I had a very strange year as a photographer, and I would like to briefly reflect on it as I’m sure lots of us have years like this. It was a year in which I finally took my skills and carefully amassed equipment and pitted them against a few, three to be precise, weddings, and I am really satisfied to have put these three learning experiences behind me and I am excited about the year ahead as a semi-professional photographer. That sounds as if it is a positive year, but there are some major undercurrents that are worrying me. In addition to my 3 weddings and 2 associated pre-shoots, I didn’t take a lot of portraits. Underpinning my growing photo skills is a deep love of portraiture and a delight in capturing something of people I like or who interest me, if I don’t continue to do that, then I’m afraid I might lose something essential, and even if I become an accomplished wedding shooter, I might lose the style and approach that I have developed naturally so far.

Of course there are reasons, I’m really busy at work and enjoying the professional challenges there. I have also bought a house with my girlfriend which is still sucking up DIY time, although we are almost finished that now, There was Julie’s pregnancy and now the birth of baby Hannah leading to sleep being somewhat disrupted. In short, combining this list with the 3-hour commute Julie and I had to see each other for most of the same year, it isn’t surprising that I haven’t taken enough portraits. What I don’t want though, is for this to become a permanent state of affairs, and that is where I have to confess to my dear readers about a failing. One of my very favourite photographers, David Alan Harvey, when working with a student who wanted to do a photoshoot with someone, give the young man short-shrift and told him to stop agonising about it, and to just push the issue with this potential subject. I agree totally with this approach, most of my favourite portraits have come from me gently “pushing” people who claim not to want to be photographed into working with me. Of course I don’t advocate being too pushy, “no” means “no” of course, but between yes and no lies a whole world of “maybe secretly I would like you to make a nice image of me and social protocol says I have to self protect by saying i’m not photogenic” or similar. These people are absolutely my favourite to work with and my problem is that I haven’t been that guy this year!

So if I am going to keep true to myself and develop my style then, I need to grow that confidence in approaching people and cutting out the small amount of time to meet with subjects and to produce something they love. Expect a pushier Matthew this year. It is an interesting question whether my few years of being pushy and doing projects like my 100-portraits has developed a style that can be seen in my early wedding shoots, or whether they look just like everyone else’s? Like every photographer, I hope that some of my style comes through?

The picture is of my Sister in Law, who I love immensely, and who really didn’t want to have her photo taken!

I will post some pictures of Hannah soon, but this is my favourite picture so far and the one I wanted to share quickly.

How time flies, Julie with 6 weeks to go. Julie set me the challenge of photographing her in a black maternity dress. Perhaps madly I used my black background cloth  and ended up using a reflector to try to get some more highlights on the bumplet. My friend Martin chided me for not posting much recently, and it’s true. I seem to be painting cupboards when I’m not working, and it just won’t do; I must try harder, watch this space.

Anyone want a portrait? Email me, I need to get creative again to get the numbing effects of a roller-full of “almond white Dulux” out of my soul:-)

I am delighted to finally post this set of pictures from David and Charlotte’s wedding. The wedding was on the 30th of September and I would have hoped to process and select the pictures within a week or so, but unfortunately I have moved house and into a painting, plastering and carpeting zone; finding time to work on pictures and paint in time for carpet-fitting has been a bit of a juggle.Anyway, all the time critical stuff is done and I can prioritise the photographs again and in nice surroundings with new carpets to boot. Lets start with the pre wedding relaxation at Mum’s house. Dad, Andrew patiently waiting for the dressing up and girlie preparations to be completed.

Mum, Trish relaxing while she can as well.Sporting her best Mona Lisa look.

Anyway, all this peaceful chilling-out is a mere preamble to the main item on the agenda, people, I give you the girlie preps:

Bridesmaid Kirsty:

You might recognise my special favourite helper Amber from the pre-shoot. Amber is in flower girl mode here.

And her sister Grace.

Bridesmaid Kathryn:

Bridesmaid Donna managing her stocks and shares as one of course must!

And the main actress in the girly preps, the bride Charlotte; check her lovely relaxed smile.

