Wedding albums and prints

Well I felt like father Christmas last week! I had several print orders from recent portrait sessions to deliver and also Anja and Daniel’s wedding album. To be honest because the portrait shoots were so close to xmas my clients weren’t expecting the prints to be ready until after the holidays but I like giving out pleasant surprises, lol! I didn’t want the orders getting clogged up with all the Christmas post so as they were all “In and around Edinburgh” (sorry, couldn’t resist throwing in the title of a book I did the photography for, lol) I decided to hand deliver them. That’s one of the personal touches you can do as a photographer in Edinburgh.

I also get a great deal of satisfaction from hand deliveries too as I see the unbridled delight on peoples faces when they see their prints or products. This is particular true with delivering a wedding album. I think I’ve talked about this before but I’m going to do so again as it really is an experience that gives me immense job satisfaction.

I delivered Anja and Daniel’s album just before lunchtime. I always try and sit with the couple when they open up and take it out of its box and then start poring over the pages. Although they have seen proofs of the pages, so they know what it will look like, they are never prepared for just how amazing it looks in the flesh! There really is no finer way to showcase your wedding photographs than in a top of the range album!

Anja and Daniel had ordered a large 12” x 12” Image Book with a magazine style layout. Because this is a pretty big album with outsize pages the picture quality is absolutely stunning! The full page spreads, which are full bleed, simply jump out at you! We’d also incorporated a few personal touches to the album design too. Anja and Daniel’s colours for their wedding had been predominantly green and yellow, as you’ll see from the pictures throughout this blog. The bridesmaids wore green dresses and carried sunflowers, the cake was decorated green and white with iced sunflowers and the beautiful white chair covers were adorned with green sashes. To complement this I’d designed a few pages with white backgrounds and coloured matched the photograph borders to the bridesmaids dresses. Similarly, I coloured matched page backgrounds to the sunflowers and again gave the photographs borders that mirrored the bridesmaids colours.

Daniel and Anja had also included two of the photographs I’d taken in the huge ornate window of the Ante-Room. One is shown here, the other can be found in an earlier post when I blogged their wedding. We came up with the idea of positioning the two images side by side on a dark background and giving them gold borders that coloured matched the Melville Castle curtains that framed the couple as they sat in the window. The page was Daniel’s favourite! Along with 39 others, lol!

I’m often asked why I don’t post pictures of my album pages. In fact its also been suggested to me many times that I should do a short video leafing through a wedding album to allow couples visiting my blog or website to see how amazing they are. However, I think I’ve mentioned this before, but wedding photographers who can do their own design work guard their designs and idea’s rigorously. It’s what makes our albums stand out from all the other photographers who use the drag and drop templates. So it’s something that I refrain from doing. To be honest, its risky enough posting photographs as I’ve had a couple of experiences of other photographers stealing my images and using them for their own marketing and advertising. This is a problem that several of the countries top photographers have had as with modern day internet access it is all too easy. It’s one of the reasons why my images online are never larger than 400 pixels, so even if they get stolen for internet usage they are too small to be used in someone else’s album or brochure.

The last occasion I caught another photographer using my images was just last year. One of my brides had stumbled across his website and noticed some of his pictures she knew were from weddings I’d photographed. I had a look and sure enough he’d lifted the images from my website and was using them on his own. When I contacted him about this he said he would be happy to pay me for their usage explaining that he was a new wedding photographer and although he had several bookings lined up he hadn’t as yet photographed a wedding and so needed some “real” wedding images for his website. He said he loved my style of photography and would seek to emulate it and as he was based down near London he wasn’t going to be in direct competition with me so it would be okay to use my photographs. It’s almost unbelievable isn’t it? Anyway I could tell you a few stories worse than that that other photographers have experienced so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much, lol!

Anyway, Daniel and Anja were over the moon with their album! They must have spent twenty minutes on every page and then went back through it again! They were going to a big family Christmas party that evening so the album was going to be taken along and given centre stage! Its hard to describe how satisfying it is when I see the natural, spontaneous, joy on a couple’s faces as they go through their wedding album. As a wedding photographer in Edinburgh wherever possible I will always hand deliver albums for this reason. It’s the greatest feedback I get!

