WE have a new blog...

If you have arrived here looking for Wedding reports and slideshows they've all gone to the new site. You can find them here.

New site, new blog...

If you have just found your way here through a search, or if you have us bookmarked, you may notice there's not a lot going on right now. Well that's because we have moved.

Go to our new site here, the blog and site are all integrated now so you won't have to keep shifting around.

Best wishes
Steven and Josh

An interview with Steven.

There's a great new blog aimed at Brides, Grooms and photographers. It's called Photography 1827. The owner, Kathryn Andrews, talks about and shows really good wedding photography, particularly fine art and documentary styles. There are also articles on fashion and style for weddings, it looks good as well.

So last night I answered Kathryn's questions and sent her some of my favourite images from over the last few years.

Click here to go have a look.

Documentary wedding photography workshop

So here it is, the link to the details and the form to register. This should appeal to just about any wedding photographer because Megan will enlighten us on how to market a wedding photography business and Josh will show us how to make the best of our RAW files and album designs. I'll have quite a bit to say about our style of wedding photojournalism. So have a look here and register your interest.

Documentary Wedding Photography Seminar

Over the past week or so we’ve been shouting on Twitter and Facebook about the seminar/workshop, whatever you want to call it we are planning for 26th and 27th November.



It’s really exciting for us because we will be inviting just a handful of our fellow wedding photographers to our studio in Bowness. They will be able to have a good look around, see our sample albums and the way we work on a day-to-day basis. It’s not just a chance for them to have a nosey, although they are very welcome. We are going to give them an insight into what makes us tick as documentary wedding photographers.



I’ve talked about this on here before but it is worth another mention. My choice to approach wedding photography the way I do was no more contrived than the pictures we make. As a young wedding photographer in the seventies and to almost the end of the eighties, I was always uncomfortable asking intelligent people to adopt contrived poses for the sake of making, what I considered to be an inaccurate record of the wedding day. That was the way all wedding photographers worked then. I don’t know if I understood why it felt uncomfortable but I know that the couples didn’t take to that sort of direction particularly well either, maybe it was because I was so young or maybe I just was not the right type of personality.



I had always been interested in the idea of photography as a means of telling stories. When I first got into photography, as a very young, smooth faced art student, I collected a series of books on photography from Time Life publishers. Those books drew a lot on the archive of Life magazine and photo-stories by the photojournalists that graced its pages. Photographers like W Eugene Smith, Margret Bourke-White and Alfred Eisenstaedt. It wasn’t long before I discovered Henri Cartier-Bresson and his, for me, life-changing essay, “The Decisive Moment” written in 1952 but just as valid now. I still love reading that essay, and I go back to it often. All of it struck a chord for me, but his idea that the photographer can be an observer, a collector of images and a re-teller of stories, but did not influence or manipulate beyond the selection process seemed to be in contrast to the way I had been trained to photograph weddings.

“…Our task is to perceive reality, almost simultaneously recording it in the sketchbook which is our camera. We must neither try to manipulate reality while we are shooting, nor manipulate the results in a darkroom. These tricks are patently discernible to those who have eyes to see…”
Henri Cartier-Bresson from “The Decisive Moment” 1952.



In 1988 a friend and fellow photographer, asked me to photograph his sister’s wedding. He knew what I thought of wedding photography at the time and sympathised with my interest in impartial story telling. So, with his sister’s blessing he suggested I work the way I had always wanted to. That was the start and by the mid nineties that approach had become fashionable and what I was doing was in demand.

There are some very important theories that go toward setting the philosophy and methodology of getting really successful, emotive, powerful story-telling pictures. There are techniques, methods and a set of personal ground rules that establish not just the look of the images we produce but our whole approach to wedding photography. So, in a nutshell, that is what we are going to be talking about on the 26th and 27th November.

As well as all that from me, the delegates will hear from Megan Henshall.



Megan is an expert in branding and marketing wedding and portrait photography businesses. She has worked with, and contributed to, the success of some of the biggest names in our industry. When it comes to numbers she knows her stuff. She is also very in tune with our typical customers (as if there was such a thing), she understands what it is our clients want from us. Because she is not a photographer, but works everyday with images, she sees our work and the work of the other photographers she works with, from a similar perspective to our clients. That means she is able to help our clients use our images in albums, frames or any other presentation that relate to the customer’s needs and desires. She will talk on those subjects and subjects that will help photographers set their price, brand and product range to fit the market they want to serve.

It’s all very well making stunning images and creating wonderful products but we photographers still have to convert that jumble of zeros and ones into recognisable images. In our business, as well as making some of the team's stunning images, that’s Josh’s domain.



He will give a presentation on our workflow, colour management (that includes how we get those punchy, film like black and whites), editing and processing. He will also talk about and demonstrate the JAD software we use to design our gorgeous Jorgensen albums.



If you are or aspire to be a documentary wedding photographer go to the link and register now.

New Sample Album

I know we usually do this the other way round, but sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind and get all adventurous... So, if you go and have a look at our Facebook page, you can get a glimpse of our newest sample album, while you are there why not join it? If, however, you would prefer to see it in the flesh and that is by far the best way to see it, give us a call 01539 454 83 and we'll get the coffee on.

A Velvet Hand, a Hawk's Eye...

We have just joined a group of wedding photographers called "Wedding Photographer's Network". They have a directory, we are in it, and they also have a blog. It's a great site with some really interesting stuff for both photographers and Brides.

Last night Steven wrote an article for their blog. It's about how he approaches his style of wedding photography. It's called A Velvet Hand, a Hawk's Eye. That's a quote from Henri Cartier-Bresson's "The Decisive Moment", Steven's favourite piece of writing of all time.

You can read the article here.