Shane & Rosie
Shane and Rosie, married in Riverside. Seven minutes. Sound on.
Among the vines.
Shane and Rosie were married in Riverside, and the frame we kept returning to has them standing among the vines, his arms around her from behind, a split-rail fence running off behind them and bougainvillea coming over the top of it. Seven minutes of film.
Riverside sits around 850 feet up in the inland valley, roughly a 47 mile drive from the Pacific. We plan for hard sun and a short, clean golden hour there, not for the soft gray mornings you get nearer the water.
Notes on Riverside.
Riverside is semi-arid: about ten inches of rain a year, most of it between September and April, so a spring or fall date is a safe outdoor bet. What you are managing instead is contrast. Summer highs run past 90 and the light is direct through the middle of the day, with no coastal cloud to knock it down. Get people under a canopy or into the vine rows and expose for skin, not sky. The Santa Ana Mountains run to the west along the Orange County line, so the sun leaves the ground earlier than the almanac says. Build your portrait window backwards from when the light goes off that ridge, not from published sunset. Then it cools hard, thirty degrees or more after dark, and the wind comes up. Get lapels wind-protected before speeches, not during.