Patshull Park Wedding Photography -Julie and Sam

This time of year is great – plenty of lovely weddings to keep me busy, and you also get the mid-summer weather roulette.  August this year has been a fairly soggy one, and it is the one thing you cannot plan.  Julie and Sam got married at Patshull Park Hotel (just near Wolverhampton, West Midlands) a couple of weeks ago, and despite the best efforts of a really dramatic thunder storm they managed to stay dry most of the day.

The middle part of the day, before and after the church had brightened up and we had some lovely weather, but the afternoon was a bit on and off, with bright sun interspersed with heavy rain.  For me the weather is not a downside – there is always somewhere a creative photographer can find a spot for photos – and the advantage of days like this is interesting light.  You also get fun moments, such as the the one where the bridesmaids were down by the lake just as a sudden downpour blew in across the lake – I have never seen rain go from nothing to drenching in such a short space of time…

Julie and Sam are very clearly in love – Sam had put some really touching facebook updates leading to the wedding, and the day itself was emotional and uplifting.  Thanks to you both for letting me share it with you. I hope you enjoy the photos…

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Louise & Peter – Hampton Manor Pre Wedding Photography

We met Louise and Peter at the Belfry Wedding Fayre earlier this year, and chatted about their wedding at the beautiful Hampton Manor later this year.  A couple of weeks ago I met up with them in Sutton Park for their pre-wedding shoot.

There are several reasons why I always do Pre-wedding shoots, and one of them is just to get to know people better.  It was a nice warm day, and it was great just wandering around taking photos of them, as well as just chatting and getting to know each other.  After getting the shots, we found a nice spot to sit for a chat and an ice cream, to talk through the wedding day plans (sitting on a blanket in the park with talking to lovely people about their wedding – there are tougher ways of spending your afternoon…).

I am really looking forward to photographing their wedding, particularly at Hampton Manor, which is a great venue.

Some photographs from the afternoon…

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Christening Photography – Berrow Court

Erk – my blog has been slightly neglected of late – the trouble with being busy is that the things that are important but not urgent get pushed back if you are not careful.  However the blog is going through a major overhaul, as is the rest of our site, so keep your eyes peeled for the not too distant future…..  hmmm – intriguing…

Anyhow, I will endeavour to catch up as I have some great shoots to post up.

I love being the family photographer – I have several families that I particularly enjoy working with, because I have seen so many stages of their lives.  The Murphy family fit this category perfectly.  I shot their wedding a couple of years ago, I have done a couple of different portrait shoots with them, including their new baby, Anaya, and most recently, Anaya’s Christening.

The family (and their friends) always love a good party, and this was no different.  The party was at Berrow Court, which is a hidden gem in the Harborne / Edgbaston area, and they had the whole house and gardens to celebrate, and they doubled the day up as Phoenix’s birthday (the younger of the boys).  Towards the end of the evening they had a band playing, and quite a few of the family and friends sang late into the evening (and they were good – not just some poor karaoke attempt!).

So here are some images from the day….

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REC Corporate Photography

I have posted a lot recently about my wedding and portrait work, but inbetween these shoots, I am constantly working on corporate photography, so I thought I would post up a couple of my recent jobs to give a flavour of what else I get up to.

One of my favourite corporate clients are the REC - the Recruitment and Employment Confederation.  They are a member organisation who promote and lobby for the Recruitment sector.  They organise events for their members across the country and often invite me along to capture the events, either for internal publicity or for the press.

The most recent event was a Public Sector Recruitment conference held in the Congress Centre (a great venue in London for corporate events by the way), where amongst others, they had Sir Peter Gershon as keynote speaker.

My role on a day like this is to take photographs of the speakers, but also to give a photographic overview of the event, so I take photos of the networking during the breaks as well as delegates during the event itself.

