The drive out to Stouffville takes about an hour from the city, and by the time I pulled into Heritage Springs the field behind the venue was already strung with marigolds. There is a particular quiet to a holud morning, the hour before the guests arrive and the whole place still belongs to the family. That is almost always where I start.
I have been filming weddings for a little over twelve years now, more than fifty of them across the GTA, and the one thing I keep relearning is that the morning sets the tone for everything that follows. I work alone, which means the family forgets I am there within about twenty minutes. That is exactly what I want.
Finding the light
Heritage Springs has these long, west-facing windows along the main hall, and in the late afternoon they throw a warm band of light right across the floor. I scouted the room the week before, so I planned the portrait session around that light rather than around the schedule on paper. Good film work is mostly patience, knowing when to press record and, just as importantly, when to wait.
I do not direct much. I wait. The day already knows what it wants to be, and most of my job is just listening for it.
The portraits
Twenty minutes of the right light
I scouted this room a week before so I knew the light was coming. When the window does the work, my only job is to stay out of its way and be ready for the moment the couple settles into something that is actually theirs.
The procession
When the dhol starts, planning ends
This is the part of a Bengali celebration no schedule can script, and the part I love most. I switch to a handheld setup and follow the energy until the last guest leaves the floor.
By the evening the dhol started up and the field came alive. When you film a wedding alone you cannot be everywhere at once, so you learn to feel where the next thing is about to happen and to already be standing there when it does. The film that came out of the weekend is below, and it is the closest I could get to how those three days actually felt.
The full wedding film - a few minutes from the weekend.