For their big day on 24th October, Mark and Sarah chose the Grimstock Country House Hotel, located in Coleshill near Solihull. As usual we’re showing a small preview of images from the day here on the blog.

Click on the images to see the full versions.

Saturday 17th October saw us return once more to Highbury Hall in Moseley. Carolyn and Andrew booked us at the Highbury wedding fayre a year prior and indeed we returned to the same fayre the day after their wedding!

Despite the temperatures being just a tad chilly at times the weather was otherwise quite cooperative and we noticed a more autumnal colours than at our previous visit last month.  A big thank you to Carolyn and Andrew for their hospitality during the day which was much appreciated.  I’ll also make special mention of the excellent registrar – Steven – who was very accommodating and happy for us to work in our usual, unobtrusive way.   We’ve come across a huge range of attitudes from registrars and clergy this past year, ranging from excellent at one end of the scale to downright rude and obnoxious at the other!  Steven was definitely the in the first category and we look forward to working with him again in the future.

We really must make special mention of the flowers, supplied by Jenny John Flowers of Oldbury, who’s arrangements were stunning and some of the best we’ve seen all year.

We have a small preview of images here, as usual.  The rest of the photos will be available for guests to view in our Client Area once the couple have returned from their honeymoon and seen their presentation.

Click on the images to see the full versions.

Vicky and Peter had picked two lovely venues for their wedding day.  St Mary’s church in Temple Balsall is so tucked away you can’t even see it from the road (we had to ask for directions!).  But the church itself is an absolute pleasure to work in.  Lots of light, gorgeous stained-glass windows and lots of space with an unusual seating layout which meant the bride and groom’s respective parents faced each other throughout the service.  But none of this is any use if the vicar doesn’t allow us to do our job properly and in this case we had no such problems.  The vicar (sorry, can’t remember her name) was happy for us to do whatever we needed.  We are always very thankful for this kind of attitude as we do come across clergy and registrars who really are very grumpy indeed!   She was also the only vicar we’ve ever seen with purple hair.  This bore an uncanny resemblance to the colour of the bridesmaid’s dresses!

For us, the day began at Vickys dad’s home in Dorridge, then onto St Mary’s and then finally onto Billesley Manor – a venue we worked at only last month.  Once again we used the grounds to get some great photos of Vicky, Pete and their guests. We’d like to say a HUGE thank-you to Vicky and Peter for looking after us so well on the day and ensuring we were well-fed and watered and also for being such great sports with our photo ideas.

As usual, we’re posting here a ‘sneek peek’ of preview images from Vicky and Peter’s wedding day.  The rest will be made available to view to guests in our Client Area once the couple have returned home from honeymoon and seen their presentation.

Click on the images to see the full versions!

Just occasionally, the chance to do something a little unusual comes up.  At Donna and Phil’s wedding earlier this month I got chatting with a guest by the name of Martin Nigel Davey, a writer, producer and actor who required someone to photograph the rehearsals of a play he was co-producing.  The play was called “Survivorship – To Cancer & Beyond”, written by playwright Monica Price about five real-life survivors of cancer who’s stories are replayed in monologue.

The cast consisted of five actresses, Jean Boht (most famous for the TV series ‘Bread’), Hannah Waterman (Eastenders and various stage roles), Sarah Manners (Casualty, Doctors), Maggie Service (Edinburgh Fringe) and Finn Atkins (Casualty, Eastenders, Once Upon A Time In The Midlands).  The play also included songs performed by the Malvern St James Singers.

So where did I fit into all this?  Well, photos of the rehearsals were required for promotional use by Macmillan Cancer Support – the charity for which the play had been produced.  It was my job to try to record the various goings-on of the rehearsal day and also the performances of the actresses as they settled into their roles.  Normally plays have extended rehearsal schedules but Survivorship had only two rehearsal days before the first night, so everyone was on edge!

The day began meeting with the producers, writer and director and of course the actresses themselves.  I was then left pretty much to my own devices to document the day as discreetly as possible.

It was fascinating to watch the goings-on of a busy theatre and witness all the hard work that goes into putting on a play.  Everyone involved was really dedicated to getting the show up and running and to be ready for the first performance that same evening, which both Sarah and I attended.

From a photographic point of view the strong directional stage lighting was really fun to try and capture, but in many ways photographing the performances was a bit like documenting the speeches at a wedding.  You try to capture hand gestures, facial expressions – just generally a bit of emotion that makes the photo into an image of a performance instead of just someone up on stage.  The big difference here was that the stage lighting produces a very dramatic effect – giving everything a strong three-dimensional appearance in the photos.  If only all wedding venues had decent lighting!

So here’s some of the pictures I took during the day.

Marie and Paul’s big day was a bit different to most of the weddings we photograph as they’d already got married in Central Park, New York  in late September!

They booked us at the very first wedding fayre we exhibited at for just a few hours to cover a blessing at Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Redditch followed by a reception party at Studley Castle.

So here’s few images from the day.  Anyone who attended the wedding can see the entire set in our Client Area where the password is the groom’s surname.

Click on the images to see the full versions!