An original photograph. A true story. An invitation to see a little differently.
There’s a garden hose in this photograph that has bugged me for almost twenty-five years.
Look at the bottom left of the image. See it? The hose follows the edge of the path perfectly until it gets close to the bottom of the frame, where it bows out. I wish it didn’t do that. I know. Of all the things in this photograph, that’s what I notice.
A beautiful bride. A Vera Wang dress. A single rose. An English estate. A pathway that pulls your eye through the frame toward a garden house that looks like something out of Downton Abbey. And I’m looking at the hose.
Welcome to the mind of a photographer.
“Side rant…” It’s kinds like looking at yourself in the mirror. You look and see yourself. But when you look at yourself in a photograph; Oh Boy! We pick ourselves apart. “I look like that?” I equate it to hearing your voice on a recording… “That’s what I sound Like… Yuck! “
I made this photograph in February of 2002 at Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire, England. It was one of the last years I was shooting weddings entirely on film. I switched to digital around January of 2003.
The bride’s name was Katie. I placed her there intentionally. I loved the perspective of the path and the way the lines carried your eye through the photograph. Katie was quiet, a little shy and incredibly photogenic. I turned her away from me, placed her hands behind her back and gave her a single red rose. I thought the simplicity of one flower worked beautifully with her Vera Wang dress and those black bows running down the back.
Of course, you can’t tell the rose is red. That’s one of the things I love about black-and-white photography. Color stops being the story. Shape, light, gesture and expression take over.
Everything about Castle Ashby seemed made for black and white. It was February and cold, but not terribly cold. More like one of those crisp fall days where you know winter isn’t very far away. The estate was enormous. I remember driving what seemed like forever just to reach the house. The grounds, the gardens, the old buildings, the church—it was a photographer’s dream. Everywhere I turned there was another photograph.
For three or four days, this place became our home. There were only about fifty guests at the wedding, and we all stayed inside the castle. I was there with my assistant and my good friend and videographer, Doug Brannigan, and his assistant. Doug has since passed away, which makes these memories mean even more to me today.
The guests would go to bed early at night. We didn’t. The four of us would stay up exploring the castle, sitting in these enormous old rooms, hanging around the snooker table, telling stories and basically behaving like four kids who suddenly had an English castle to themselves.
At one point, Doug decided we should make a scary movie. Because apparently that’s what you do when you’re wandering around an old English castle late at night. We started staging these ridiculous little scenes. For one of them, we wanted the shadow of an old rocking horse in an upstairs window overlooking the courtyard. We locked the video camera down on a tripod, framed the shot—and somehow the camera moved.
Not the tripod. The framing. Later, we were filming in another room with very low ceilings. We shut off the lights and used a few small lights we’d brought with us. Suddenly I felt water dripping on my face.
“Whoa, whoa. Turn the lights on.” They did. Nothing. No water. Nothing on my face. Nothing dripping from the ceiling. Lights went off. Drip. Drip. I started laughing. “I’m getting dripped on again.” There was also an old graveyard beside the church on the property, with headstones dating back well over a century. Naturally, we wandered around there at night too. Maybe not our smartest decision. But we weren’t scared. We were having the time of our lives.
The wedding itself was beautiful and intimate. Katie and June arrived by horse and carriage. The church was right there on the grounds. Everywhere we went there was another incredible backdrop, another piece of history, another opportunity to make a photograph.
I remember thinking how lucky I was. I was in England, staying in a castle with my friends, making photographs—and somebody was actually paying me to do it. But there’s another story behind this photograph. Because I almost wasn’t there.
A short time before Katie and June contacted me, another family had approached me about photographing a wedding closer to home around the same date at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
It was a good job. The bride’s father was an entertainment attorney, and because there would be celebrity guests attending, he wanted to make some changes to my contract. Fair enough. We went back and forth. I made some concessions. He made more changes. I agreed to some of those. Then there were more. And somewhere along the way, this little voice inside me started talking.
Don’t do this. There wasn’t one giant red flag. Nobody had done anything terrible. It just didn’t feel right. But I was running a business. You don’t normally turn away a good-paying wedding because of a feeling. Eventually his wife called my studio. She had the credit card in her hand and was ready to give me the deposit.
I didn’t call her back. A day went by. She called again. “Robert, give me a call. We want to give you the deposit.” And I remember thinking: I really don’t want to do this wedding.
Then the phone rang again. Different couple. Same date. Katie and June.
They told me about their wedding in England, at an estate called Castle Ashby. I couldn’t believe it. I told them the truth. I said I didn’t want to pressure them, but I had another client ready to book the date and, frankly, I didn’t think I wanted to take that wedding. “Is there any way you could come in tonight?” (Back in the day, people actually came into the studio and we met face to face, something I miss in today’s world.)
They did. We met. We clicked. And they hired me on the spot.
I then sat down and wrote what I remember being about a two-page letter to the other family explaining why I was declining their wedding. I was actually a little nervous sending it. And that was that. One decision. One uncomfortable feeling I decided not to ignore.
And a short time later I was standing on a pathway in Northamptonshire, England, with Katie in front of me, a roll of black-and-white film in my camera and a single red rose behind her back.
Which brings me back to that hose. Today I could remove it in about ten seconds. I won’t.
Back then, shooting film taught you to pay attention. There wasn’t a screen on the back of the camera. You couldn’t immediately check what you had. And you certainly didn’t shoot something thinking, I’ll fix it later.
I still work that way today. If something shouldn’t be in the photograph, I’d rather move it before I take the picture than remove it afterward. But I wouldn’t have moved this hose.
Not because I didn’t notice it. I probably didn’t. But even if I had, stopping everything to straighten a garden hose would have interrupted what I was doing with Katie. Sometimes making something absolutely perfect means missing what was already pretty damn good.
So the hose stays. It’s part of what was there. It’s real. And maybe that’s one reason this photograph means more to me now than it did when I made it.
I can look at it and see things I might do differently today. Maybe I’d shoot it with a shallower depth of field and let that garden house fall slightly out of focus. Maybe I’d compose something differently. But I wouldn’t want to remake it.
Because when I look at this photograph, I don’t just see Katie standing on a path. I see four friends staying up too late in an English castle. I see a snooker table. A rocking horse. An old graveyard. Water dripping from a ceiling that apparently wasn’t dripping at all.
I see Doug.
I see a time in my career when there was film in my camera and no way of knowing immediately whether I’d gotten the photograph. And I remember how fortunate I’ve been to have a career that has taken me to places I never could have imagined.
All because, this particular time, I listened to that little voice.
Hindsight is always 20/20. But I’ve learned something during my time on this earth. Every once in a while there’s a little voice inside us. A nudge. An inkling. A gut feeling. A Spidey sense. Whatever you want to call it…
We don’t always know what it’s trying to tell us. And we certainly don’t know what’s waiting on the other side.
Sometimes, it’s worth listening.
Refocus
When was a time in your life when you listened to that little voice inside, refocused, changed direction, and never looked back? Are you grateful you did?