With being an Edinburgh wedding photographer as you would expect most of my baby photography is carried out in and around Edinburgh itself. However, I did have one couple who came up from London to marry in a Scottish Castle book me to travel down to them for their babies christening followed by a photography session, which was a delight!Funnily enough though, a baby shoot was my first professional solo assignment and it was this that led me to my first wedding booking at the age of 16! My very first job was with an established photographic studio in the north of England. This was run by two brothers who having a very good reputation were always kept busy with work.
They were largely old school photographers and although I found there approach and way of working a little old fashioned it gave me a good grounding in the basic skills and rudiments of wedding and portrait photography. All portrait session, including baby shoots, were carried out in the studio. However, one day they had a client request a photography session at home. Now for me this sounded like a great idea. I have always thought, and still do, that studio photography tends to have a kind of ’rabbit in the headlights’ look. Even the most creative studio photographers, and I know a great many, cannot really avoid that staged and formalistic feel.
But working in a babies own environment, or for children their garden or on location, really lends itself to creating completely natural, relaxed and fun images. Due to my enthusiasm for the idea, and the studio owners lack of, I was given my first solo commission! I was allowed to take along as much gear and equipment as I wished. But to be honest a lot of the old fashioned gear is so heavy and cumbersome I really felt it would hinder the type of natural pictures I wanted to shoot. So much to the brothers horror I elected to simply use a light weight 35mm SLR.
Now after the shoot I returned to the studio to process the film. The brothers were not happy at all with the results! They were nothing like what they would have produced if the client had come to studio. I tried pointing out that that was the whole point, I was producing something different. Anyway, they moaned and complained sufficiently so that I ended up considerably apprehensive about how the parents were going to react upon seeing their proofs! However, I needn’t have worried. When the parents came to view the proofs they absolutely loved them and it the studio obtained one of its largest print orders of the year!
A couple of weeks later the mother returned with her sister who had just begun planning her wedding and they wanted to book me to photograph the day. Up until then I had never photographed a wedding, and indeed no one except the two brothers did so for the studio, but the sisters were adamant that it was me they wanted. So there I was at 16 years of age with my first wedding booked!
After discussions with the bride and groom we decided that I would photograph the wedding day predominantly photojournalistic style, which was pretty much unheard of at the time, and we would endeavour to get through all the formals in under half an hour as they didn’t want a two hour chunk of their day spent on them, which again was the norm for weddings back then (and still is for some today, lol). As with my first baby session we ended up with a great set of natural, relaxed photographs which captured the emotions, feelings and atmosphere of the day perfectly.
Although I had learnt the art and technicalities of photography with the studio it was quite apparent that my individual style did not match so it was not long until I left and set out on my own. Today I find it interesting that with both weddings and portrait’s the 21st century preference is more for modern, contemporary lifestyle photography rather than the old formalised pictures.
Anyway there’s a few examples here from my last baby session with five week old Jack last Saturday and a couple of wedding images from albums I’ll have out on display this weekend at the Melville Castle wedding show.
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