David Bier Photography

Last week I shot Sital and Martin’s wedding reception. This was another job for Patrick Ralph, the Asian wedding supremo, and this time it was in a Baylis House , a Berkshire hotel set in beautiful grounds…just right for some quick bridal portraits! Here are a few of my favourites:

Last week I photographed Krishna and Qumal’s mendi ceremony for Patrick Ralph, a fantastic photographer who specialises in Asian weddings. For those who don’t know, this involves the bride and groom being showered with gifts, and henna and oil is applied to their hands and head. A very different kind of wedding ritual to any I’d seen before, and an absolute explosion of colour! Here are a few of my favourites:

My little sister Hannah got married last weekend, to Glenn. He’s a great bloke, they make a lovely couple, and they’ll be a really happy little family when Nebuchadnezzar (my suggestion) is born in September. The wedding was intimate, fun, and relaxed. Congratulations to the pair of them. Here’s a sneak peek of their wedding album.

There must have been thousands of articles about how to choose someone to photograph your wedding. Most of them say the same sort of things about budgets, shot lists, professional memberships. Some of them give you nice long lists of questions to ask. Now, these may be useful tips if you’re looking to narrow down dozens of photographers to a shortlist. It’s handy to have a few simple ways of qualifying candidates without spending too much time or effort.

But once you’ve got your shortlist, these basic guidelines don’t really get to the core of what you should be looking for. They’re too mechanical. Choosing a wedding photographer should be an emotional decision – after all, you’re trusting someone to capture some of your most important memories and emotions.

So what is the key factor? Simple. It’s click. Rapport. Connection.

Once all the boxes are ticked (pricing, experience, availability), you need to know that your photographer really gets you. This has to go deeper than someone with a friendly smile and a firm handshake. Someone is going to be creating memories of the most important day of your life. If their aesthetic, or sense of humour, or basic view of the world don’t sync with yours, those images are going to jar whenever you see them. Your wedding memories are going to feel like someone else’s.

I believe that there are three areas you should look at.

Firstly, there’s the way that the photographer communicates in their marketing. Anyone that publishes a website or a brochure is sending messages about who they are, and how they want to represent themselves. How do you feel about their style, their tone, their approach to design? Are you excited, intrigued, amused? Or are you irritated, impatient, bored?

Secondly, when you meet in person, the conversation should flow naturally. If it feels like you’re being blasted by a sales pitch, something’s wrong. The meeting ought to be a relaxing experience, where their confidence gives you a sense of security. You may not be looking for a new best friend, but you should like and trust this person. And on top of that, you should be able to sense that they’re excited about your venue, your funky cake, and your eight-piece soul band, and touched by your great-aunt flying in from New Zealand.

Thirdly, you should feel great about the sample products they show. The images should have the emotional punch you’d like in your own. The quality of the albums should make you enjoy handling them. The page designs should be satisfying. The stories should leap off the pages. Does the style feel like a natural extension of their brochure, their website, their conversation? Does it feel natural to you?

If all these factors are in place, you’ll know you’ve found the right person to photograph your wedding. Listen to your instinct. Trust them to capture your unique moments. Trust them to tell your story. Trust them to create your memories.

Kelly McWilliams, a wedding planner from Florida, wrote this blog post advising brides to enjoy their wedding day, rather than spend the whole time worrying about the details.

Michelle is absolutely right. You’ve spent a lot of time, effort and money to hire a team of professionals for your wedding - so let them do their jobs. Unexpected things happen, but if you’ve got people around you that you completely trust, let them do the worrying! Your job is to relax, spend time with each other, have fun with your guests. Try and stay in the moment.  Take it all in, and let the day unfold in its own way.

When you book a wedding photographer, it’s important that you know how long you’re going to be waiting to see your pictures. And exactly when you should be expecting to see prints, albums, or whatever else you’ve paid cold hard cash for. For instance, if you’re expecting to see proofs when you get back from honeymoon two weeks after the wedding, but your photographer isn’t intending to show you them for a month…Not good. Your final wedding experience shouldn’t be ruined because of an unprofessional attitude to customer service and communication.

It may well take several weeks to prepare your images or products (I’ll talk about what’s involved in post-processing in a future post), but make sure you know what your photographer has in mind. He or she will have a pretty standard workflow, and will be able to set your expectations from the word go.

For my own weddings, I aim to blog my favourite half-dozen or so images within two weeks of the wedding date. It gives the bride and groom (and their families and friends) something to whet their appetite. The next thing they’ll see is their full album design, within five weeks of the wedding date. Once they’ve chosen their album spreads, the albums typically take a further eight weeks to print, bind and arrive from the US, by which point I’ll have received any framed prints or canvases as well, and can deliver everything they’ve ordered.

I think it’s actually quite nice to have a couple of months between the wedding day and receiving your album. It builds anticipation and makes that first viewing all the more emotional. Just don’t let your mum cry all over your nice new album!

