Blogposts
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Dark Wedding Venues
Dark wedding venues – working with the light Dark wedding venues is the title of this post and how the light at venues affects the resulting wedding photography. Not every wedding venue has perfect light. This may be due to the layout of the venue, the lighting, the weather, and the time of year, there are many factors. Reportage or documentary wedding photography is primarily about storytelling. So the moments are key. Particular moments that happen during the day, both seen and unseen by the wedding couple. But also the emotions, the characters, and the atmosphere. The lighting is a…
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Highley Manor | Rhys & Chris
Highley Manor wedding photography Highley Manor is a wedding venue that sits just near the Sussex village of Balcombe and a few miles south of Crawley. Not far from where the M23 becomes the A23 and the road heads on south to Brighton. Once the home of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, although that particular building was demolished and the present one built in the late nineteenth century. A local wedding venue for me, just a few miles from my house, but one I had not shot at for twenty years until the wedding day for Rhys and Chris. It…
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Bosham Church wedding | Ellen & Oliver
Bosham Church wedding Bosham church sits close to the quay in the small Sussex village near Chichester. Holy Trinity church, surrounded by flint walls, is considered the oldest place of worship in Sussex. This Grade I listed building sits on Saxon foundations, in turn, that may sit on the remains of a Roman Basilica. The Roman Palace at Fishbourne is just up the road. Certainly, the Romans were nearby. An enormous sculpted marble head, known as ‘the Bosham Head’, much eroded and weighing 170kg was found in a local garden in 1800. It is now thought this could have been…
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Weddings in 2024
Weddings in 2024 – May to December Weddings in 2024 started in May for me, with a small wedding at the Waterside Inn in Berkshire and ended in December in Kent, in some very wintry weather. In between I also captured weddings in Sussex, Surrey, Suffolk, London, Cambridge, Bath and Shropshire. More on that Shropshire wedding in a bit, as there was something very unique about that particular job for me. Weddings varied in size and expense. Small intimate weddings in a restaurant to super large marquees in sunlit fields. I think the amount spent on fine cigars at one…
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Cheswardine wedding | Caroline & Simon
Cheswardine wedding A Cheswardine wedding, a small village near the Shropshire/Staffordshire border. Just north of Newport and south of Market Drayton, the Shropshire Union Canal passes nearby. Now with all due respect, I doubt that most of the UK population has ever heard of Cheswardine, but when Caroline emailed me in March, the name popped out for me, for a particular reason. With all the weddings I’ve shot, 1000+ now, this is the first church that has a family connection for me. St Swithun’s church, on a small hilltop, overlooking the village High Street is where my Great, Great, Great,…
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Local church wedding | Tori and Joe
A local church wedding in Sussex A local church wedding in Fishbourne, West Sussex. Local because the tiny St Peter & St Mary church is just around the corner from Tori’s parents’ house in the village. Fishbourne sits just a couple of miles west of Chichester. The A27 bypass slices through between them and right next to probably Fishbourne’s biggest claim to fame – the remains of a massive and luxurious Roman Palace. (A school trip venue for many Sussex schoolchildren, it is the largest known Roman residence north of the Alps). Did they hold weddings there back in the…
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Royal Hospital Chelsea | Charles & Shane
Royal Hospital Chelsea wedding Royal Hospital Chelsea, is home to those famous scarlet-coated pensioners, as well as the annual RHS Chelsea Flower Show. The London wedding venue, on a sunny Saturday in September, for Charles and Shane. A venue that had a family connection for Charles. The first time I’ve shot a wedding here. The hospital was founded by King Charles II – a shiny gold statue of him in one of the large forecourts – in 1682 as an almshouse. It now houses 300 British Army veterans and something I didn’t know, it is where the ashes of former…
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Cambridge University wedding | Naomi & Jon
Cambridge University wedding Cambridge University wedding at Queens’ College for Naomi and Jon, on a July day of very mixed weather, plus the day of a crucial Quarter-Final in the Euros for England! When would the wedding guests break and steal a watch of the game on their phones? Queens’ College, Cambridge Naomi and Jon came down to Cambridge from their home in the Scottish borders, as this was Jon’s old college. Guests had come from all over, so it was seen as ideal not only as a unique and historic venue but geographically too. The last time I shot…