Category Archive: Reportage wedding photographer
Documentary wedding photography | WEDDING 365#35
WEDDING 365 PROJECT – Latest image, front end of February – one taken from today’s Wokefield Park wedding.
SHOOTING DATA: 5DMk2, 24mm, F1.6, 1/100, ISO 2500, underexposed by a third.
VENUE: Wokefield Park
ETHOS: It makes sense on days where I’m shooting a wedding, to upload a photograph from the current catch. I’m keen to promote that wedding photography should not follow a spreadsheet of capture. I have in the past been offered tick lists diligently cut from various wedding journals suggesting photographic must haves. Anybody who has ever written a list like that in a magazine, has surely never shot a wedding, well, certainly not from a documentary stance. I used to politely accept these lists. I now politely decline. I’m not at heart a detail recordist. Yes I will photograph the dress, yes the shoes – if they’re there, yes the flowers and so on, but I don’t spend hours fulfilling the requirements of a check list. Do that and you stop watching the day as it unfolds. I spend many hours studying work online of other wedding togs, genuinely intrigued by their blogs and portfolios, and I’m surprised how some seem to be mainly collections of wedding accessories delicately posed and arranged. They are of course trinkets of the day and important ones at that, but whilst all this arranging is happening, what real action is being missed? What’s happening to the people that make this whole story sing? For me that’s the magic. Morning preparations are one important facet, it’s my ‘finding feet’ part of the day and I enter the arena, open minded. I don’t want to muddy the waters of creativity by simply seeking a mirror shot, or setting up garter images etc. I’m hoping to capture fresh angles in what can often be similar and familiar scenes. This one above is not necessarily ground breaking, but it does show my desire to seek an unusual composition among banked standards. I love the way ‘Mum’ is delicately shaping the rim of her hat whilst make up is applied; instantly two stories in one image. Then there’s the draw of the netting texture, shooting through the round of the material, framing her head with the hat. I think it’ll make a good decent addition to the preparation chapter in the documentary book I prepare for the couple. A hat that’s ‘doing something,’ not just posed upon a box by a window.
Wedding family portraits | WEDDING 365#27
WEDDING 365 PROJECT – Daily choice of a wedding photojournalist image selected from my catalogue, collated from time spent documenting these unique events. Ethos provided for prospective brides and grooms, shooting data for the togs intrigued by that kind of information. Please comment, it makes a World of difference.
SHOOTING DATA: 5DMk2, 24mm lens, F1.2, 1/1000, ISO 1000
ETHOS: First up, from a technical standpoint I wouldn’t make a habit at shooting family groups with such a shallow depth of field. This would certainly support the composition. It’s obvious when you see the top of a head (bottom of frame) that this was captured with family connection as a consideration, more than the thought of family portraiture. For me though it’s become the perfect portrait and with a slight crop, presto, it will be. It’s about the boy. I have two young sons, and I know how my boys would feel on such a busy and important day. There’s so much going on, such a lot of attention being showered on him by all and sundry, that the comforting reassurance of parents and one big sis leapt out at me as a ‘must capture moment.’ And so often these become the day’s portraits. How much more refreshing to encapsulate real spirit in a photograph than a ‘smile for the man’ alternative.
Documentary wedding photographer | Update to Alex and Kerry
I’ve received a handful of mails with regard Alex and Kerry’s wedding slide show and one of the final slides featuring fireworks. Click below to read more and you’ll see the image in question, plus a handful of selected black and whites that describe the day pictorially.
Rivervale Barn wedding photography | Raj and Charlotte
I had dinner last night with Steve; best man at my wedding six years ago. See, this wedding thing, it’s all Steve’s fault. He’d insisted I shoot his brother Nick’s wedding a year before my own. He’d not accepted my protestations that I shot only portraits. He refused to believe that I couldn’t turn my creative eye to wedding photography. I quoted £200 as a gesture relating to experience – and I shot that wedding. And so now in 2012, I find myself as a professional wedding photographer by trade, and that’s pretty much my bag. We mused over that fated request last night whilst wrestling the last serving spoonfuls of my wife’s infamous chilli dish, and I repeated a conclusion I’ve made in mantra like fashion of late; no other form of photography that I’ve practiced, is so down to earth honest, variety driven and personally emotional. I’m an old softy at heart and so watching Raj with their son catch Charlotte’s eye as she processed down the aisle was and always will be bound to stir emotions. Wedding photography, and particularly documentary wedding photography is a much misunderstood genre of capture. There is a craft in capturing decisive moments. I genuinely become emotionally connected during a wedding, it’s inevitable, and I hope that comes across in the images presented. At Rivervale Barn, the reception continued – and with a banquet room dressed fittingly for a Christmas wedding only the hardest of Dickensian hearts could fail to be emotively captured by Raj and Charlotte’s poignant celebrations. Dr. Raj, Charlotte, congratulations. You had me at; “Please stand for the arrival of the bride.”
Michael and Natalie – Warbrook House wedding photography
“Hello Neale, I’m Bob.” All wedding videographers are called Bob. There are a handful of exceptions of course, as equally I’ve worked alongside WVs called Barry, Jeff, Mark, Danny and Julie. But in the main, they’re called Bob. Fact. This Bob looked pretty proficient behind his four cameras, and equally proficient hoovering up the canapes and champers. And thus the good humoured banter commenced. (Reference the ‘Bob hoovering’ image if you click more.) Humour was order of the day, and in a second factual revelation; that’s usually the case when a fair proportion of the congregation come from the Emerald Isle. Hosted at Warbrook House, a pretty Georgian country house hotel on the Berks and Hants border near Hook, most guests, and I’ll include myself, seemed to sport an inane grin for the day. This was a wedding that had a smile. It also had a Bob.
Posted in Warbrook House, Wedding Photographer
Tagged Berks wedding photographer, Documentary wedding photographer, Hampshire wedding photographer, Hants wedding photographer, Photojournalism at weddings, Reportage wedding photographer, Wedding photographer Berkshire, Wedding photojournalist, Wedding photojournalist Berkshire
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