Some bride’s get treated to a visiting hairdresser, but poor Charlotte is a hairdresser and her sense of duty clearly trumped her sense of decadence. Who does half a dozen hairstyles just before their wedding? impressive!

I just love the rose in Donna’s hair.

Of course Donna helped with the hair too.

More pictures of the girls getting in the mood:

Charlotte and David’s daughter Katie prefers getting in the wedding mood the modern way; ipads are the only choice.

My colleague and friend Maggie comfortable in her casual togs, prior to the girly-dressing-thing that she was kind-of dreading…

and Maggie’s new hound, the gorgeous Shelby hoping the wedding will bring bones or other celebratory largesse.

Katie steps up the preparation pace, by taking her ipad to the dressing table, she really means business now..

Eventually there has to be a first all-scrubbed-polished and ready Princess, this time its Grace…

Get that dress..

Talking of striking outfits, isn’t Trisha’s amazing, just love that fascinator..

Kirsty modelling the amazing black bridesmaid’s dresses, very striking.

But speaking personally, seeing Maggie dressed up and girly, with good grace too, was a real highlight; Maggie looks great! (I had to tone down the red though as my Canon Sensor was totally saturated in the red channel, really).

Exhausted from all the hard work, cinderella finally gets that dress on, and isn’t it beautiful…

And talking of beautiful, Katie is all ready and dressed here too..

Oh, almost forgot, brother, David appeared looking the biz, no fuss, no hassle, i’m just saying….

Anyway, over to Helensburgh where groom David was all ready and looking great.

As was best man Ian..

Anyway, enough of the photographs, “I have a bride waiting”…

With the registrar at last.

All is ready.

David’s wait was not long, Charlotte arrives..

A quick moment with Dad.

But now, down to the happy business.

The ceremony over, many gathered friends and well-wishers delivered the traditional confetti, you would be amazed how many photos it takes to get one without confetti in front of the couple’s faces.

I know, it’s cheesy, but it’s fun as well, it could have been worse, look at the restraint I showed with Charlotte’s hair rose!

One happy bride, looking amazing.

Anyway, at this point, Charlotte’s plan A, the public park which I had recce’d earlier to scout locations, took a bit of a hit as the heavens opened up and the inevitable rain began, plan B was Gran’s house for the formals.

But plan B took a hammering too as the rain, turned particularly nasty, nothing like the traditional wedding-double-garage-waiting-ceremony:-)

The formals almost scuppered, the enterprising gentlemen present produced a plethora of brollies, and unorthodox or not, the show went on!

No brollies though for this posse of real men, unflinching but soaked, they really earn the right to sport sporrans here.

But, the rain got still heavier and plan D, subsection 4, paragraph C was executed, Gran’s house proper!

And then two of the equally handsome David; can you believe that this guy doesn’t like being photographed, really?

Charlotte will have these wee sweeties assisting at the event. Her daughter Katie on the left and friend and bridesmaid’s girls Grace and Amber behind. I grant that they are all lovely, but this photographer needs to record here that Amber is the best camera bag tidier and carrier ever on my shoots; thanks Amber!

Bridesmaid Donna with the girls; yes, we did get wet feet, but it was so worth it!

Grace with cool-as-cool-can-be T-Shirt:

Amber with Megawatt smile:

Big smiles all round here, even from slightly-grumpy-wanting-macaroni-pure starving-Katie. You just have to be patient and catch the moment. (Or carry a photographer’s stove and some pasta…).

Finally we get down to a little couple stuff, after all, that’s what it’s all about.

Awww, aren’t they fantastic together. Looking forward to capturing their wedding smooches:-)

I love this one, they really look like they have something we don’t. Look at their eyes, they look amazing, no touch up or enhancement in software, just as they were eye-wise!

And now for some romantic snuggling, surveys at the time have revealed that 100% of all bridesmaids present said “awwwwww”.

Now donning my anorak, all previous pictures were taken with my surprisingly great Sigma 24-70 f2.8, I completed the wedding lens set last weekend with the Sigma 70-200 f2.8 and this is my first blogged image with it. I already have a Canon 70-300 f4.5-5.6, and it has produced some great images, but somehow it has never produced the magic I need in portraits, this seems to deliver it in spades. My first impression is sharpness and soft bokeh by the bucket, but it’s a beast in the paws, scarily bulky. Quality glass isn’t small I suppose. I hope they like this family grouping as much as I do.