The one thing about my job is the variety it gives me, and I genuinely find corporate events such as this interesting.  So here is what I do…

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Christine & James Pre Wedding Photography – Birmingham

I have had some great shoots recently – the weather has been great, and it has been lovely to meet up with wedding couples in different places.  Christine and James are getting married in Edgbaston later on this year, and we decided to go up to the Lickey Hills to talk through their wedding day plans and to get some pre-wedding photographs.  I love the Lickeys so it was nice to be able to get into the hills for a couple of hours (although I always seem to end up down the paths that lead nowhere…), and Christine and James are really easy-going so we wandered around stopping at various points to get some photographs of the two of them together.

We ended up at the cafe and spent a bit of time looking at the details of the day, which for me is an essential part of the pre-wedding shoot – the more I know about a wedding the better; if I know what is important to the bride and groom then I can make sure that my photos on the day reflect that.  And the more fun it all is too.

So here are some of the photographs from Christine and James’s pre-wedding shoot:

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Another Family Portrait Photography session in London

The same day as Tristan’s shoot (below) I also went over to meet up with Bobbie and Tim and their very cute little boy, Jesse.  The last time I had met Jesse he was only a couple of weeks old – they were visiting Simon and Sam when I went over for a portrait session with their newborn, Lily.  So Jesse had changed a bit…

Jesse is such a good natured little boy – he was very patient with the whole photography process, and gave us some lovely smiles.  I have always found the key with photographing children, and particularly babies, is to go at their pace and be patient with them and have plenty of cuddle breaks.  This does mean that some shoots go on for longer than others, but for me it is really important that I get the beautiful shots that I know I can get.  However, Jesse was great – it was nice and relaxed, he was happy and it all went to plan.

It was good to catch up with Bobbie and Tim again, and to see that Jesse is so healthy and happy.  Here are some pics from the shoot….

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Family Portraits in London

I spent a weekend in London a couple of weeks ago and did two lovely but very different portrait session.  The first was with Colin and Susie, and their little boy, Tristan.  Tristan loves his football, so we went over to Wandsworth Common with a football, a rugby ball, and some bread for the ducks.

Tristan is a similar age to my eldest, Josh, and it is such a fun age to take photographs – they just get into doing something (like kicking a ball) when they suddenly and irresistibly get sidetracked by something even more fascinating, like a stick, so you get these fantastic moments when they are just engrossed in something incredibly trivial.  These moments make for some of my favourite photographs, like the ones when Tristan discovered that there were several ways around the bamboo and it made a great hiding place…

Here is my pick of the family portraits from the morning.

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Baby Portrait Photographs

Since we started our own family, portraits of babies has taken on a new significance for me – I love looking at photos of my own boys, and really enjoy the reactions of clients when I show them photographs of their children.

It is so interesting watching children develop, particularly in the first year as the development is so fast, and it is easy to forget what they were like (I am now coming out with the phrase that I scoffed at not so long ago – “You forget how small they are when they are born…”.   I never tire of taking photos of babies and children because they are all so different, and each session allows me to get to know a little bit about them, and I get a lovely perspective on them when I return to do more portrait sessions as they grow up.

Here are a selection of some of my recent baby portrait sessions….

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Chesford Grange Wedding Fayre Photography

It was great to meet all the brides, grooms and their families at Chesford Grange Wedding Fayre in Warwickshire last weekend.  I always love finding out about people’s weddings, and I am looking forward to meeting many of you again to chat through your big day over a cup of coffee sometime soon…

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Business Toolbox Corporate Photographs

I often get asked to take corporate photographs for people who are after something a bit different – a corporate portrait should reflect the company, whether that is more formal or more playful, depending on what they are trying to say about themselves as individuals and as a business.

I met Tracy from Toolbox For Your Business – a company that help startup businesses – through networking, and she asked me to get some images for and article for Raw Business magazine.  I headed over to her offices near Cotteridge, and spent a really enjoyable couple of hours getting a variety of photographs for her.  Raw Business were looking for a more quirky approach, playing on the idea of toolboxes and building, but Tracy also wanted a mixture of images for other uses, so we made sure I got some without the hard hat…

Here is a flavour of what I got for Tracy and Raw Business….

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