Mundaring
wedding photographer

Melissa and Gavin had their wedding at a beautiful private property surrounded by Aussie bush and a variety of flowers.

Private-property weddings in the Hills are our favourite kind of problem. There's no venue coordinator and no established photo spots — so we walk the site beforehand and find them.

Bush light is contrasty and green, and it will wreck skin tones if it isn't handled properly. Getting warmth out of a Mundaring afternoon is a colour-grading job as much as a shooting one.

A private-property wedding has no venue coordinator, no established photo spots and no wet-weather room somebody else has already thought about. That work lands on you, and some of it lands on us. We walk the site before the day, find where the light will be at the times that matter, and pick the fallbacks — because on a private block there is no back-up room unless you hire one.

Power and light are the two that catch people out. A property that is beautiful at four in the afternoon can be genuinely dark by the time speeches start, and festoon lighting needs somewhere to plug in. It is worth deciding early whether you are running a generator, because it changes where the marquee goes, which changes where the dancing happens, which changes what we can photograph after sunset.

Mundaring sits about forty minutes east of the Perth CBD in the Hills proper. The bush there is jarrah and marri with granite underneath, and it changes character hard across the year — green and soft after winter rain, dry and golden by February. Both photograph well. They just do not photograph the same, which is worth knowing when you pick a date from a spreadsheet.