Sunnybrae Estate · Regency Park SA · Adelaide
Garden Wedding · Heritage & Historic Venue Wedding · City: Adelaide · Venue: Sunnybrae Estate
A sheet-steel wall, flower beds around an old fountain and two giant plane trees with the sun breaking through. Before Shannon and Luke’s wedding and reception at Sunnybrae Estate in Adelaide, we walked Carlton Gardens in Carlton with them for their engagement session. This is that whole walk in the order it happened, and it sits beside our featured edit of their wedding day.
Tree-lined avenues · Royal Exhibition Building · A sheet-steel wall · Flower beds and a fountain · Sun through the plane trees · White fluff on the lawn
Shannon and Luke started side by side at the end of one of Carlton Gardens’ long tree-lined avenues, grinning straight down the lens. We got them walking almost at once: away from us down the path, then back towards us hand in hand, her patterned maxi skirt swinging. Walking gives couples something to do with their hands and the smiles look after themselves. When they stopped for a hug on the leaf-scattered path, we stepped right back and let the rows of trunks shrink them to two small figures in a green tunnel.
On the open lawn we moved in close. Luke wrapped his arms around Shannon from behind, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and laughed, and then she looked straight at us with his chin resting on her shoulder. We kept the trees well behind them for these, so the background melts into soft green and every bit of attention stays on their faces. Back on the path, Shannon held Luke's face for a kiss while the wind pulled her hair right across the frame. We kept that one, wind and all.
Shannon settled onto Luke’s lap with the white walls of the Royal Exhibition Building rising behind them. Then we went looking for plainer walls. Against grey concrete with tall black grilles, they stood a step apart and reached across for each other’s hand. At a pale sheet-steel wall, Luke folded his arms for a solo portrait, Shannon looked down with a small smile for hers, and then they leant together on the cool metal, foreheads touching. A big pale wall works like a reflector, bouncing soft light back into faces.
Our Carlton Gardens pre-wedding photos needed the gardens themselves too. Under a soft, cloudy sky we pulled right back at the flower beds so the planting and an old fountain sat around them, and we kept a couple of those frames in black and white. Then came the two biggest plane trees we could find. We stood well back with a wide lens so the trunks made a doorway, the sun broke through the canopy above, and Shannon and Luke held each other on the grass in the middle.
Near the end, white fluff started drifting off the trees and floating across the lawn. We waited for a thick patch, kept the trees in the foreground soft, and let it fall around Shannon and Luke while they held each other. Little surprises like that are why we never rush the last stretch of a session. We finished framed by leaves and dark trunks, the two of them close and calm. Our featured edit of their Sunnybrae Estate wedding day is on its own page, linked below.
We ran Shannon and Luke’s session as one easy loop rather than a string of set pieces. It opened at the far end of a long avenue, crossed the open lawn for close portraits, then swung past the white walls of the Royal Exhibition Building to a run of concrete and steel walls before circling back through the flower beds and the two biggest plane trees. Keeping them on the move meant nobody stood around waiting, and each new backdrop turned up just as the previous one had given us everything we wanted.
Cloud sat over the gardens for most of the afternoon, and we were happy about it. An overcast sky turns the whole park into one huge softbox, so we could face Shannon and Luke in any direction without squinting or bright patches on skin. When the sun finally broke through above the giant trunks, we kept it high in the canopy so it lit the leaves rather than their faces. The wind kept lifting Shannon’s long hair, so we timed kisses for the gusts, and late in the walk the trees began shedding white fluff over the lawn.
The concrete wall with its tall black grilles gave strong vertical lines, ideal for two people standing a step apart and reaching for each other. The pale bolted steel wall was the real find: it threw clean, cool light straight back into their faces and made a calm stage for a solo portrait of each of them. On the lawn we used a long lens and left plenty of distance between the couple and the trees, so the greens dissolved. A green lamp post on one path made a tidy frame for a forehead kiss.
Wear something that moves. Shannon’s patterned maxi skirt swung with every step, and the walking frames ended up among our favourites. Be open to wandering off the obvious paths, because the plain walls around a grand building often photograph better than the postcard view. If your wedding is in another city, as Shannon and Luke’s was, a walk here gives you a relaxed warm up with us and a set of pictures from a completely different place to the day itself.