Looking back over previous Image of the Week posts, I realise that I haven’t showcased too many outdoor images. Actually I have no idea as to why this is the case, but maybe it is because the images that I love to shoot come from the more technically challenging environments that I find inside buildings with their architecture and light sources? Anyway, to address the balance a little I have chosen an outdoor photograph from just after Christmas
Winter weddings - I absolutely love them. I know they scare photographers to death because of the light on a Winter’s day, but for me that’s always been the thing that I love the most. In Wintertime we get such a huge variety of different lighting conditions to deal with but this gives Winter weddings a variety and atmosphere that we don’t see during the Summer months.
Traditionally I have always ran an image of the year feature on my blog at the end of the year, but because of the workload that I have coming up (four weddings before the end of the year) I have no choice but to run this post a couple of weeks early. I still have plenty of images to shoot before 2012, and some of them may be better than this one, but for me this shot has stood out since June when I took it. If someone were to ask me for one image that defines my style then this is it.
Last Saturday I took the train from Preston station to London Euston to cover a wedding near Tower Bridge. Preston Station has to be the most godforsaken place in the North West but a train from there to the Capital takes only a couple of hours. The parents of one of my clients from earlier this month were also on the train, and as we chatted on the frozen platform the bride’s mum commented on how she sees new things in my pictures every time she looks at them. I was quite flattered because I’ve always wanted people to look at my work and see a lot of the subtlety that went into the picture - something that would almost go unnoticed if you looked at the picture quickly.
This November has been a strange month for me. Usually I get some time off between the middle of October and the beginning of December as traditionally November isn’t the most popular month for weddings. Not this year!! It has been one of my most popular months of the year and the weather has also been really mild. I’m guessing my brides must know something I don’t :D
I’ve covered some great wedding venues in my career, but one of the most unusual is actually on my doorstep - or rather a few miles up the coast at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. My bride wanted the whole pleasure beach feel to her wedding, and with that came all sorts of challenges with regard to the pictures. Not only did I have to contend with a 5pm November ceremony, a dimly lit venue and 250 guests, but I also needed to get some of Blackpool into the images.
Last week I was in my Ambassadorial role at Canon’s Pro Solutions event in London. Canon chose the event to showcase their new EOS 1DX camera, and also the Pixma Pro-1 printer which I have been involved with. The marketing video for the Pro-1 which I feature in is available to view on YouTube. It has been a manic couple of weeks for me, but now I’m back in the studio and back to my ‘day job’ I can concentrate on catching up with my Image of the Week series :)
The bridal blogs and photographer’s websites these days are full of detail pictures. Endless images of shoes, dresses, table decorations, flowers, cakes and favours. Anyone would think that the wedding day has become less about the people and more about the style and look of the day. As a people photographer I find this to be quite a sad state of affairs. Obviously, details of the day are important in terms of producing a well rounded coverage, but for me the wedding is still about the marriage of two people and the emotion and atmosphere that surrounds the day.
This time last week I was getting ready to fly to Holland to speak at the Zoom Campus event in Nieuwegein on behalf of Canon cameras. Normally I hold seminars for professional photographers but the Zoom event is aimed squarely at the enthusiast/amateur market and for me that meant a change in emphasis when it came to my presentation. So what could I speak about when 70% of the people in each seminar hadn’t shot a wedding before?
I love shooting in London. I know I’m based in the North West, and my most of my weddings take place up here, but there is always something interesting about covering a wedding in the capital. Thanks to Virgin Trains, London is just over two hours away and if I’m offered a wedding there, I usually like to take it.
