Here’s one of my personal favourites from one of last summer’s weddings. I think the dog would really like a share of the wedding cake, given the opportunity. I’m just glad I was in the right place at the right time to shoot a couple of frames before the dog decided there were better chances elsewhere….
From a wedding last summer: as is often the case, the centre of attention lies elsewhere. One person has noticed me, the others haven’t, which is the way I like it.
I’m still deriving plenty of interest from going through some photographs I took on holiday in Vieste, Italy in October 2013, some of which featured in my blog post of October 20th. Here are a couple of my favourites from a wedding I came across at a delightful small church in the town centre called Chiesa Santa Croce. I frequently prefer a black and white conversion in the case of these Italian people shots – something about the dark suits and sunglasses makes this feel right.
In the first picture I’m standing right inside a group of wedding guests, a couple of whom are looking in my direction, but what I like about this picture is the younger man on the left, whose attention is taken by the woman in sunglasses centre right.
In the second picture we have a group of men standing next to one of the wedding cars. This was taken near to the hotel used for the wedding reception, coincidentally the hotel were staying in. I’d just walked back to the hotel after taking photos of the guests milling around outside the church.
Again, I’ve use black and white here to remove the distractions of colour. The group includes (as I remember) the groom. They’re looking at the car, they’re talking among themselves. There isn’t a great deal going on in this picture, but I like it as a commentary on weddings, Italian style.
Here’s a small selection of photographs of shop frontages taken on a holiday in October in the Puglia region of Italy. I do like the character of the architecture in much of this part of the heel of Italy, and as a wedding photographer I found some of these displays interesting. Essentially they are street photography, but they appealed to me as a subject for a blog post. The first four are in Lecce, the fifth is in Bari and the final one in Matera.
Here is some street photography from an October wedding in the town of Vieste in Puglia, Italy, where we happened to be on holiday. After the service at the Chiesa Santa Croce, a beautiful small church in the town centre, and a gathering outside, two white doves were released before the couple were showered in confetti. Dozens of cars with wedding guests drove around the town honking their horns. Happening across all of this by chance, I took some photographs, and here are some of my favourites.
This is a case of exploring the boundaries between wedding photography and street photography! I’ve always taken the view that what you learn from being a street photographer can be applied creatively to weddings. It’s the matter of immersing yourself in the action, looking for new angles, not being reluctant to focus on how people interact, capturing something real and dynamic.
Well, I had the chance to put some of this into practice in June this year while having a short break in Berlin. Wandering around the Neukölln district of Berlin one afternoon and heading nowhere in particular, in fact feeling rather bored, I heard a commotion down Fuldastraße and went to take a closer look. This turned out to be a wedding celebration in full flow: firecrackers, a red and white costumed marching band, and someone firing what looked like a starting pistol – I got into the thick of it and followed the wedding group along the street, trying to dodge the firecrackers and take pictures at the same time. This was great fun – even though I wasn’t entirely sure of the identities of the bride and groom, they didn’t seem to be together much, though I’m fairly sure the bride wore bright blue.
After about 300m the group came to another building and – after more noisy and exuberant celebrations in the street – went inside. My final pictures were of the wedding car parked outside.
In the end, I was really pleased to have captured some dynamic images in the street that I feel really capture the atmosphere of this occasion. I went up to a group of men and they told me they were Arabic; I didn’t know.
This summer we spent a day in Murmansk, on Russia’s White Sea while on a cruise to Norway and Russia in search of the midnight sun. Not only did we see the midnight sun, along with the milky white waters around the Solovetski Islands on some of the hottest days of the summer, we were able to visit Arkangelsk and Murmansk for a chance to look around two industrial cities largely unbtouched by the tourist industry.
Murmansk itself – the world’s biggest Arctic city with a port kept ice free by the gulf stream – features a good number of monuments and museums set in an urban landscape of Soviet era architecture rising above the bleak port area.
While our excursion group were visiting the memorial complex – home to an Orthodox church, a memorial lighthouse, and a memorial to the Kursk submarine – a bride and groom arrived for some post-wedding photography at this fine vantage point looking across the city and the post, closely followed by a second couple. Naturally I – along with several of our excursion party – took the chance to capture a few photographs of them. Here are some of my favourites.
A wonderful wintry wedding on a snowy day in March, from the bride’s house in Danbury, Essex to a service at St Margaret’s Downham, emerging into an absolute blizzard and then on to the reception at Crondon Park Golf Club. A white wedding in more ways than one, so here are a few images from the day; there are others in the wedding gallery.
All taken with a Canon EOS 400D with Tamron SP AF 17-50mm F/2,8XR lens. Click on any image to see a larger version.
I had the pleasure of being asked to photograph Jackie and Steve’s wedding in June at Congham Hall, near King’s Lynn in Norfolk. As luck would have it the early summer weather didn’t disappoint and the venue itself was immaculate. I arrived around mid-day for some establishing shots around the house and grounds and a coffee, followed by a few photographs of the final stages of bridal preparation. After the ceremony there was time to mill around in the grounds for a while until I left shortly before everyone sat down for a meal. Al the staff at Congham Hall were most helpful and I’m sure all concerned enjoyed the day immensely. Here is a small selection of favourite images from the day.
“We have looked at the photos and are very pleased with them, you captured our special day perfectly. Will definitely recommend your services if we know anyone who is getting married” – Jackie and Steve
A brief review of my year in wedding photography, limited to just five images…..
I’ve decided to pick just five photographs I haven’t used in this blog or on my website before, converted to black and white, to sum up my photographic year as a documentary wedding photography. This wasn’t a particularly easy exercise, but here are the results and I hope you enjoy looking at them.
The first is from a Norwich wedding in April. This was in the church before the main wedding service itself, well before the bride’s arrival. The wedding was a fusion of a Zimbabwean and a British wedding – here some of the guests are clearly enjoying themselves quite uninhibitedly, though the small boy isn’t quite sure what to make of it
The second is also from April, at the reception in St Andrew’s Hall in Norwich. I think it was the lovely interaction between the two women that appealed to me about this image, with the way their arms are linked together in the same angled shape.
The third is from a June wedding at The Old Rectory, Great Melton near Norwich – one of the bridesmaids is having her hair done while another bridesmaid waits, reflected in the mirror. This is a beautiful country house venue, though apart from bridal preparations much of my time was spent outside, dodging the summer showers while photographing a woodland wedding.
The fourth is an image from a wedding in Florence in June. I just happened to be outside the beautiful Chiesa Di San Miniato Del Monte overlooking the city when the wedding party spilled out of the church after their ceremony, so I merged with the crowds and took some documentary shots: here I captured some of the interactions between guests while the couple were posing for photographs in the background.
Finally the fifth image is also from Florence, and taken on the iconic Ponte Vecchio while a couple walked up and down being photographed – I just took advantage of the circumstances and took some pictures. It’s a pleasant combination of bride and groom and (separated from them) a number of passers by.
Images that tell a story 