A wonderful December wedding in Sai Kung

Its almost Christmas.....but the weather in Hong Kong refused to cool down today for our final wedding shoot of the year (2nd one this week at this venue!) where we had the pleasure of doing the stills photography for Richard and Glos. I just want to share a few images from todays shoot and say thank you to the lovely couple for inviting us to be their wedding photographers.

Balloons were a key theme throughout the day making a number of appearances

We headed out for an hour on a yacht to take some images before the ceremony

131 is a great venue for a wedding and it shone through yet again (I think this is the 6th wedding we have shot at this venue, and it has some of the best backdrops for a venue in Hong Kong in my eyes (unless you want backdrops of skyscrapers of course....then there's plenty of good locations in Central!).

The setup was well underway when we arrived at midday

This was a cool idea I haven't see before

This little girl loved the camera

the first kiss.....always nice to have a picture to remember it by ;-)

Anyway, enough of my rambling, heres a few more images for the newly weds to see and share with their friends and family as a teaser for the rest that will come in a few weeks time, we wanted to get this post out quick so they can see it immediately, they've been married just over 4 hours now...so its about time the photographer delivered some images ;-)

Best of luck to Richard and Glos for the future, and thanks again for inviting us, we wish you the very best for your future together.

Great to capture the expressions on the faces during key moments

The happy couple just after getting married

The bride and her bridesmaids after the ceremony

(Speeches...another key moment in any wedding)

(more cool ideas for wedding venue decorations)

Richard & Glos invited all their guests to 'make a wish' together and release a balloon....yet another cool and touching idea!

When we met the couple last week to review our plan...the concern on everyone's mind was 'the weather'...as the 7 day forecast for Hong Kong said to expect monsoon rain....hmmm....it seems that couldn't have been further from what we were blessed with today......My advice for wedding photography in Hong Kong....make sure you pick the right photographer and video crew and don't listen to the weather forecast!

F8 Photography provides stills and video production for weddings, events, corporate, commercial, training, sports, documentaries and NGO projects around the world, to see more of our work our meet us to discuss a project, please contact us here: info@f8photography.com.hk or check out our work via the galleries that can be accessed from the front page of our website here.

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Matt & Katie - Down under at Shek O

Friday the 23rd of September, a nice sunny Friday afternoon in Hong Kong...but for Matt & Katie it was perhaps the most important day of their lives so far.   A big wedding was the order of the day, with friends and family coming from Australia and the rest of the world to celebrate this amazing occasion. And amazing it certainly was, a really great, beautiful bunch of people who helped us get some really nice images throughout the day and very late into the night!

The wedding planner Sonya and her team from Bliss Creations did an outstanding job setting up and organising the various venues, and the setup at Shek O Golf Club was easily one of the best wedding setups I have ever seen anywhere.

It all started at the Four Seasons Hotel in Central to capture some images of Katie's preparations in her suite.  We were graced with good weather most of the day, so that gave us the opportunity to shoot natural light and the family were so relaxed it made it easy to shoot our reportage style of wedding photography.

After spending a few minutes with the bridal party it was time to dash across town to the oldest church in Hong Kong - St John's Cathedral in time to introduce ourselves to the reverend as a matter of courtesy as we would photographing inside the church and then to get some images of the bride arriving and get into position for the ceremony.  Trying to get across town on a Friday afternoon at short notice can be quite stressful in itself....but luck was on our side and we made it in good time well ahead of the bride.

This church is a great venue in Hong Kong, we've photographed several weddings here and has to be the best church from a photography perspective with lots of natural light flowing in through the large windows and open doors, all helping us to get natural looking images with great light....and of course flash photography is not allowed inside the church anyway, nor would we ever choose to use flash for daytime photography for weddings, we prefer to use natural light and fast prime lenses (we also use these fast lenses for most of the evening photography also, using natural light wherever possible).

