I hit the road and headed to Vancouver for Levi and Benson’s Vancouver wedding at the Loden Hotel over the BC Day long weekend. It was the first time I’ve been in the Loden, and really enjoyed the venue.

The Loden has a beautiful looking grand salon just off the restaurant that really made for an elegant wedding venue.

After the ceremony we headed down to the Vancouver Conference Centre to do some portraits. The conference centre has a green roof, as well as a fantastic view of the Vancouver harbour and North Shore mountains. It’s part of the photojournalist’s creed that it’s always easier to seek forgiveness than permission, so I asked the guys to jump over the wall so I could get a photo of them on the grass covered roof.

The Olympic cauldron is such an iconic part of the city that you have to stop by for some photos.

While we out taking the wedding portraits, the wedding decorators reset the salon for dinner.

Since Benson was only in Vancouver for a few weeks before heading home to Singapore, he and Levi took a trip up here to Whistler, where I met them for an engagement portrait.

Tech Stuff
I keep telling young photographers that if you’r going to be shooting weddings, you need to know exactly what you’re going to do for portraits way in advance of the wedding. The week before this wedding, I stopped by the Loden and checked out all the locations, and then walked down to the harbour to scout some locations. I had 30 minutes to get all the portraits, including the 15 minutes it took to walk there and back, so there’s no time to be doing stuff on the fly.

One of the test photos I took with my iPhone during the location scout. I spent almost an hour looking around for spots for portraits.

Cameras: Nikon D3 x 2
Lenses: Nikon AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8, Nikon AF-S 28-70mm f/2.8, Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8
Lighting: Nikon SB-900 flash, SU-800 controller, and a small softbox on a light stand.
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