Recreating a Grandmother’s Bridal Portrait

a Bride’s Special Request

I recently had a beautiful bride make a special request of me on the morning that she was getting married. She had an old photograph of her grandmother on her grandmother’s wedding day that she wanted to create. Here is that old photograph:

Making Miracles Happen

As this was not pre-planned, I had to improvise a bit. Her grandmother’s photo was taken in a studio. We were in a bedroom (and if you’ve ever been in a bedroom the morning of a wedding, you know it can be very busy and cluttered). There also was not a lot of time to make this happen. I found a trunk for the bride to sit on, adjusted her dress, grabbed her flowers, and gave it a go.

First Step: Cleanup

On a busy wedding morning, there is often little time for actual cleaning. I cleaned up the room digitally in Photoshop to start. Here is what that looked like. We now have a picture of the bride in a clean and comfortable space that accurately depicts where she was on the morning of her wedding.

Second Step: A Modern “Vintage” portrait

More work in Photoshop. The goal is to recreate that “studio portrait” look from the photo that was taken. This is a lot of work, but having properly set up the lighting in advance definitely made it easier. Removing everything in the background, and recreating a backdrop similar to her grandmother’s photo, here is the color result:

Final Step

That photo is gorgeous, and I think it would look beautiful hanging on any wall. However, we want to recreate her grandmother’s photo as closely as possible. This means black-and-white. After a lot of careful analysis, I was able to match the color toning and grain of the original about as well as could be done. These three images show the result: original color, her grandmother’s photo, and her final finished product.

Wedding Photographer Chris James

Born and raised here in Rhode Island, but I also travel to nearby states. I’d love to be your wedding photographer!