­ci­nat­ing one. Although I’m based in Bris­tol, I pretty much work through­out the coun­try, I fre­quently find myself in Lon­don or the Cotswolds.

I love the depth and breadth of pho­tog­ra­phy that a wed­ding offers, from the grand cer­e­mo­nial pro­ceed­ings to the tiny del­i­cate details. I also love the dif­fer­ent pho­to­graphic dis­ci­plines that come into play: por­trai­ture, archi­tec­ture, chil­dren, fash­ion, interiors.

I also think that wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy has dra­mat­i­cally changed over the last few years, or at least the per­cep­tion of it has. There are some won­der­fully tal­ented pho­tog­ra­phers work­ing in the wed­ding indus­try who are now proud to stick their hands up and say ‘YES, I’m a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher’. I think that wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy is now as cre­ative, inno­v­a­tive and inter­est­ing as an other form of pho­tog­ra­phy out there.

Prior to being a pho­tog­ra­pher I spent many years work­ing in the film indus­try and had the luck & joy of work­ing with vision­ar­ies such as Terry Gilliam and Sam Rami amongst oth­ers. So film is most cer­tainly a key influ­ence. Music is another major influ­ence but it’s the magic that hap­pens when you put music against film that is my dri­ving force, the emo­tions that can be trig­gered, the places we can be trans­ported to — that’s pow­er­ful stuff indeed — one of the great mas­ters of this is Michael Nyman.

I also always love mag­a­zines, even from a very young age, I’ve always just grazed through them, tak­ing in the images and the color palettes more by osmo­sis than any con­scious under­tak­ing. It kind of sad­dens me the whole move­ment towards e-magazines, I like to be able to phys­i­cally inter­act with what I’m look­ing at and read­ing, to turn a page over or rip a page out.

Inte­rior design has also been a big influ­ence or rather the pho­tog­ra­phy of inte­rior design has. I spent far too much of my child­hood being dragged around numer­ous hab­er­dash­ery shops by my Mum, I guess some of it had to rub off!

What does 2012 hold in store for Brett Symes Photography?

It’s a really excit­ing year ahead with some fab­u­lous wed­dings to look for­ward to. I can’t quite believe that I’m shoot­ing a wed­ding a St Paul’s Cathe­dral in Feb­ru­ary, I’ve got but­ter­flies in my stom­ach already for that one, I can’t wait.

I’m also exhibit­ing at my First National Wed­ding show in March at the NEC, it will be great fun get­ting to meet with loads of brides-to-be. Do come along and say hello.

Links:

Web­site: www.brettsymesphotography.co.uk

Blog: www.brettsymesphotography.co.uk/my-blog

Face­book: www.facebook.com/pages/Brett-Symes-Photography/154539654590328

Twit­ter: @BrettSymesPhoto