Wedding Photographer King’s College Cambridge — the Chapel, the Fan Vault and the Backs
King’s College Chapel is the supreme achievement of English Perpendicular Gothic architecture — a building begun by Henry VI in 1446 and completed by Henry VIII in 1531 whose fan vault (the longest fan vault in the world at 88 metres) and the twelve bay windows of the north and south walls flood the white stone interior with the coloured light of the largest collection of early sixteenth-century Flemish stained glass windows in existence. The chapel’s exterior — the four pinnacled corner turrets, the great west window and the long horizontal line of the side elevations’ buttressing seen from the Backs’ east meadow — provides Cambridge’s most immediately recognisable portrait backdrop. For King’s College Cambridge wedding photography, my approach to the chapel and its grounds combines the formal architectural portrait compositions of the exterior with the extraordinary available light of the interior fan vault above the ceremony space.
The Gibbs Building, the Front Court and King’s Parade
The Gibbs Building — James Gibbs’s 1723 Neoclassical range on the college’s east side, facing the Senate House across the lawn, with its Corinthian pilasters and the formal Portland stone facade — provides King’s College’s most formal architectural exterior portrait backdrop in contrast to the medieval Gothic of the chapel. The Front Court — the large rectangular courtyard between the chapel and the Gibbs Building, open to King’s Parade on the east side through the gatehouse — provides an enclosed college court portrait setting of exceptional classical-Gothic contrast. King’s Parade itself — the street fronting the college whose combination of the medieval gatehouse, the Senate House opposite and the market beyond provides Cambridge’s most concentratedly academic street portrait setting.
The Backs, Clare Bridge and the River Cam
The King’s College Backs — the formal lawn between the chapel’s west front and the River Cam, with the Clare Bridge of 1638 (Cambridge’s oldest surviving bridge) visible to the north and the weeping willows along the Cam’s edge — provide the most classically composed Cambridge portrait settings: the view from the Clare Bridge south across the Backs lawn to the chapel’s west end against the sky is the compositional spine of Cambridge wedding photography. The Cam along the King’s Backs — with the punts drifting below the willows and the Bridge of Sighs visible above the water to the north — provides specific punting portrait settings of maximum Cambridge riverside character available in a thirty-minute portrait excursion from the chapel’s west door.