Isaac,

Normally people start winding down in December. Not you though! This month you’ve been like a baby Tasmanian Devil. Everything you can grab gets gummed and licked to within an inch of its life, especially your feet. Seeing you with a sheet of tissue paper invited comparison with a lion munching on a gazelle. Less disturbingly (but much wetter), you’ve discovered that the bath is great for splashing in. And the rougher we play with you, the more you like it. You especially love the games where we make you gasp in terror, followed by a great big gummy grin. Just wait till you find about rollercoasters!

In amongst all that, you also managed to sit up on your own for a few seconds. In fact, you’re getting so good at sitting up that we’ve ordered your first high chair in preparation for weaning. Mummy makes sure you are constantly physically challenged. She’s always putting you on your tummy so that you lift your head up, getting you to sit up, rolling you around…it must be like a perpetual personal training session.

In other news, you’ve started protesting very loudly about being put down on your own. Listen up sunshine - if you think you’re going to win a battle of wills, you want to take a closer look at your parents. Not going to happen, my friend. Between us we’ve got over six decades of Olympic level stubborn control-freakery. Not to mention several friends with kids, and we’ve seen them crash and burn on this stuff. You ARE going down for your nap. It’s time for Spooks. Anyway, it’s all smiles again when you wake up.

The highlight this month is that you’ve been laughing a lot more. It’s a beautiful little throaty giggle and we cannot get enough. Sometimes you seem to laugh at random…but sometimes we can get a series of 4 or 5 chuckles out of you, which makes our day. It’s definitely a nicer sound than that dolphin-esque squeak you’ve started doing, which makes us feel like we’re raising a SeaWorld refugee. I’m sure it won’t be all that long before you’re laughing at us, rather than with us, so we’ll enjoy it while it lasts, if that’s OK.

This is my last letter to you for 2008. God only knows what you’ll challenge us with in 2009, but this is our first proper year as a family in 10 Avenue Road. We couldn’t have asked for more - you’ve been a wonderful little boy and we’re very glad to have you.

Love,
Daddy

One of the most common questions people ask me is “how do people justify charging thousands of pounds for a single day’s work?”.

Well, this is an old topic, but here’s my take on it. The wedding day is hugely important. An extraordinary amount of time will have gone into planning every tiny detail, not to mention the thousands of pounds spent. Enough Bargain Buckets and Viennettas have been ordered to feed all your guests. People may be travelling from far and wide to share the celebrations. It’s a unique day, never to be repeated, and you want photographs to help you relive it.

So, who will you trust to provide the photographs of this hugely important one-off event? On one end of the spectrum, there’s your cousin Barry who owns one of those expensive digital SLR cameras. He’s done some fantastic photos from his round the world trip. He’s got the gear, and he clearly knows how to take photos, so he’s bound to do a great job of the wedding…right?

Well, no. Wedding photography is unique. So although cousin Barry might have some fantastic landscapes from the Australian outback, do you really know how good he is at photographing things that move? If he drops his camera on the way to the ceremony, does he have a backup - or is that game over for your photos? Can he design and provide a professional quality album? In short, do you actually know what you’re going to get? You may be lucky…but then again, you may not. How much of a risk are you willing to take?

On the other end of the spectrum, a seasoned pro can show you, in advance, EXACTLY the sort of thing you can expect. You can see images and testimonials from previous weddings, so you know he can actually cope with your fast paced, demanding event and still produce meaningful images. He will have backup equipment, and even backup photographers, so you know he can cope with emergencies and not let you down. And he’ll work with professional labs and album manufacturers, unlike cousin Barry, so you know your memories will be properly presented and stored. He can do all this because he has invested years, and thousands of pounds, working on his photographic technique, putting all the equipment together, gaining membership in industry associations, and building relationships with professional suppliers.

And by the way, a wedding photographer’s work goes far beyond the wedding day itself. Post-processing, album design, print ordering, framing, uploading…it’s more likely to be anything up to 5 days work per wedding. Cousin Barry may not have thought that through, and you may not even see any photos for months. A pro will tell you when to expect your images. He can do this because he has invested time in developing an efficient workflow that ensures you will see your photographs as quickly as possible.

The result is that once you sign a contract with your wedding photographer, you can tick it off your list and move on to the next item. It’s taken care of. You know what to expect, and when to expect it. The value you place on that feeling of confidence depends on a combination of your risk appetite, your budget, and the value you place on photography. Whether the answer is £100 or £10,000, there are photographers who will gladly take your money. Just make sure you fully understand, and are happy, with what you’re getting in return.

In an earlier post, I talked about the misconception that wedding photojournalists won’t or can’t do the formal group shots. I’ve also heard claims that we can’t do formal portraits, such as the posed bride and groom shots. Well, wrong again…I love doing portraits!

The challenge for me is to reflect the subject’s personality in the frame. I really enjoy my portrait work - it allows me to be creative in a very different way from the documentary stuff, and it really adds depth to a wedding album. Here are a few of my favourites - wedding and non-wedding.