I have been exceedingly lucky with my career, having experienced great variety and opportunity within my professional photography.
I have worked within several leading Fleet Street news titles as a press photographer, before setting up my own picture agency in Eastern Europe, selling stories, features and investigations to international titles.
The range of experience and knowledge gained, has led to an acquired skill set invaluable to my current career as a wedding photographer. The current love and popularity of natural, documentary wedding photography has been a joy to embrace, with capturing the essence of the day already being second nature to me.
I prefer to describe my own style as ‘emotive documentary’ wedding photography as I see my strength and instinct as being one of not just shooting the choreographed wider story. I like to tune in to the people I work with, often sharing similar humour and character traits that make it so much easier when observing them and judging when a moment may arise, so I can be poised and ready to capture it.
This has been very apparent within the recent weddings I have captured, allowing me to get in really close, physically as well as within the camera crop. Isolating that pure emotion, leaving the viewer with no other distraction in and around the subject.
I shoot all weddings whilst reflecting my own beliefs and attitude to the wedding day. I believe that the couple should live the day to the full, in and amongst their gathered family and friends. In my opinion, the last thing they should be asked to do is to go away from the environment, spending extended periods of time with a photographer, living out a stylized photo shoot.
The first image I have selected to show here is of a very tender moment that pretty much reduced the whole room to tears. A very sweet speech being delivered by the step father of the bride, recalling all the moments shared in the brides life and that her had always seen her as being very much his own daughter. The build up and delivery was perfect, with his voice wavering with emotion. This particular frame contains so much, having both the Bride and her mother in law simultaneously biting their lips, trying to hold back the tears – I love the shot.
My second frame looks like a traditional first dance but it’s actually the Bride and her father taking to the dance floor. It was the first time of me capturing the father of the bride dance, as it isn’t something that occurs at every wedding.
The bride’s father lives abroad and it was obvious to see that the two of them had a very special close relationship. The father was an ex-marine, allegedly tough, but so soft for his daughter, having shed many a tear during the earlier ceremony!
The image is simple with just enough detail to catch his daughters eyes closed with her arms draped around her father’s shoulders. I purposely burnt in the surrounding areas to draw the viewer into this moment, one of my favourite wedding dance shots to date.
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