Throughout the month of November, our Photo of the Day series will be taken over by each of Rangefinder‘s newly minted 30 Rising Stars of Wedding Photography in 2019. The 30 honorees are featured in our November issue, and each of their full, 30-photo submissions, reviewed by the competition judges, can be found in our online gallery. For more behind-the-scenes insights, follow us on Instagram.

“Someone once told me that when they look at my work, it’s as if the people in the image are about to move,” recalls Becy Farr of Belle Art Photography, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. This not only resonated with her, it inspired her to begin shooting videos on her old Super 8mm camera.

Farr’s artistic origins lie in filmmaking, but she moved to photos to master light. “But I still think like a filmmaker,” she says. Farr focuses on a couple’s passion and quirks, aiming to place viewers in the scene with them. Light, mood and atmosphere “with an almost dreamy and ethereal quality” reign supreme.

Below are her behind-the-scenes insights on three of the photos from her submission this year.

Capturing the emotions of the wedding is so important to me, and those moments just before they get married are, for me, the most poignant. It’s this raw reaction of a mother seeing her daughter in her wedding dress that just hits me, even more so because it hit her so strongly that she held onto her other daughter for support. You just can’t fake that. It’s so real.

I think when you are capturing weddings, you become attuned to these moments and can feel when they are going to happen. Instead of snapping continuously and hoping for the best, I find that if you compose an image on screen and then wait for the moment to unfold, you can create something special.

I always want to create portraits that really reflect the couple. After meeting these two and witnessing their striking, poised beauty and very gentle personas, I really wanted to show this. It’s a simple portrait taken on my go-to 35mm prime lens. This shot is more about the edit. The light was very flat that day, but I wanted to show how their eyes stood out. I gave just a few brushstrokes of highlights to the whites of their eyes so that as the viewer, you feel like you are engaging with them yourselves. 

I loved this wedding so much. I remember that the groom was going away shortly after for a little while—I can still feel the emotions from that day. The swords are an incredible part of their uniform. It was a given that their would be some sort of sword fighting. As playful as it was, I love that this moment came together so naturally. I would love to tell you that his new wife was watching her husband fight off another man. I guess that’s the beauty of photographs: The story can be reinvented over and over. But this one is more about just being present for these moments and knowing when to take a step back, frame and document the scene that is playing out.