August 6, 2025

Congratulations to Sindy and Andrew on their recent wedding! I also want to publicly thank them for the opportunity to capture their special day.

They overcame a lot of obstacles to see this day come to fruition. One of which was the weather. Now unlike as Alanis Morrisette famously put it, in her song “Ironic”, “… like rain on your wedding day…”, this was the complete opposite. Here in Nova Scotia, we were in the middle of a drought that the province hadn’t seen in years. The last rain before the big day was in early June. Even at the time of writing this on September 10th, we’ve only had one significant rainfall since the day of the wedding. It was so dry that the provincial government had prohibited people from forests and trails to try to reduce the chance of forest fires.

Being summer in Canada, Sindy and Andrew, like many other Canadians wanted to have an outdoor wedding. Especially here in Nova Scotia, “Canada’s Ocean Playground” (as it says on the license plates) is an awesome part of the country to have outdoor weddings. Future blog post to follow about outdoor locations in Nova Scotia.

They found a venue, at Healy Events in Kentville. Having shot weddings all over Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, this property, also known as Healy Farms, has easily taken over as my favourite wedding location shoot. So much so, that I feel that it deserves its own post as well.

Another obstacle that they had to overcome was scheduling. Andrew’s job sees him unavailable for days at a time, so they had very limited windows. This lead to a first for me personally, a wedding on a Wednesday. Days tend to meld into one another for me, so days of the week for me and my character don’t really mean much, not nearly as much as the date, like the 16th or 30th to the like, what day it falls on is pretty much irrelevant to me. The only times it did was while I was teaching and growing up and going to school.

The other unique aspect of the wedding was the start time. They had originally scheduled it for 10am, which actually turned into 10:30. Personally, unless it’s specifically requested, like it was here, much like suntanning, I try not to shoot between 10am and 2 pm on sunny days. The sun is at its peak during that time and tends for unflattering light and shadows. Cloudy days provide a natural scrim, so it’s a little more forgiving. Now even with the early start time, it was still not working with everyone’s internal clocks as one of the bridesmaids proved.

Now for many of you who have followed my wedding photography, and are accustomed to my style, I try to capture the event not just in documentary style, but as a fly on the wall. I try to blend in to the point that people don’t know I’m there. During the ceremony obviously not so much, but I’m also shooting at angles that don’t draw attention or block the guests’ views. (Shot most of a ceremony sliding around on my butt once because of the set up.) Because of this style, I love capturing the unscripted and spontaneous. Sindy provided me with the most spontaneous situation to date… She desperately wanted to climb a tree in her wedding dress. Sadly Andrew didn’t see it her way and didn’t want to join her. (Not that I blame him. I used to love climbing trees, but in a suit on my wedding day, probably not one of those times.) Up she went, and was able to convince her friend and bridesmaid to join her.

The photos from that turned out great, but I also couldn’t help but internally scream at the missed opportunity that was, Jess (the owner of Healy Events) has that tree all wrapped in lights that looks amazing at night. My creative juices were flowing in overdrive, wishing that it was darker and the lights on the tree had taken effect and the both of them were in the tree.

As I mentioned earlier, we were in the middle of a drought not seen in those parts for at least 10 years. So as you can imagine, the vast green meadow that doubles as the stage for the ceremony was completely brown. Which is where Lightroom’s masking and their newer “landscape” choice was a huge time saver and also allowed me to edit the photos as if we had plenty of rain throughout the summer. No one wants to look back at their wedding album and see photo after photo of brown vegetation.

As I was changing the grass from brown to green, (see the first photo for the comparison), I accidentally moved the hue slider too far. But it also unlocked a thought. Selective colouring was a huge trend back 15 years or so ago. To be honest, I still find one frame from time to time where I feel like it works. But this triggered another thought. What if I essentially turned an image into monochrome, but with the couple’s colour of choice, which for Sindy and Andrew was purple.

Personally I liked it, it gave it a surreal other-worldly look. I included it in their final gallery hoping that they liked it, or at least hoping I didn’t get an email asking me what I was thinking to include such a garish image. Not only did they like it, they included it as one of their favourites.

Here at Healy Farms, they also have a fabulous reception area in the upper floor of one of the barns. Which on one end has a window. Through this window, I captured probably one of my personal favourite images from the day. It was staged and at the same time, unscripted. I managed to capture one of those in-between moments.

As I mentioned earlier, the reception area is a personal dream come true. Not only is it the natural wood of the inside of the barn, but they’ve also treated the wood which brings out wonderful warm colours of the wood, and you’re not going to get a splinter anywhere in the space. They have the patio lights hanging from the ceiling which helps with he lighting but still dark enough that I used one of my portable studio lighting set ups which included the Godox AD200 with the studio bulb and not the speed light head, held with a Manfrotto 1051Bac light stand and a Godox S2 Flash S-Type Bracket with Bowens Mount.

All in all, it was a great day. All the best to Sindy and Andrew and I wish them all the happily ever afters they wish for.