I have just transfered Gary and Cathy’s wedding photographs to the computer and thought I would share a few with you all, here are some of the images that I liked from the day. The wedding was in Bangor and on route to the Slieve Donard we stopped off at Castlewellan forest park, as always a great location for wedding photography. At a later date I hope to post the full wedding.
I have just transfered the wedding I was shooting at The Old Inn on Sunday for Gerry and Claire and thought I would add a quick post of ten images that caught my eye. I’m going to try and do a ‘Quick post’ of every wedding I shoot this year of ten images that I like the most after every transfer then if I get time a more comprehensive one at a later date.
Over the last week I have been going through the archives looking at weddings that I have taken in the past few months that I could put on the new gallery. I was surprised by how many photographs I take and either forget about or disregard, it’s only after looking back that I see something in them that I really like. This one was taken while the register was being signed, I had been warned by the Minister not to take any photographs until she had finished the official paperwork so while I was waiting for the nod I took this photograph.
It’s in these moments when the pressure is off that I see the other things that make up a wedding day, it’s only when I slow down and look around me that I take truly creative pictures. The lesson I learned is to approach every wedding with an open mind, slow down (quality is better that quantity) and learn to see what is happening around me and not just what is in front of me.
Here is the link to the full wedding day – Mount Stewart Wedding Photographer
Over the last few days the eagle eyed among you may have noticed some subtle changes to the website, the most noticable of these is the Gallery area. I have been wanting to do this for nearly a year but with all the weddings it has been impossible to find the time to do it. At the start of the week I decided to put everything else on hold and concentrate on getting it done and the galleries updated. My aim is to show as many full wedding days as possible at some of my favourite wedding venues to let you see how a whole wedding is photographed, it’s easy to put individual images from a lot of different weddings into a ‘best of’ selection but it’s more difficult to show a large collection of images taken from a single wedding day. I have not completed it yet and hope to do so in the next few days, I also want to keep adding and updating it when the wedding season is in full swing. I will also be adding the images that I like the most over the coming days to a seperate gallery.
Enjoy !
I would like to thank John at Lifeforms Design and all the folks at Atto Partners for the developement.
If you would like to get in touch with me about your wedding click on the link below -
Wedding Photographers Northern Ireland
One of the good things about being a wedding photographer is you really appreciate being off on a Saturday and one of the things I love most is walking Coco along the coast to the beach, today I brought a camera with me. This is my favourite.
It’s always good to get a little bit of time to experiment and play with new filters, etc. I am waiting on clients coming to meet me for the first time and have a spare half hour to play about. My latest is tilt shift effect, this is were the focal plane has been moved to change the depth of focus field. I will post more but this is my first attempt, not bad I recon !
Wow ! I have a wedding featured on the Vera Wang website. To view it you can click on this link – Larchfield Wedding Feature
Over a year ago I photographed Hugh & Rita’s wedding at Larchfield Estate, Rita was wearing the most amazing Vera Wang wedding dress, so after the wedding we submitted images to Vera Wang for possible inclusion in their featured weddings section. As you can imagine it’s quite a long process and they are very choosy about what they publish, it’s only the best wedding photographers around who have been featured.
Since I hadn’t heard from them in so long I thought they were not going to use them, I didn’t expect them to as all the wedding images on the website are of such a high quality, so I couldn’t believe it when I received an email yesterday to tell me that my images had been accepted for inclusion.
After looking through the other weddings featured I am the only wedding photographer in Northern Ireland to have work published on this prestigious site, Vera Wang is an iconic brand and I am so delighted that they feel that my work is of such a standard that they are happy to be associated with me.
If you would like to view more of my work of talk to me about your Wedding Photography you can click on the link below.
Last night was the competition for the best wedding album of the year award by the Professional Photographers Association of Northern Ireland. With stiff competition from some of the best wedding photographers in Northern Ireland at the top of their field, I was delighted to be announced the winner. In my opinion what makes this competition so special is the fact that it is judged on a complete wedding for start to finish along with the final presentation of the wedding album, not just on an individual image taken at a wedding like other competitions.
The other thing that is unique to this competition is that it is judged by my fellow professional wedding photographers in Northern Ireland within the association, people who really know what they are talking about with many years of experience.
I would like to thank them for voting for me.
Recently I noticed that the images I have been taking have not been as sharp as they could be, I was having to add a lot of sharpening post-production. After looking at photographs taken by another wedding photographer in Northern Ireland straight out of camera using the same equipment I realised I was not getting the best out of my cameras and lenses.
The problem was a minor one but enough to annoy me, so after a bit of research I needed to customise the focusing of my lenses to my camera. What I was unaware of is that all lenses and camera bodies are different and need to be calibrated together to get them to focus perfectly. Camera manufacturers set them up to work generically but the tolerances between lenses and cameras can be quite large and need adjusting. It is especially critical if you use lenses wide open at f1.2-f2.8, if you have sharp images at these apertures and have not calibrated your lenses to your camera, you are one of the lucky ones.
I borrowed a Lens Align from another very kind wedding photographer (who will remain nameless to protect him from every photographer in Northern Ireland phoning him to borrow the Lens Align) who I knew used a lot of prime lenses and had similar issues. Every single one of the seven professional lenses I use was front focusing, some by over half an inch. Basically this means that all of my images were slightly out of focus, if they were back focusing at least some part of the image would have been sharp !
Below is an example of a very minor front focusing lens issue I had, notice the number 4 at the front being a lot sharper than the 4 on the the other side of the zero line. (It is the 85mm shot at f1.4.) The sharpest part of the image was in front of the zero line, I have now adjusted it to be slightly behind the the line. This gives me a better chance of getting images sharp wide open.
If you shoot a lot of weddings and love the fall off you get working wide open I would check out the Lens Align, it will save you a lot of time sharpening images afterwards and you will have a higher success rate with what you take. The difference is huge and I can even see it just by looking at the screen on the back of the camera, never mind the computer screen. It takes a while to do but once they are done the camera remembers the lens and settings and you never need to do them again, not unless you buy a new lens off-course.
Over the past couple of months I have being doing a lot of research on wedding albums from around the world to find something that little bit more extra special. After meeting with the world renowned Jorgensen Albums from Australia recently I am delighted to announce that I have started to stock their album collections.
The first of the studio samples arrived today and I was completely blown away by the presentation and quality, these albums are unique in many ways and are a mix between Classic albums and my Digital Art albums and are named the Fusion Collection. Another feature is the limitless possibilities available to make your album your own with amazing leathers in funky colours to beautiful wood finishes.
Here are some images that will make your mouth water.
If you would like to view more of my wedding photography in Northern Ireland, click on the link below.