If you are currently planning your wedding I am always happy to come out and meet up with you and look through some wedding albums and books. Just drop me an email or give me a call. Alternatively, if you’ve not yet firmed up a date or venue, keep a regular check on the Latest News and Events page of my website as I’m regularly exhibiting and appearing at various venues and events.

Winter wedding at Wedderburn

Well I’ve been so busy with the run up to Christmas and trying to make sure all my print, card and album orders are ready in time that I haven’t had much chance to blog. Yes, and thank you for those of you who have emailed me telling me so, lol!

Anyway I might get chance to back track over a few things in the next few weeks but for today I’ll tell you about my last wedding, which was down in the Borders last weekend. As a wedding photographer in Edinburgh I get the chance to travel all over Scotland photographing weddings at some of our most magnificent venues. But last weekend’s wedding had me at three all in one day!

Leigh-ann and Jonathan were getting married at Gavinton village church and then onto their reception at Wedderburn Castle. I was booked to start at Leigh-ann’s parents home in Lauder, which meant I’d have the three different venues on the day. This is really nice as it produces a real diversity of images as well as capturing the entire day from start to finish. I arrived at the house for 11am and did an hour of pre-wedding preparations and bridal portraits, as well as a request from Leigh-ann’s father to photograph his Japanese koi-carp. In fact, he had more photographs taken of himself standing proudly by their pond than what he did standing with Leigh-ann! (He knows I’m only joking lol, couldn’t resist it!)

It was then a half hour drive to the church where I grabbed a few shots of Jonathan and his bestman and ushers before the wedding cars started to arrive. I also hooked up with Geoff from watchthebirdie from this point onwards who was producing the wedding video. I’ve worked with Geoff on many occasions and he’s the only videographer I recommend so I was really chuffed when he won the 2009 VOWS award for vidoegraphy just a few weeks ago.
He was still buzzing actually, lol!

Following the wedding ceremony, which I photographed reportage style for the most part, we headed back to Wedderburn Castle where we’d agreed we’d do most of the classic photography including all the group photographs. By now it was getting late into the afternoon and the sun was dropping quickly. I know many photographers do not like winter weddings, in fact some just won’t do them due to it “being too dark for photography”, but I absolutely love them! I spent a few years doing commercial and editorial work before I went back into wedding photography fulltime and this included some landscape photography so for me the last two hours of sunset right at the end of the day has always been magical! That’s why it’s known as the golden hour. So I knew we were going to get some gorgeous, atmospheric images!

There’s a few examples posted here for you to see.
The first is a 'standard' arriving at the castle image with the bride and groom posed classically beside the wedding car with the formidable Wedderburn Castle making a dramatic backdrop. I also did a similar version too without the car, posing the bride and groom at the castle entrance and shooting from a very low angle to accentuate the mightiness of the castle. I converted this image to black and white so it would complement the first shot. I then rotated around Leigh-ann and Jonathan for the natural looking image here with the sun setting right behind them which produced a nice warm, romantic picture.

After all the group shots I took Leigh-ann and Jonathan back inside the castle to capture the last few minutes of the golden light. The suns low angle was pouring through a couple of the huge, ornate windows high above the main staircase creating a be-speckled array of pools of light and shadows. You’ll notice from the three images taken on the staircase how warm and distinctive it makes the photographs appear, particularly the shot of Leigh-ann right at the top of the staircase leaning on the banister. The angled golden light doesn’t last for long but with flow posing techniques I was able to shoot around 30-40 different images in about ten minutes before it disappeared.

After the wedding breakfast, and of course all the speeches and cake cutting, I quickly took Jonathan and Leigh-ann to the bottom of the staircase whilst it was free from passing guests and family and got a wide shot of the two of them at the foot of the staircase with the Christmas tree all lit up behind them. This is another atmospheric photograph that you cant get until the light levels are low enough.

The day concluded, photographically anyway, with the first dance. Regular readers of my blog will know how much I enjoy the first dance photographs. They are so full of character once the lights come down! I got a good mix of full length and close ups as well as my trademark first dance image looking up at the couple from floor level. And, no, I don’t lay prone on the ground for this. Far too dangerous with so many stomping feet!