After the ceremony it was time for another move, this time to Shek O Golf Club right round the other side of the island....again, we had luck on our side and managed to find a taxi quickly so we could arrive ahead of the rest of the party to prepare everything in advance.  We had to setup a wireless transmission rig with projectors, laptops and a network so that we could transmit our images from earlier in the day direct to the walls in the venue and then spend the rest of the day and evening shooting 'live' direct to the wireless slide show which appeared full wall size within the venue.  We do this at most of our events now and it always has a lot of positive impact and is a great way for us to showcase our work at an event (Of course it puts more pressure on us to get strong images also to show live, but that's the way we like to work).

Then it was time to grab a few group shots and images of the bride and groom outside on the lawn of the golf club, with magnificent views behind of mountains, the South China Sea and waves crashing against cliffs, really a great setting and we couldn't have asked for better weather, it was now slightly overcast, with great soft natural light through the clouds.

Thereafter it was time for the dinner, the speeches and then the party started to get crazy (the groom had warned me earlier that these people like to party hard...)  I was looking forward to the evenings photography as I knew this was going to give us a different and dynamic contrast of images to the earlier part of the day, when people party hard and let their hair down, it always works well for the photographer (as long as no alcohol lands on the laptop or camera gear :-), which thankfully somehow it didn't...lol).  We had already captured some nice traditional reportage style images, a lot of black and white work, and now we were going to be able to use some off camera flash and slow shutter speeds to get some dynamic colourful dancing shots.....

The party went on late, with lots of dancing (there was even a break-dancing act going on with back flips and head spins at one point!) and a great night was had by all.  At midnight buses arrived and took everybody off to Central for the after-party...I'm sure there were some sore heads the next day....For us it was time to leave, and spend the next few days buried in Lightroom 3 with masses of images to sort out, select and develop.

All that remains to be said from us is Thanks to Sonya the wedding planner and congratulations to Matt & Katie on their special day, it was a pleasure to be your photographer and we hope the images can help memorise this amazing occasion for you, your family and friends.

A Mandarin Oriental Wedding

It was 8.30am on Sunday the 21st August....most of Hong Kong was still snoozing, but for David & Angie, it was their big day, so no time to rest....

We went through our last equipment checks to make sure we had everything we needed for the day ahead. We had additional equipment with us including the macbook pros, so we could edit during the day, as an extra task awaited to prepare the images from the morning's events for ipad slideshows at the evening reception....sounds easy enough....but with 1500 images to go through; select, edit, retouch, export and upload in 2 hours....you need to make sure you have everything well practiced and organised in an almost military fashion....there's no second chances on a wedding day for the photographer....

The venue for the wedding itself - The Mandarin Suite at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Central, probably the most amazing small venue we've had the pleasure to work at - when we say small - its not really 'that' small - its an amazing presidential suite with 6 or 7 rooms including spas, dining rooms, etc which has the most prestigious previous guestlist including Princess Diana, Tom Cruise and Bill Clinton, amongst countless others... so a very historical and cool location for us to shoot - perfect for a wedding reception we thought!

Then came the manic few hours of editing and post production. Fortunately our small team is well versed in Adobe Lightroom, so we were able to edit efficiently and quickly to get everything prepared and uploaded to the iPads in good time to arrive at the reception location in Exchange Square at 'The Rotunda'.

Another great location for the evenings entertainment we thought, the first time we had shot here, our only concern was if there was going to be enough natural light for the large group shot at around 6.30pm, luckily the 5D Mark IIs high ISO performance saved the day for us and let us shoot freely even in dimming light.

It was an amazing wedding, we thank David & Angie for inviting us to be their photographers, we hope they love the photographs that show how much of a fun filled day it was, we always try to capture the emotion and laughter of the couple and the guests. It was nice for us to be able to see the reactions of the couple and all the guests as they browsed the photos on the ipads in the evening, and we received much positive feedback, which is always nice.

We look forward to our next shoot, be it a wedding, a commercial shoot or street photography deep in the heart of Cambodia, thats the joy of photography, every day brings a new challenge, we love every minute of it.

Heres are a few images from the wedding, congratulations again to David & Angie.