MUSICIANS

Traditions

There are lots of traditions in Denmark that are naturally new to me, being an immigrant and all that! But I am slowly learning some of them.

This one involved a wedding anniversary celebration, singing, and musicians of course. Let me try and explain.

Some married friends of mine a Texan and a Dane, yes there is a bona fide Texan living on Møn! They asked me if I could photograph her parent's 50 Year Golden Wedding Anniversary celebrations.

It was summertime when he asked me. Of course I said “yes”, they are good friends of mine, then he told me the date, 18th December, my heart sank. It sank even further when I went to meet them and talk about their plans. I was about to learn a lot about Danish traditions.

The tradition is for a brass band or at least a couple of musicians playing brass instruments to serenade the celebrating couple. The couple then greets them from their bedroom window whilst all the guests congregate in their garden. This is a great tradition in the summer but not so great in the middle of a dark Danish winter at 7.30 in the morning.

The day dawned or didn’t and off I went. The family had gone to a lot of trouble in creating a great atmosphere. Flag poles had been hired and erected in the middle of the night to create a walkway of flags for the guests to walk through. The musicians arrived, who were great by the way. The happy couple was serenaded and the celebrations carried on for most of the day, I stayed till around 6pm to document the day. I made an Apple album of the day for the couple through iPhoto which have proved to be a real winner for this type of event

This represented quite a technical challenge I used the Nikon Auto-Iso controls to give me some leeway when shooting  like this with Nikon D800 Nikkor 24-120 F4 1/60 iso 3200 On Camera Flash -2stops