Cambridge Wedding Photographer | Cambridgeshire Wedding Photography

As an experienced wedding photographer one learns to look for certain moments that occur fairly much at each wedding. These tend to happen wherever the wedding is, whoever the couple are and fairly much irrespective of what sort of wedding they are having. One of my personal favourite moments is just before the bride is about to walk up the aisle and she takes the arm of her father. Now it could be because I am the father to two girls myself (I will potentailly be a snivelling wreck if they get married and I give them away!) but I always find this moment extremely moving. There is always a glance between bride and father, a smile or a tear – sometimes this is just as they link arms or sometimes before or after but, more often than not, it happens and makes a great photograph.

The image below is one of my particular favourites. It was heavy snow and very cold outside, the church and churchyard were beautiful and I remember the bride having to arrive by Land Rover as the church was at the bottom of a very slippery hill. When we went into the service the sun was setting and the church was extremely full and extremely warm! This type of situation presents numerous challenges for the photographer not least that as soon as I brought the camera in from the cold outside the lens steamed up! However, working with a “cold camera” and a “warm camera” I managed to get this lovely moment – I particularly like the way that the shape of the bride and her father is echoed by the bridesmaids behind. For me that lifts the image from being good to rather special!

I have to admit to having a bit of a secret liking for all of those programmes on the TV that profess to show the “state of the nation” or look back at how we lived during a particular era. This is particularly interesting now as I am getting (a little!) older because, at the grand age of 46 historical programmes about the 70′s, 80′s or even the 90′s bring back personal memories of how things used to be! My goodness I’m sounding really old now! However we all do like a good dose of facts, figures and statistics – I think in many ways they act as a sort of barometer and help us to picture how we fit into things. What is the norm? What are other people doing? Am I doing what everyone else is doing (and perhaps being reassured by this) or is everyone else doing what I thought was my idea! (Dammit!)

The wedding industry is a funny old beast and, having been a part of it for over ten years now, I have seen fads and trends come and go. However, love will never go out of fashion and couples will always look for ways to make a public declaration of commitment. Increasingly this may be made within a secular context and the term “marriage or wedding” is in fact becoming used to describe a wide variety of events to celebrate the coming together of two people. This makes it an exciting time for a wedding photographer such as myself. I am increasingly getting commissions from couples who are wanting to celebrate their weddings in their own personal ways, be this an unusual venue, a non traditional order of events for the day or an unusual day of the week. This suits my style of wedding photography very well. I really enjoy the opportunity to “go with the flow” and it prevents me from photographing with any pre conceived ideas about what the final outcome is going to be. It allows me to push the definition of what a wedding photograph is. Twenty years ago wedding photographs would have been posed set pieces of cake cuttings register signings and smiling group shots and people had pre conceived ideas about what was or wasn’t a wedding photograph. Today that definition is much more broad, my photograph below is a photograph taken at a wedding and, to me is a fascinating story of three different events juxtaposed in one frame, but is it a “wedding photograph” in the accepted sense? – well probably not really!

I wanted to share a brilliant infographic sent to me by The Wedding Secret.It shows beautifully clearly what is going on in the wedding world right now and actually reflects some of my experiences in my business in microcosm as well. The shift to secular weddings, the interest in having weddings on weekdays and not always in the height of the summer are all things that I have noticed recently. I’m not great with written facts and figures but I do think in a very visual way – infographics, therefore, are a perfect way for me to assimilate infomation easily and I think that this one is an absolutely outstanding piece of work – enjoy!

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Created by The Wedding Secret

Created by The Wedding Secret: