I think that I have always had a number of issues with wedding shows! I definately have a number of issues with wedding fayres, mainly the fake olde English and it’s terrible merangue dress connotations, less so with wedding shows which sound a bit more cool and happening (in theory!) but certainly much less of an issue with wedding open days! The Secret Garden wedding open day last Saturday completely converted me and we had a whale of a time. It was small, bespoke and personal, the Secret Garden staff were superb, their hospitality fantastic and the whole event had a lovely informal sort of homemade but extremely warm and professional feel about it. Even better the sun shone for the day, the marquee and gardens looked lovely and we were lucky enough to meet some genuinely fantastic, enthusiastic and talented suppliers.
It is always an huge pleasure to see people’s reactions to my photography and I had created a new sample album for the occasion which went down a treat! We met so many genuinely fantastic couples who had some really great ideas for their weddings, many had a real sense of individual style and also a clear vision for what they wanted photographically. So many couples come to us wanting a natural record of the day and worried about both the group shots and also the bride and groom shots and it is really nice to be able to talk these things through face to face and to be able to help. I was also doing complimentary engagement shoots on the day, this was hard work but very rewarding as it was mixed in with talking to people as well as photographing the fashion shows – very busy!
There are a few images from the fashion shows below.
The photographic press is currently being bombarded by the release of yet another updated version of two already amazingly good cameras. There are excited reviews by publications and professional bodies that really should know better and the obsession with pixels and low noise ISO goes on. The camera manufacturers, they would have us believe, are working tirelessly on our behalf to create even more gizmos to help us take even better photographs – face recognition, zone metering, million point focussing zones etc etc and the expensive list goes on. None of this paraphanelia makes anybody a better photographer, in fact the further away one goes from understanding the relationships between aperture and shutterspeed and being able to use your camera in manual mode the further away from becoming a better photographer you become. In a way this is comforting, as a professional photographer I know that it is my eye or my minds eye that counts. For me to become a better photographer it is a matter of mental agility, freshness of thought and emotional atunement. These are all attributes that improve in no other way than by hard graft and, week in week out I practice my craft and I graft away at it. I look, listen, learn and think – pixels and resolution and auto this and that mode are completely superflouous. Ideally I shoot with a single camera with a single prime lens on fully manual mode – no gadgets, just my eyes and my thinking. I love this purity and pared down approach, it’s beautiful, minimalist and has an honesty and integrity that will serve me well for years.