These are with my Canon 50mm f1.4 prime.

This was a fun pre-shoot, and everyone was really lovely and determined to have fun and make good pictures. The wedding will be great to photograph. I’m sure you’ll all watch this space.

Check this magnificent new entrance, Mike in the background playing my guitar.

And a closer picture after stepping through the door.

Good to see the maker looking satisfied with his craftsmanship; it was a pleasure hearing him playing it.

Anyway, I took some shots of work in progress for Mike, this is a pair of necks for classical instruments in early gluing.

Mike preparing his plane blade for book-matching and gluing some tables. This was the process that Mike thought would interest me, done in the traditional way.

Mike takes blade sharpness really seriously.

Mike beginning to prepare the edges for sticking together.

And here Mike is checking that the two edges meet perfectly and mate properly along the whole length.

This bit is so interesting, Mike uses traditional animal glue, which needs to be warmed briefly to ensure good penetration. After using traditional string and wedges to bring the two faces together, Mike plays a torch over the joint to help the glue to do it’s job.

Mike was keen for me to photograph the process, but I wanted to photograph Mike; I love this close-up of Mike while he focuses on the new joint. I have said this in previous posts, but what a striking man Mike is.

I couldn’t resist these sound-hole inlays, all handmade by Mike; I love these and wish I could have a guitar to go with each of these!

Finally, a workshop detail for fun.

This set of pictures was all taken with my Canon 5dMk2 and my Sigma 24-70 f2.8. Mike was working really quickly and so I wanted to frame him working while staying safely out of his way. I bought this lens for my recent wedding shoot and have been really happy with it. It takes great portraits and delivers that look of gorgeous bokeh that I am addicted to. I hadn’t expected to like it this much, being a prime lens addict, but it is really special and will be heavily used in wedding shoots.

This picture was our first deliberate attempt to capture the now more obvious baby bump!

This one was a quick landscape with my beloved 28mm prime Sigma. On the Canon 7d, more or less a normal view like the 50mm was on older SLR film cameras.

These next two images were handheld HDR’s using my Sigma 10-20mm zoom, wide. On the 7d this is 16mm equivalent. Three bracketed exposures were taken handheld at high speed to minimise movement between them and they were processed in my favourite “Photomatix” HDR software helped by the “Lightroom” plugin.

A couple of weeks ago I assisted Matthew while he photographed Emma, Alison and Shona, three lovely girls who were thankfully very friendly, patient and obliging! It was definitely a useful experience for me, and great fun too.

It was good to learn from watching Matthew at work, seeing the effects the flash can have on the lighting, and also chatting afterwards about the kinds of things Matthew’s thinking about as he’s working.

I then had a go at taking some portraits of my own. Matthew makes it all seem so effortless, but there are so many issues to consider on the other side of the view finder, from composition, focus and depth of field to good communication with your subjects.

The main thing I found myself concentrating on was focussing and making sure the autofocus was aligned to the subject’s eyes. However this led to a common problem: I was forgetting all about aperture size, which I had set to F1.8 for most of the time, which unfortunately led to only one of the faces being perfectly sharp. For instance, I think this photo is otherwise quite good:

the background is interesting but not too detailed, the lighting is good, and the girls look relaxed and happy. Having discussed this with Matthew, using F4 or F5.6 would have made all the difference.

This next one is very similar, which is a shame because it could have been a great photo!

Anyway, the next two I’m really happy with. They’ve obviously had the benefit of Matthew’s processing, but I like to think I can take a wee bit of the credit too!

Although her eyes are closed, Emma has a lovely expression, and I’m happy with the composition and the background. And the black-and-white gives it some added drama.

This is probably my favourite. Alison looks really natural and relaxed and the background is just interesting enough, without being distracting.

There is a lot of satisfaction in having taken a shot that you’re totally pleased with, but I think with a portrait, there is an added pleasure if the subject is happy with it too. So I hope the girls like these ones, even though they’re not perfect!