Celebrating the tenth anniversary of my wedding business

In a few weeks time a major milestone in my business will take place, it will be ten years since I left newspaper photography and set up my wedding business, and 22 years since I first became involved in professional photography. During that time I have photographed hundreds of weddings all across the UK and a number of international weddings.

In 1988 I got my first job in photography, working in the darkrooms at the Peterborough Evening Telegraph newspaper, A lot has changed in photography since then. My first job saw me developing and printing black & white photographs, I spent most of my working life under the dim red glow of the safe light. My fingers turned yellow from the chemicals, no doubt in today's health and safety concious world there would be rules about dipping your hands in developer and fixer. Luckily for me, the picture editor on the newspaper saw some ability in my photographic skills and persuaded the newspaper to send me on the official training course for newspaper photographers, the NCTJ. I packed my bags and spent a year of training in Sheffield, before returning as a qualified press photographer. I went on to work for various regional and national newspapers and magazines over the next 12 years.

While I was on the NCTJ course in 1989, an early prototype of the digital camera was demonstrated. At that point most press photographers still shot on black & white film (HP5 was our standard stock). Digital photography seemed like it would never catch on, the camera was clunky and the only one of its kind in the country. Even when I left newspaper photography in 1999, digital photography was only just making an entrance, many photographers shot on film and used a negative scanner to produce digital images.

I remember when a major news story broke while I was working for a local newspaper in the early 1990's, some of the photographers from national newspapers came to our office to develop their films and wire them to the offices in London. One of them brought a suitcase sized machine that would scan the film and transmit it over a phone line. I had never seen anything like it before and was in awe of the new technology.

I photographed a number of high profile news stories during my time in press work, although a lot of the work was actually mundane. I enjoyed photographing bands and managed to blag my way into photographing Meatloaf, Belinda Carlisle, Chris Rea, Saxon and a number of others. More memorable press assignments include spending a week with the British Army flying helicopters and driving tanks in Germany, spending time with Tony Blair on his battle bus before he won the General Election, photographing most of the Royal Family on a Rota pass – we had strict instructions not to talk to the Royal Family, one one occasion the Queen Mother struck up a conversation with me and I wasn't sure if it would be rude to ignore her or break the rules, as it happened I broke the rules and had a quick chat with her.

After 12 years as a press photographer I started to look for something different, newspaper photography was great, but it is very long hours and nobody is ever grateful of your work, yesterday's photograph is today's fish and chip wrapping. At that time (1999) wedding photography was considered as the lowest of the low for photographers, the average wedding photographer turned up with a blad on sticks (Hassleblad on a tripod) and shot a couple of rolls of 120 film with the same old set up photographs every wedding. My press colleagues thought I was mad for even considering weddings, although a number of them have since contacted me asking for advice on photographing weddings. Luckily I discovered an emerging style of wedding photography, wedding photojournalism. At that time there was maybe just a couple of photographers in the UK working in this style. It was a style that would fit perfectly with my newspaper background. My only problem was I didn't have a portfolio. I did have some wedding photographs from my press portfolio, A few months previously I had been sent to a semi celebrity wedding, as it happened I wasn't very welcome and was chased away by the ushers, but not before I had taken some photographs in a documentary style. The bride actually phoned up the newspaper and ordered some prints, despite not welcoming my presence at her wedding.
Armed with a small portfolio of work I gained my first wedding at Swinfen Hall. Once I put these photographs on my website I was inundated with enquiries for more weddings and before I knew it I was a full time wedding photographer shooting 50 weddings a year.

The first couple of years saw me working on film, a mixture of colour and black & white. I set up a darkroom at home, complete with a dry to dry colour processor. In 2003 I brought a digital camera and started experimenting with taking a few photographs at each wedding with it, a couple of years later I was working totally with digital cameras and found a lot of my time was spent in front of a computer.

Digital has brought mixed blessings for professional photographers, it has opened up new avenues of creativity, but meant spending a lot of time in front of a computer screen. Digital photography has also made it very easy for anyone to set up as a wedding photographer. The market is now saturated with many wedding photographers who lack any training and often any real experience. It is possible to pay for a portfolio building day at a mock wedding or even buy a complete wedding album taken by another photographer, as a result many couples are no doubt left with sub standard photography from photographers who have no previous experience. Luckily there are plenty of couples who appreciate good photography and the standard of the top wedding photographers in the UK is very high.

As I reach the tenth anniversary of my business, I can say that I still enjoy my job as much now as I did back in the summer of 2000, weddings are happy events and it is an honour to be involved in them. Photography is far more than a job to me, it is my life. I look forward to the next ten years and all the changes it may bring.