The Kind of Couple Who Makes a Day Easy
Some couples arrive at a mountain landing site a little nervous and a little formal. They need a few minutes to settle in, get comfortable, remember that this is actually meant to be enjoyable.
This couple arrived laughing and didn’t really stop. They were easy with the location, easy with the camera, easy with each other — the kind of people who make everyone around them relax as well. Scott included. By the time Philippa Cook had finished the ceremony, the whole thing had the energy of a group of friends who’d organised a very scenic outing that also happened to involve legal paperwork.
The photos reflect that. Not because the location isn’t doing its job — it very much is — but because the subjects in front of the camera look like they’re actually having a good time, which is rarer than it should be in wedding photography.
The Location
This is a lesser known spot Scott has found over years of flying around locations in the Queenstown area — a landing on the high western slopes above Lake Wakatipu, with open ground, rolling, tussocky hills, views across to Queenstown and The Remarkables and a point that pushes out with the full width of the lake below..
The visual is similar to the iconic Coromandel Peak shot — couple on a narrow high point, enormous lake below, mountain range as a backdrop — but this is a Close to Queenstown landing, which means it comes in at a very affordable price rather than requiring the longer, more expensive flight to Coromandel Peak. For couples who’ve seen that image and want something in the same territory without the additional cost, this location is worth knowing about.
The 60 minute landing gave them enough time to work through the different parts of the site — the open high ground, the point, the backdrops. There’s variety in the landscape here and big ol’ views!
What Scott Does on the Mountain
The pilot is with the couple for the whole landing. That’s obvious in one sense — he’s the photographer — but it’s worth spelling out what that means in practice. He’s there, part of the day, guiding people all the best photo spots, cracking jokes, handing over the bubbles and being a throughly decent bloke.
With a couple who are already relaxed and funny, that dynamic becomes a genuinely good time. The atmosphere on the mountain feeds directly into the photographs. You can’t direct the kind of ease that shows up in the images from this wedding — you can only create the right conditions for it. A good location helps. A good celebrant helps. A photographer who’s good company helps more than most people expect.
This is one of the things that doesn’t come across on a packages page, but comes across very clearly when you look at the photos.
The Photographs
Natural, unposed wedding photography is one of those things that sounds straightforward but is actually quite hard to get right. It requires subjects who are comfortable, a photographer who knows when to stay out of the way, and enough time and space for genuine moments to happen rather than being manufactured.
All three were present here. The wide panoramic shots work because the location is genuinely wide and panoramic. The closer portrait shots work because the couple wasn’t performing for the camera. The ceremony shots work because celebrant Philippa Cook ran a ceremony worth photographing. It all adds up to a set of images that are strong precisely because they’re not trying too hard.
If you’ve looked at a lot of elopement photography and found yourself thinking that everyone in the photos looks slightly like they’re waiting for the photo to be over — this is the alternative to that.
Worth Knowing
The Simple Is Beautiful package with a 60 minute Close to Queenstown landing is one of the most cost-effective ways to get a genuinely dramatic mountain backdrop in Queenstown. The locations in this category cover a lot of ground — from snow-covered peaks to lake view sites like this one — and the experience on the ground is the same regardless of which you land on.
If panoramic lake and mountain views are the priority, and you’d rather not pay for the longer flight to somewhere like Coromandel Peak, ask about the Close to Queenstown options. Some of the best spots in the portfolio are in this category.
