STYLE

I love weddings.

A day where everyone gathers their closest friends and family to celebrate their love for one another, eat delicious food, listen to cool music and have an awesome party. Whats not to like?!

A wedding day is full of emotion; happiness, excitement, trepidation, laughter, enjoyment, the odd tear and most importantly FUN. Its my job to capture these emotions in their purest, least contrived form. And thats what I do. I love a beautiful portrait, understand the value of some family group shots, but where I’m really in my element is just capturing the day as I see it.

There are certain buzz words that people use for this style of photography; documentary, reportage, candid, etc, but the reality is much simpler. Wedding photography has moved on so much in the past 10 years or so that nearly everyone expects this approach from their wedding photographer. Theres a lot more to creating a good candid photograph of someone than just taking a photo of someone when they’re not looking. You need to capture a sense of story and emotion.

Portraits are important. Thats a statement I’ve completely changed my view on over the past couple of years. I’ve grown to really value a decent set of portraits as part of a collection of wedding photographs.

Theres no need to spend hours and hours taking horribly posed photos, but giving me 20-30 minutes of your day to take you away and create some awesome portraits should certainly be something to consider.

Now I know that most people hate having their photo taken and can’t think of anything worse than having to pose for my camera, but as someone who completely shares that viewpoint, I like to think I’m good at making people feel comfortable, relaxed and happy to be themselves in front of me.

My approach on the day itself is simple. Depending on the option you book, I like to arrive around 2 hours before the bride is due to leave for the ceremony and I stay around 1 hour or so after the first dance. The evening party is one of my favourite aspects of the day so I’m often seen well over 1 hour from the first dance and I never leave until I’m happy I’ve captured the evenings atmosphere. I don’t worry too much about time plans as my vast experience tells me that weddings very, very rarely keep to a schedule. Instead I like to leave you to have the best day of your lives with your friends and family.

I like to spend no more than 20 minutes photographing formal group shots, which is why I ask for a list of 10 groups max. I do think its important to give me 20-30 minutes to capture some awesome, creative portraits of the two of you. It’ll be nothing too posey and you’ll certainly never have to say cheese.