Wedding Photographer East Lothian. Paul Santos shares a wedding photography technique.

Although I consider myself a documentary wedding photographer on the whole, I do love a good portrait! And as my passion for many years was landscape and seascape photography, I look to include the surrounding scenery where appropriate when taking portraits. I always like a nice dramatic portrait to finish off a documentary style wedding album.

The beach is one of my favourite places anywhere in the world. So I was looking forward to this wonderful Scottish wedding as I knew the venue was situated a two minute walk from the sand. I also knew the previous night's sunsets had been a bit amazing and was hoping for the same, I wasn’t let down. I took a series of more personal close shots here until the sky turned and started to get excited at what I could hopefully achieve with the gorgeous sky. I knew as soon as I started shooting I'd be pleased with the outcome.

Although it looks quite idyllic in the image, the reality couldn’t have been more different. The wind came! You'll see the emerging sandstorm coming either side of Lydia & Gary. To give you an idea of it, they both brought a glass of champagne down with them and whilst shooting placed the glasses on the sand - when we finished the glasses has about two inches of sand topping them up. This was also a problem for my bare mounted flash on a stand, which blew over twice - leaving this Scottish beach as a new home for a small plastic flash diffuser I didn’t realise I'd lost until days later. It's nice to have ideal conditions, but it would have been a shame if we didn’t head down to the beach for a little while.

This image has quite a basic composition as it's perhaps slightly more about the surrounding scenery then the couple in it, although I do think that’s what make the final shot. If you notice the horizon on the right isn't perfect - it's slightly skewed to balance in the angled greenery coming in on the left hand side. I did try it true but it just felt wrong in my eyes and slightly irritated me as I like balanced symmetry.

Taken with a Nikon D700 and a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 24mm / f6.3 / 1-320sec / ISO500. Small amount of off-camera flash used, zoomed in, to bring the couple out of the shadows - triggered by wireless remotes.

Tweaks include slight sharpening, colour correction and boost, slight darkening of the edges.

I'm really happy with this shot, it's near enough what I had in my head. I would have loved some clean sand with no footprints, but hey, this is the way it was. I think this is one of the clients favourite images from the day. As I usually do, I upload one to facebook and tag them in it so all their friends can see it too, and the response was great, with the word 'breathtaking' mentioned more than once - which made me happy. Taken next to West Bay, North Berwick, East Lothian. I still have sand in my shoes.