St Helen’s Bishopsgate, Threadneedles Hotel and Tower Bridge
When you are a London wedding photographer it helps to have the eyes of a tourist or visitor to our great city when you are working. By that we mean looking at what may be very familiar to you in a fresh and unique way, each time a well known place is the location you find yourself on a wedding day. As a busy in demand photographer, you owe it to each and every couple to be as fresh and sharp sighted with your image making on their big day as humanly possible. When Joanna and I formed Big Day Weddings ten years ago, the first question we asked ourselves was “if we were looking for a wedding photographer to capture our special day, what would we want from them?” We try and bring the answers we found for that particular question to each and every once in a lifetime event we cover. One such area we have worked many times that is still as fresh as the first time is Bishopsgate and its surrounding streets.
This particular day we started at the lovely Threadneedles Hotel just behind the London Stock Exchange and the Bank of England, on wait for it…Threadneedle Street. Kim and Michael as regulars at St Helen’s church in Bishopsgate naturally wanted to get married there, with their familiar clergy Andrew Sachs conducting the service. Bride and groom both got ready at the Threadneedles hotel, making sure their paths didn’t cross, and Joanna and myself flitted between the two of them to get the full story of the start of their day.
The service at St Helens was a very heartfelt affair, and after a mixture of reportage photography and some formals too, we caught a wedding taxi to explore Butlers Wharf and Tower Bridge area for forty minutes, while the wedding party made their way by foot the short distance to the hotel for the reception. We love photographing wedding couples in the Tower Bridge area, which again is an place we have worked in and around many many times. After our fun and games there, and some good hearted banter with our London cab driver, we all headed back to the Threadneedles for Kim and Michael’s champagne reception.
You can see we used a variety of lenses here from fish eyes to exotic fixed focal length portrait lenses. Some people have already asked “is that kissing shot at Tower Bridge real?” Well, to do an Ed Milliband: “Hell Yes!” All we did was boost the blues in an already dramatic sky. For the shot of Kim in the lift lobby area of the hotel, Joanna held a Fresnel lens spotlight over Kim while I zoomed in from a far and used my “secret” tactics to create a reaction to give the image some extra dynamism. All good fun!
To see some more images taken in and around Bishopsgate including the fantastic Leadenhall Market and our special wedding day trespassing shot on the Lloyds Building, then take a look at our dedicated galleries: Wedding Galleries
By David Green
