Trisha and Adam travelled all the way from The USA for their intimate destination wedding in Ireland. The location was Cloughan Castle set in the Irish countryside just outside the town of Loughrea in Co. Galway. The castle offers great privacy to its guests and is a stunning location for a wedding, photographers are spoilt for choice in terms of locations for wedding pictures as there are great options both within the castle itself and externally on the grounds that surround the Castle.

However, on this occasion the weather was not on our side and most of the photography concentrated within the Castle. Still as I mentioned earlier this was not a bad thing the as you just need to be aware of what the Castle can offer and be as creative as you possibly can be.

The wedding ceremony was performed by Dara Molloy a Celtic Monk-Priest who hails from the Aran Islands. I have worked with Dara many times over the years, and he is a truly lovely man. I’m always struck by the way he connects with the bride and groom, performing ceremonies that are memorable, thoughtful and intertwined with an element of fun and warmth. It doesn’t matter if there are a hundred guests or five as was the case with the wedding of Trisha and Adam the atmosphere that Dara helps to create is always the same and I have to say I’m always privileged to witness it.

After the ceremony I had a window of roughly one hour before everybody sat for dinner to complete the photography and as I also mentioned earlier the weather was not on our side as it was wintertime in the Irish countryside with the light fading fast. Luckily for me I’m very familiar with Cloughan Castle as set about stirring up my creative juices. As there was no natural light streaming into the castle from outside, I had to create my own light for the photographs I intended on capturing. So, I relied on my trusty Godox flash and Octa box (flash modifier that softens the flash) to fire it through, one light keeping it simple and placing it strategically as I felt the scene warranted it. The castle it constructed from stone which soaks up any ambient light, this is light which helps to illuminate the overall look and feel of a scene. So, from a technical point of view in terms of getting a good ambient exposures I needed to be very careful of my shutter speeds and ISO settings to help retain detail in the shadows and backgrounds otherwise my images especially because I was using flash photography could turn out similar to that of shining a flash light down a corridor just to illuminate specific area with everything else becoming dark or in most cases black with no detail, this was not what I wanted here. Towards the end of the couple session portraits, I suggested that we go out for a few moments even though it was still raining, especially after they had travelled all this way it would have been a pity not to have captured some external views of the castle. Trisha and Adam agreed and didn’t mind at all going out in the rain. We spent a few quick minutes outside capturing some wedding images which in the end proved very worthwhile.

Trisha, Adam you were a pleasure to work with and thank you for having me as your wedding photographer.