A First Dance in the Rain
At Wadsworth Mansion in Middletown, Connecticut, I started photographing the first dance from inside the room. In one frame, the groom lifts their joined hands and the bride’s dress swings out as she turns. There’s enough room in the photograph to see the chandeliers overhead and their guests watching behind them.
From inside Wadsworth Mansion, you can see the turn and the guests watching it happen.
In the closer frame, their hands are still joined. He’s looking at her, and her eyes are lowered. I can see the movement of the dance in the first picture. In this one, I keep coming back to the way he looks at her.
Closer in, I keep coming back to the way he looks at her.
I had the dance from inside the room. I wondered what it would look like with the whole mansion around them. So I stepped outside into the rain.
Outside, the tall windows were bright against the dark façade. I could see the couple moving behind them. The window frames gave the picture its shape, and they also made the timing difficult. I needed both faces to come into view in the same narrow opening. I watched the couple turn until they did. I pressed the shutter once.
What I could see from outside
The couple is small in the photograph. The warm light is concentrated in the windows, and your eye has a little distance to travel before you find them. I like that it takes a moment. From inside the room, I was watching their expressions. From outside, I could see two people having a moment to themselves inside a building full of people who had come to celebrate with them.
I made the photograph in 2002 with a Nikon D1x at ISO 1600, in the early years of photographing weddings digitally. In the finished version, I softened the shadows and added a gold tone. I wanted to keep the warmth I remember seeing from the rain and leave enough darkness around the windows for that warmth to have somewhere to go. The photograph went into the Professional Photographers of America Loan Collection. When I look at it now, I still think about the turn that brought both faces into view.
I stepped outside into the rain and waited for both faces to come into view between the window frames.
What I wanted the darkness to do
When you look at the photograph, the windows give you several places to look before you find the couple. That’s part of what I like about it. You get a sense of the size of the house, then you find the two people who make the picture worth looking at. The same window frames that kept getting in my way as the couple turned are what give the finished photograph its rhythm.
The gold in the finished image matters to me for a similar reason. It keeps my eye in the windows. If I brought up too much detail in the outside of the building, I’d spend more time looking at the façade. I wanted you to spend that time looking for the couple. I think about that when I finish wedding photographs. I can use the tone of the picture to guide someone toward what I remember noticing.
The Setting Behind the Photograph
The architecture of Wadsworth Mansion became an essential part of this photograph. The windows, the scale of the building, and the contrast between the warm interior and the rainy evening all contributed to the composition. I've photographed many extraordinary wedding venues throughout my career, but this remains one of my favorite examples of a location becoming part of the story rather than simply its backdrop.
Explore more of my Wadsworth Mansion wedding photography.
What belongs together in the finished photographs
I’d still want you to have the close photographs of the dance. They let you see an expression that would be easy to miss from a table across the room. A full-length photograph gives you the movement. The view through the windows lets you see where it all happened. If I were placing the photographs in an album, I’d spend a moment inside the room with you before turning the page to the rain. You’d know who to look for in those windows.
The Places That Become Part of Our Stories
Some wedding photographs are remembered for the people in them. Others become inseparable from the places where those moments happened. The most meaningful often bring both together. Throughout my career, I've photographed weddings in historic mansions, extraordinary ballrooms, and remarkable destinations, always looking for the relationship between the setting and the human story unfolding within it.
You can explore more of these places and photographs in my Wedding Venues collection.