Wedding photographer at the Domaine de Sigalous
Press photography since 1992, applied to weddings. Sigalous lives by the seasons more than by the hours, and documenting a wedding here begins with knowing what month it is. The oaks, the vines, the terrace each have their moment of the year.
It is a vineyard in a sheltered valley at La Crau, between Hyères and Toulon, with an old farmhouse at the centre and a park of venerable trees around it. Toulon is fifteen minutes away, Hyères ten, and yet you find yourself far from either.
The morning louvres
The preparations take place in the estate's farm buildings, and the light comes in through the louvred shutters.
Louvred light arrives in blades rather than in a sheet. It gives a dress its texture and a suit its cut, and it fades quickly enough that the background stays dark while the subject stays lit. It is the one moment of the day when a photographer wants less light, and the farmhouse grants it.
Beneath the oaks or facing the vines
Ceremonies are held beneath the century-old oaks or facing the vines, and the choice belongs to the calendar as much as to taste.
The oaks wait for the leaves to return. Bare, they offer branches and a hard sky. In leaf, they filter the light instead of blocking it, and place a face in a softened version of the same daylight the guests receive, so the frame holds in one piece.
The vines follow another calendar and give their best in autumn, when the leaves turn and the rows stop being green corridors to become bands of gold and red climbing towards the hills. A ceremony facing them in October is an entirely different photograph from the same ceremony in June.
Winter suits neither, and it is better said at a first conversation than discovered on a site visit one Sunday in January.
The blue hour on the terrace
When the Provençal sky turns indigo, the panoramic terrace becomes an open-air room, lit by the candles, the string lights and the lanterns the planners have set out.
That half hour is the one I organise the rest of the evening around. There is still enough colour in the sky to hold a background, and the lights on the table have become strong enough to carry a face. Twenty minutes later, the sky is black and the same table reduces to isolated pools of brightness.
Past that window, I compose my light with off-camera flashes. Ambient lighting has grace and little power, and working at its intensity alone pushes the ISO up and adds a grain that costs a face its fineness. A brought light keeps the fineness and the truth of the colours.
What does the estate ask technically?
Two things that work against each other. The shade beneath the trees is deep, and the dry stone throws the light back hard. Moving a couple three metres changes the exposure well beyond what the eye perceives. It is a place where reading the light counts as much as setting the camera, and where fine adjustment comes into its own, in fractions of a second.
Where do you take the couple?
Away from everyone, towards the top of the estate. From there, the view takes in the whole valley, and the couple stand with the entire terroir behind them, where elsewhere you would settle for a wall or a hedge.
Do guests stay on the estate?
In the gîtes fitted out in the old farm buildings. Part of the wedding party sleeps on site, and the last hours gain a freedom the road denies elsewhere.
Lawrence Banahan, documentary wedding photographer in Toulon, Hyères and on the French Riviera. Domaine de Sigalous, 1350 chemin de Sigaloux, La Crau.