10 years of wedding photography

This weekend marks 10 years since I photographed my first wedding. A whole decade of weddings. How did that happen?!

So firstly, a massive congratulations to Shameem and Mat on their 10 year wedding anniversary. They are such a loving and kind couple and I am so happy for them both. Despite being 3653 days ago (or 3654 as a write this), I can still remember their day well, they got married in the Lake District on an incredibly hot day. It was a brilliant day and one that literally changed my life.

So, as well as congratulating them on 10 years of very happy marriage, I also owe them one of the biggest and most heartfelt thank you’s I could ever give as without them asking me to photograph their wedding, I very much doubt I would even be a photographer.

When Shameem asked me whether I would be interested in photographing her wedding we worked together at an engineering firm in Manchester. I had long been in to photography but it was never more than a hobby and rather than people, the things I photographed most were landscapes and my pet cat! I didn’t have a website, just a free gallery on Photobox. I had never used my camera in a pressurised situation and had only ever been to a few weddings as a guest. The world of wedding photography was completely unknown to me at the beginning of 2006.

Luckily for me the day went well (thanks in no small part to deciding to shoot in RAW a couple of days before the wedding… phew) and a couple of Shameem and Mat’s friends, who were at the wedding, also then booked me to photograph their wedding. It all started slowly from there.

The world of photography, and especially wedding photography, has changed so much in these past 10 years. When I shot Shameem and Mat’s wedding on 10th June 2006 I was using just one Nikon D70 camera and two lenses; the 17-55mm kit lens and a Sigma 70-300mm. I also had a tripod so I looked the part. Now, well, I use a lot more than that.

The Nikon D70 was a brilliant camera in it’s day and it’s the one camera I have owned that I would never sell. Not only because it was my first DSLR camera but mainly because it was bought for me as a joint Christmas present from my wife Michelle, my parents and my parents in law. Despite the fact my phone now has a higher resolution than the D70, it was extremely expensive at the time and without the generosity of my family, I wouldn’t have been able to afford it. Since then I have owned various numbers of the Nikon D200, D300, D700, D800 and D810 cameras. I have always enjoyed new cameras and seeing how they improve on each other but for me, they are just tools now, I have no special affinity with any of them. I always will for that D70 though.

Over the past 10 years, one of the biggest changes I have seen is the advancement of digital photography. The quality of the files of the cameras I am using now compared to 10 years ago is crazy. This has been brilliant from a photography point of view but has made running a business harder as there are now so many photographers out there. This though, is a really good thing. When I first started, there was very little competition, most wedding photographers were still using film and software like Lightroom and Photo Mechanic, now so essential to us all, didn’t exist.

Luckily for me, as there was little competition, I was given the time to get better and improve slowly. I don’t think I really started to become confident in what I could do for a good 4 or 5 years. Now though, for new photographers starting out, they have to be good almost immediately so the pressure is much more intense and building a successful business is much harder. I look at this as a huge positive though, without so many talented wedding photographers out there, the quality of what we are producing wouldn’t be as good as it is. It is the competition which is driving us all on to become better and better and that is only ever a good thing for both us as photographers and our bride and grooms.

It’s not just cameras that have got better either. Websites and the way we show our work has changed so much over the past decade. When I first started I had an off the shelf template website. I liked it at the time but it was basic in the extreme. Now though blogs have overtaken static websites and Facebook and Twitter have become mainstream. Again, this has helped me massively because I have never been someone who is able to “sell” themselves very well so having the ability to use my website and social media to show my work off is huge. In fact, I would go as far to say that I would never have got to where I am now if brides were using the Yellow Pages to find their photographer so thank you Mark Zukerberg – I’d be happier still if you’d show my photographs to everyone who likes my page though…

This next bit is more for the geeky photographers. It’s hard to imagine shooting a wedding now and not culling the images in Photomechanic and editing in Lightroom, yet 10 years ago these didn’t exist so I was opening up every image in Photoshop and then deciding whether it was worth deleting or keeping and editing. I did this with every single image. Bear in mind I was also using a not so great PC at the time and it gives me cold sweats to think of how horrible that would be to do now. I still use Photoshop for certain things but only rarely.

In terms of my own work, I like to think that I have come a long way since my first wedding. I hope I have. I’m never truly happy with my work but I’m happy about that. It’s not good to settle. I haven’t ever left a wedding and not thought of something on the drive home which I should have done that day to have made something better. I’m used to that feeling though and I hope it never goes. I now judge myself on how many “moments” I have shot, and shot well, rather than focusing as much on just the portraits. I am still aiming to take absolute killer portraits but it’s the moments which I know will last the longest in everyone’s memories and I’m always seeking them.

I get closer now too. The 70-200, for years, was my most used lens. Now though, it’s the 35mm. The difference in feel and impact which the same moment has when taken on a 35mm to a 70-200mm is massive. Close wins every single time. As Robert Capa said “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”. A emotional moment shot close on the 35mm will almost always trump everything else. It took me about 8 years to realise this though.

The world of weddings has been very good for me. Not only has it given me a career which I truly love, and taken me to Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Ireland and all over the UK, I’ve also met and become friends with so many other photographers and suppliers that I couldn’t list them all. They know who they are though. Being a wedding photographer can be a very lonely profession in many ways so having such a good group of other photographers around me who I can truly call friends has been so important to me. The North West is a special place and the wedding industry here is awesome. So many nights out, funny memories, laughs and friendships.

I don’t know what the future holds or what may change and it’s pointless trying to guess, I just know that I want to keep on enjoying this awesome ride for as long as a I can. It’s cliched but witnessing so so many emotional moments, life changing moments, all from a few yards away and capturing it forever doing what you love is truly special and I am ridiculously lucky to do that for a living.

So to Shameem and Mat, and all 300 or so bride and grooms who have trusted me with capturing their wedding day for them, a massive massive thank you.

Here’s to the next 10 years.

I wonder what I’ll be writing in June 2026?