The Genius Wedding Photography of Briars Atlas at Neuendorf House

Wedding Ethos: Octopus Mode

To borrow a phrase from a client: “Did we just hire an octopus?”

And that’s what I like to hear. Nobody ever really knows what images they will fall in love with when they receive their gallery… If they choose something that is less “predictable editorial coverage” and more like a treasure chest of every dynamic possible shot by 5 different people, then Iʼll be happy.

On a wedding I carry a variety of gear and dispositions to try and cover all ground from clean and classy, to offbeat and artistic, to chaotic and gritty.

Couples are (hopefully) hiring any of us wedding photographers for having a point of view, and not being on autopilot. SO that’s where my focus is.

Photographer: Briars Atlas

For me, these simple reception tableshots are some of my favorite parts of the day, and nothing brings them to life quite like Kodak film. Iʼll hunt around the room looking for people on their phones or engaging with others across the table or in conversation behind them, look in the other direction pretending my attention is elsewhere so they donʼt feel like theyʼre being observed, and just wait for a nice flattering moment where a few simple things are happening that work nicely together.

Gear That Speaks Your Language

I’m all about gear fluidity… each camera lens, body, or flash brings a totally different way of seeing and interpreting a moment so I like to change it up, a lot. For this wedding, my setup looked like this:

Film: Hasselblad 500CM with assorted lenses, Canon EOS 1V, Fuji GA645GII, Contax G2
Digital: Canon R5 + 24–70mm
Flashes: Profoto studio kit (including the relentless A10) and trusty Canon 430EX II — tiny, dependable, and easily replaceable.

Two Shooters, Unlimited Time

Having a second photographer who is not only skilled on the tools but also people-aware and connective in all the right ways as my second photographer Sarah, is vital. It helps when they work like I do: all-in, at all-times, doing everything we can for the couple with energy and optimism from start to stumps.

‘How I shot this’
As I had loads of cameras on me at any one time, and with some of them over 50 years old, there was bound to be a light leak somewhere in there. Thatʼs half the reason I carry a diversity of them, it lets little happy accidents like this happen. One whole roll suffered this fate, and I turned most of them to black and white. They have this stunning withered newspaper print feel to them as a result that I love so much.

Prep That Frees You to Flow

I occasionally aspire to be a mood-boardʼer and prepare ideas ahead of time, but then Iʼm reminded time and again that my bigger skill is simply going fishing in a cyclone.

What I do plan is my gear and timings, and make sure theyʼre on lock, which letʼs me be agile and exploit great things as they unfold, without getting too caught up on something planned.

If I have everything I need at my disposal, charged and ready and on hand, I feel able to do what I do best, which is be responsive, and catch moments and ideas as they come that can be arranged thoughtfully in the editing process.

Iʼve seen enough David Lynch interviews now to feel fairly validated in that disposition (even if I only have the creativity myself of 1/5th of his left nasal hair).

‘A Favorite Image’
Neuendorf House is spectacular top to tail, but the pièce de résistance is the front entrance. Matt legged it up to the rooftop, Alison was hanging around the front, I got them aligned (not terribly much work there in case you canʼt tell), and simply let things happen. You canʼt direct this stuff... get them in place, scratch whatever compositional itches matter, let them be, and make sense of it afterwards, it is possible to interfere too much. This one immediately felt like an homage to my favorite painter, Jeffrey Smart.

Ceremony

I knew we were getting the full “giant burning orb in the skyˮ special for the ceremony, which for me means loads of opportunity for working F8-16, and in a place like that, you generally either want super shallow depth of field or super deep.

It would feel “offˮ shooting any images that feature the architecture if you can detect the hard lines blurring out. This is how I like to shoot: less reliance on blurring things out, more reliance on working that little bit harder to get layered images with more things in focus.

Portraits

Matt referenced a noir eastern European photographer (whoʼs name escapes me) that made beautiful, high contrast black and white self portrait images with lots of leading lines. He has a bit of mountain goat in him I reckon, and when he scaled the far rear wall here as their friends played tennis on the recovery day, everything seemed to line up to channel that. Hard sun, F16, off to the races.

I usually love off camera flash for a bit of drama, but carrying a nifty little 35mm around with direct flash comes in handy loads of times. This is shot on Portra, but since I self-scan my film rolls, I can dial things in a little bit different from a white-balance point of view using Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom. I love this feel, as it has something closer to a Cinestill temperature, with all of the incredible goodness of that line of Kodak films.

Reception

Demares brilliant floral arrangements were such a tasteful explosion of accents against the architecture. The projections by Alona made an incredible use of the large reception wall too.

The real surprise, however, was how delicately complex it was representing the hues of the building. It wouldʼve been easy to throw a muted preset over the set and have it look incredible, which would have just shaved off so much goodness of the natural tones of the structure. The challenge is that balance between representing the skin tones in the right way too, since both those and the buildings color sit within a similar tonal bracket, all of which changed dramatically over the day.

Parting Words

The heavy lifting of this wedding was done by the enthusiasm and lean-in of my couple: Alison and Matt, the latter of whom was up for getting some spicy aerial work in on the tall structures. Incredibly grateful.

I would be remiss to not mention my education portal, which can be found at https://soup.briarsatlas.com. Thereʼs loads of silly ideas and insights on there, and upcoming courses on copywriting, thinking laterally, shooting film and more.