I’ve enjoyed using my vintage lenses with my Fujifilm X-T cameras over the last few weeks. It’s been really good to slow down, using manual focusing, and I like the colour rendering and sharp images my Auto Takamar 35mm F2.3 lens has produced (it’s a 50mm lens on my crop sensor Fuji cameras). The other vintage lens I’ve been using is my Pentacon 135mm F2.8 – known as the bokeh monster, with good reason.
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Our second wedding of 2014 was in late March. Tim and Charmaine were getting married at a hotel near Frome, Somerset. The wedding ceremony and wedding breakfast were to be held at the same venue, making life easier for me.
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Our first wedding in 2014 was in late March when we shot Andy and Louise’s ceremony at the Walton Park Hotel, Clevedon, N.Somerset, UK. Its a modest wedding venue and a little bit restricted for photo opportunities on site. However, Andy and Louise had a few ideas for couple shots on the Victorian seafront at Clevedon. Louise and her party were getting ready at the hotel and Andy was due to arrive an hour or so before the ceremony start time. They lived in Clevedon so there were no great logistical problems.
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Into July 2013 and the wedding of Frank and Tina. We were back at Arnos Court Hotel in Bristol. Unfortunately, as far as outside wedding shots were concerned, it rained pretty much all day. Other than the bad weather though, another lovely wedding day, that ran quite smoothly for me.
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I shot two further weddings in 2013. I thought we’d been busier than that, although we did have lots of future bookings for 2014. In June I shot Ben and Sarah’s wedding at the Holiday Inn, Filton, Bristol.
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Our first wedding of 2013 was in January of that year. The Bride, Nicola, had been a bridesmaid at a wedding I photographed in 2012 and booked me, for her wedding, following that ceremony.
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Reviewing our first wedding photography year
Having shot our last wedding of 2012 it was time to look back and assess how it had gone and where I wanted to go with my wedding photography. We’d gone into the year with about 50% of the weddings we worked on booked, the other 50% were late or short notice bookings. Going into 2013 I hadn’t advertised anywhere other than the work intranet. I was still getting regular enquiries, via word of mouth or being booked on recommendations by my clients from 2012. That was really nice, and encouraging.
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The one with the stroppy Church Warden.
A late booking to shoot Luke and Ashleigh’s wedding meant our final wedding of 2012 would be in November at Aust, South Gloucestershire. Luke had ties to the church there and the couple very much wanted a church wedding, which was followed by a reception at The Grange Hotel in Winterbourne.
The one with the Videographers.
October and the wedding of Tom and Sam, my first professional booking although by this time we’d shot ten weddings. Sam had booked a small wedding venue in North Somerset which was part of a carp fishing lake complex. The venue had two barns, at right angles to each other. The main ceremony room was quite well lit with natural light but it was quite narrow with the desks, the registrars were going to use to run the ceremony, very close to the rear and sidewall.
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My day at the Damien Lovegrove Workshop. I arrived at 9.00am and spent the first hour chatting with the other two photographers on the course. Both were full time professionals specialising in general photography.
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Steve Hyde 