You may recall Wendy & Adam’s engagement shoot some time ago in Henley on Thames. Well, recently, on what has been the hottest day of the year so far, they were married at the Hotel Du Vin in Henley. The blistering heat didn’t stop a fun-filled and hugely friendly atmosphere and the iced drinks were on hand to cool us all down.

Huge thanks go out to everybody who made us feel so very welcome on that day – as if were were lifelong friends, instead of relative strangers. You guys all made our job so very easy on that day, so Thank You!

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Here is a selection of my favourites from the day :

Karen, Michael and I met at the National Wedding Show over a year ago & so much has happened since then, when it came to their pre-wedding shoot I need a facebook photo to recall what they looked like! It was all good stuff and I knew exactly who to look out for when I met them again!

Karen and Michael will be getting married this Friday at the gorgeous Buxted Park Hotel in Sussex. We met there recently to have a recce around the venue before the event, but also for their pre-wedding shoot. It was a beautiful sunny day, with lots of photographic opportunities around the grounds – we’re all keeping our fingers crossed for lovely weather this coming Friday.

Carly and Nick were guests at the wedding of Carly & Stuart, which I shot in 2008. They seemed to like my style (which is always a good sign!) and so have booked me for their own wedding later this year – which I am thrilled about. We met up for breakfast a couple of weeks ago, one sunny Sunday morning, to chat about their upcoming wedding, and then went for a walk down by the river and watercress fields of the lovely town of Alresford.
There were lots of opportunities for engagement photography, and so here are my favourites from the session.

A touch of off-camera-flash here to add a litle “zing” to the image …

Well, for the second of my animal posts this week, here are a few shots of something a little larger than a kitten! I have always been fascinated with wildlife, from a very early age. I have been to Kenya a few times on some amazing photographic safaris, but unfortunately it’s somewhat of a luxury, and not something you can really do every year – so, I have to settle for second best, and go to the zoo instead!

Last Friday I took a day out and headed on over to London Zoo. I went primarily to visit the new £5.3m Gorilla Enclosure, in search for some shots of their silverback … very disappointingly, I didn’t find out until I was there that there is no silverback anymore, as he died last year … which is very sad. What I found instead were three very sleepy females (and about a million parties of school children !)

One female ventured out for about 3 minutes, to take a drink from one of the bottles of fruit juice that the keepers lob over the fence, and that was my chance to grab a few shots, in between getting bashed about by the excited school children!

I love the closed eyes in this first shot, as if the drink is everything she was hoping for … pure pleasure.

… and then looking about to keep an eye on everything …


… including me, which was a little unnerving!!


Apparently there is a new silverback coming at some point, so I shall be back soon to see what he looks like!

So, I met Karen Skidmore (from Can Do Can Be Small Business Marketing) some 12 months ago at the Grow Your Business event, here in Guildford. For most of that time I have been trying to convince her to allow me to do some updated headshots for her, and have also been trying to convince her that they don’t need to be done against a white background!

But what do you do when your subject is adamant that she wants images against a white background because she herself is convinced that it’s best like this for social media purposes ?? Well, you do it her way …. first … and then, you do it the proper way, and show her the results … and wait for the reaction.

In this case, the reaction was, “Put that white background away and delete all those photos. We’ll do it your way!”

Now, I’m not telling this story to sound smug, but to explain that sometimes you need to actually see something ‘in the flesh’ so to speak, to realise that there is an alternative to what you thought. As a photographer, I get these little creative visions sometimes, and it’s the relationship I have with my subjects that allows me to gain a good enough level of trust so I can try something different for them – and produce pleasing results.

So, my new brief with Karen was no longer a white background, but a darker, warmer & uncluttered background which would make her face stand out well in small images which will be used for social media – email, facebook, twitter etc She also needed shots with her facing a certain direction, hence the “to the left” & “to the right” pair of images too.

We were somewhat challenged by the cold & dark clouds which threatened rain at any moment, but managed to get a lovely set of images that really allowed Karen’s personality to shine through. This is most important when it comes to these types of images – one cannot simply snap away and take a nice picture; it needs to be engaging!

Here, then, is the new Karen !

Thanks for being open to the suggestion, Karen, and I hope you like them!!