Well now, here’s a thing.
I was recently re-reading Bill Bryson’s ‘The lost continent’ and was quite amazed to find him mention the little brown church in the vale, Iowa. Amazed because I photographed a wedding there last summer and it was quite an experience – let me elaborate.
The wedding I photographed was quite a low key affair, 2nd time around for both Bride and Groom, not a huge number of guests and quite informal – but I was not prepared for the controlled chaos that greeted us at the church.
The little brown church is hugely popular in the area and it is apparently quite normal to see 12 weddings in a single day there – when we arrived there was a service taking place, a photo session outside from the previous wedding, and a wedding party waiting to go into the church ahead of us.
The service was quite unlike any I had been to in the UK, and the minister told me that I could shoot from anywhere in the church (including up on the dias with him if I liked !!) and I could shoot at any time during the ceremony – there were no restrictions at all. Inside the church was beautifully light and airy and I was able to shoot at 800 iso handheld no problem, but the ceremony was only about 20 minutes long so not much time for overly creative stuff !!
After the service the scene outside was being repeated, except we were now the ones doing the photography whilst others were either getting married or waiting their turn – quite unusual for a UK photographer to see.
Interestingly it turned out that the majority of the local photographers there would have several clients in a day and used the same locations and shot setups repeatedly – this lead to a bit of a queue for the most scenic area’s, but all very good natured.
And a picture of the venue ??
But then Mr Bryson had a second sirprise in store for me – just a little further on in the book he mentioned that he crossed the mississippi river at Prairie du Chien – and I did that too !!, on the same old iron bridge he talked about. however, unlike old Mr Bryson I stopped in Prairie du Chien for lunch, and had the most amazing fried catfish platter – caught straight out of the river by the locals, yum. The venue by the way, was Coaches Family Dining.
So that’s my link to Bill Bryson exhausted for now, but I’m sure there will be more when I read more !!