Wedding photographer at the Château Pas du Cerf
I come from press photography, and I never really left it. A wedding is documented like an event, and the Pas du Cerf has the rare quality of offering several lights in a single estate, each at its own hour.
It is a family vineyard at La Londe-les-Maures, with the Maures massif resting on the horizon and a lake at the foot of the property. Mornings start bright here: the Provençal light hits the château head on, and the whole facade warms before the preparations are even finished.
The upper garden, facing the sunset
Civil ceremonies are held in the heights of the garden, on a natural terrace edged with planting. The couple have the trees behind them, and the valley beyond.
The garden faces west, and the hour follows from that. Too early, the sun comes into the guests' eyes and into my lens. Later, it passes behind the couple, the trees light up from underneath, and the whole garden turns gold in a single movement. Between those two versions of the same place, there are about ninety minutes.
Three settings for the session
After the ceremony I take the couple to three places on the estate.
The vines, in the gold of the late afternoon, when the rows lead the eye into the distance and everything green turns warm.
The entrance to the château, lined with cypresses. Vertical and dark, they frame a couple the way a colonnade would, with the suppleness of living things added.
The ceremony arch, once the guests have moved on to the cocktail hour. Two people beneath the structure where they have just said yes, with the silence returned around them, and the image needs nothing more.
The lake, for the last light
The lake is kept for the end of the day.
Water throws the light upward, fills faces from below and softens everything, provided the sun is already low. Earlier, the same water becomes a hard reflector, and the pines around it break the light into fragments across faces. You go down there last, when everything else is done.
The pine groves and the vines
The pines give filtered shade and a sense of enclosure, the vines give depth and distance. Between the two, the estate covers almost everything a reportage asks for, without a car or a journey.
The main room
It opens onto the vines, and the evening runs late there.
The room's lighting is that of a dinner, soft and low. I compose my light with the equipment I bring, off-camera flashes arranged around the room, so the evening keeps its depth and its colours. It is a deliberate choice: a room lit for dinner is pleasant to be in, and I give it what it needs to be pleasant in photographs too.
Can the whole day happen on site?
It can, and that is a quiet comfort. The estate has accommodation, the ceremony, the meal and the party all take place in one spot, and the morning flows into the afternoon without a break.
Lawrence Banahan, documentary wedding photographer in Hyères, Toulon and on the French Riviera. Château Pas du Cerf, 5920 route de Collobrières, La Londe-les-Maures.