Fernie is a strange place. You wouldn’t know it, driving through the Alberta-border city, but there’s some fairly remote and beautiful resorts in this area. This is one of them.
Fun fact, This isn’t the first time I’ve photographed Island Lake Lodge. I was there back in April. These two were at that wedding, and so I had met them before.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re going to start with the detail shots – there’s a lot of beautiful areas nearby, and I took full advantage.
While I was photographing the dress in the woods, I heard a rustling. I had specifically picked out a remote spot because I didn’t want any of the guests seeing the dress before the wedding. As it turned out, my fears were unfounded. It was a deer, curious about what I was doing in his part of the woods.
In the Cedar cabin, the boys were getting ready. Because of the large windows, we had some fairly bold light. And also, the mood was light. We had a lot of fun.
Over in the girl’s cabin, the dress had been steamed, and so it was time to put it on . We had a first look down the path, near “I Dew Point” (They knew exactly what they were doing when they came up with that name!), and plans for formals directly after.
And then, she was ready to meet this handsome groom out in the forest.
And there he was, waiting for her.
And of course, some photos of this wild bridal party were in order.
After a short bathroom break, the groomsmen as well.
The ceremony site here is really something special. There’s the lake in the background, and mountains on every side. An added touch I really appreciated, was benches and arch pointed towards the sun. That means each photo is backlit. Every. One. On cell phones, it doesn’t turn out, but on dedicated cameras with prime (a lens without zoom or very little zoom), it looks absolutely ethereal.
The ceremony was gorgeous and heartfelt. Hand-written personal vows, and even a few tears.
Then, some family photos, and drinks up in the lodge.
It was a blur between that and our sneakway. I had scouted out the sunset before, and realized the sun was behind the mountains at 5:45, not 7:15 as reported. Thats’ because the mountains were particularly high. As speeches started at 6pm, this wasn’t wasn’t an issue.
This sneakaway was particularly important. I didn’t have nearly as many formals of these two as I had wanted, and I had a fairly concrete idea of what I wanted the album to be. Fortunately, everything is maximum about a five minute walk away.
And these two were down to sneak away.
First, the forest photos.
You’ll notice two tricks I used for the first section. Lens flare – my 35mm f/1.4II flares like crazy, but only in very dark places, with extremely bright light. This is fairly common when it comes to film lenses, and one of the reasons why I prefer them. You can work with it just right.
And the second trick – prisming.
And one extra trick – haze in a can.
I’m not done yet.
There’s the beach, so we made our way to it. Keep in mind these photos are meant to be blown up, so you might have to squint a bit.
Sneak away sessions should ideally be around twenty minutes, thirty at the most. We were approaching thirty, but we hadn’t even come to the most important part. The whole family photo.
Although I’d like to show you more, it’s time to finish up this sampler. It’s a really massive sneak peek, at a little over 70 photos!
There’s a lot of beautiful moments, some tears, a lot of laughs (especially during the speeches!) and some breathtaking landscapes. But it’ll all be out in 3 weeks, when I’m done editing this absolutely massive album. If you’d like to see it when it’s done, click here to be put on the waiting list.
Until then, thank you for reading this far! If you’d like to stay updated, consider following my facebook or instagram. Talk soon!
