Photographing a Highland Wedding

A Highland wedding is the most photogenic ceremony in Britain, and the most demanding for the camera: dark barathea and black silk, bright tartan, white lace, all in the same frame. Whether the photographer is a professional or a trusted cousin, a few decisions made before the day decide whether the record does the dress justice.

What should the photographer know about the outfit?

The outfit has a hierarchy of details, and the album fails when they are missed. The pictures that matter are the full line of the kilt to the hose, the sporran set right, the flashes level, the plaid brooch if worn, and the boutonnière or badge on the lapel. A photographer who shoots the groom as he would a suited groom gets a man in a skirt in his pictures; one who knows the dress gets the dress.

Light does the rest. Tartan reads poorly in flat light and superbly at a raking angle, so the portraits want directional light: a window for the morning shots, the low sun for the group outside. Flash straight at the kilt flattens the sett into wallpaper; bounced or off to the side, it preserves the pattern's depth.

How do you light a kilted group indoors?

Carefully. The church and the hotel function room are the two difficult rooms of the day, and both punish the unprepared. The group shot wants the lights placed to rake the kilts, not to fire at the faces alone; the sporran fur and the polished brogues take light well, but a hard frontal flash makes the sporran a white blaze and the tartan a plaid tablecloth. A working photographer's notes on event photography workflow, dark-room bounce and one-light portraiture, translate directly to the problem the Highland wedding sets.

The conventions of wedding photography supply the coverage list; the Highland setting adds the details the standard list misses.

Which moments does the album need?

Beyond the ceremony itself, a Highland wedding has three pictures that no other kind of wedding produces. The piper leading, whether down the aisle or to the top table, which wants a low angle and the full pipe banner in frame. The first dance as a reel or a ceilidh set, which wants a fast shutter and a raised viewpoint to catch the sets moving. And the detail plate: the sporran, the skean, the flashes, the plaid, laid out on the morning of the day, which is the picture the grandsons will look at longest.

Those three, done well, are the difference between a record of a wedding and a record of a Highland wedding.

What should the wearer do for the pictures?

Dress early and completely, in the order the outfit asks for, and let the photographer see the kit before it goes on. The mistakes that spoil the album are small and repeated: a kilt worn too long or too short, a sporran riding high, flashes uneven, the plaid thrown carelessly. All are prevented by ten minutes in front of a full-length mirror and a photographer who is told which details matter.

The full order of work is in how to wear a kilt, and the dressing-for-the-day notes in the accessories entry cover the pieces the lens looks for. The man who dresses by the book needs no second take.

What survives the day?

The dress is cleaned and returned to the wardrobe; the photographs are the outfit's afterlife. Done right, they show what the day was: a man wearing the oldest formal dress in Europe, in the company of his family, on the day that needed it most. The pictures carry the sett forward to the next generation, who will wear the same pattern on their own day and look back at how it was worn.

That is what the outfit is for, and the camera is merely its witness.

One more picture belongs in the album, and it is the easiest to miss: the tartan itself, photographed close and flat, so the sett is recorded for the family archive. In fifty years that photograph is the reference for the next wedding's cloth, the way the register entry is the reference for the weaver. Ask for it in the morning's detail shots, beside the sporran and the brooch, and the album will have kept the pattern as well as the day.

The last decision belongs to the couple: the group line against the church or the hill, with the kilts to the front and the pipes at the edge. It is the picture that goes on the wall, and it is the one where the dress does the work, the sett, the sporran and the line of the kilt saying in one frame what the whole day was.