Wedding Photographer in Hampshire

New Place, Wedding Venue Review

New Place

Shirrell Heath

Southampton

Hampshire

SO32 2JH

The New Place at Shirrel Heath is a beautiful wedding venue which is well maintained. While an impressive building, it's construction is more welcoming and less oppressive than some manor houses and is made from a lovely Red brick which makes an attractive background by itself.

The hotel is surrounded by a gravelled area which is very useful providing a good firm area for groups when the grass is too wet, soft or muddy following bad weather.

A grand entrance is created with an arch that could have been made for photography. Recognising this, the hotel place large pots of flowers with colourful blooms making for a quite simply stunning backdrop.

There is a large well maintained lawn with several tree's which can be used to provide shade in order to keep people cool and lower contrast on the brides dress in order to retain fine highlight detail.

Inside the venue has much to offer in the event of poor weather, ceilings are moderately high and usually White, making the use of flash bounced off the ceiling to provide additional light possible.

With several rooms available there should always be space to shoot groups  indoors in bad weather providing you have use of them and they can be cleared for this purpose.

If your service is also to be held here the room can be a little dark, but not overly so. At this venue it's possible to shoot your service from the front rather than back if required, although there is only place for me to stand which is out of the way and it has a squeaky floorboard, so I have to spend most of the service with my weight on one leg!

Overall the venue somehow seems to have a sense of scale and class without being oppressive in the way some venues are. It's beautiful rather than grand and has a friendly feel to it. A very pleasant venue for wedding photography.

Continuing down the lawn there are several more mature tees which have photographic potential leading to a large landscaped pond, complete with bench. This is a very attractive area and ideal for photography.

Inside the venue the room where the service is held poses no technical difficulties and the banqueting room is light and airy.

The stairway can be also be used with additional lighting, it's dark wood panelling adds a sense of character and grandeur, but also absorbs a lot of light making the area quite dark. This issue is relatively easy to resolve by using additional lighting.

What really strikes me about Farnham House Hotel is the organisation and relaxed feel of weddings there. The staff always seem to know exactly what they are doing and everything tends to run on time. The venue is attractive without being overly pretentious and that often makes for a very relaxed wedding.

With a separate room for the service and meal, in the event of wet weather the room used for the service can be employed for group photographs, while various areas around the stairway, bar and reception have potential for portraits of the couple. The quality of light in the bar and reception area's are particularly good, coming from large windows and then absorbed by oak panelling, giving a lovely directional quality of light with good contrast.

Informal pictures are easily taken anywhere inside the venue, with few technical problems to overcome other than ensuring flash is not reflected from the glass in the conservatory and the wood panelling does not impart an undue colour cast on reflected light.

In it's size, Farnham House Hotel is one of the more rounded wedding venues in the area and worth shortlisting.