Taking another break from Wedding photography, March’s image of the month comes from the Christening of little Thomas at All Saints Church, Loughton in Milton Keynes Buckinghamshire.

I often find it dificult taking pictures at a christening, through restrictions placed during the service but also because you are often sharing the service with other families not related to the one I am covering. Other than the use of flash there were no real restrictions is place and I got some really nice images during the Baptism and some great shots of the family in all its represented generation.

However, I have chosen this image as I beleive it concentrates the attention on what is often missed my the casual observer, and that is a private moment of reflection from both parents at one of the key stages in the life of their new family. And of course, little Thomas’s complete bemusement at the whole event.

Thanks for looking

Matt

February’s image comes from a shoot we did at Martin Charle’s Bridal Boutique. The inspiration behind the shoot was vintage hollywood brides. I liked this particular image as it has a serenity and beauty to it yet also a shy a vulnerable feel.

The image was shot with a mixture of ambient and flash light. The ambient light is from the large shop front window with the stronger side lighting coming from a single Bowens Gemini Pro 500 with gridded Creative Light softbox.

I’ll be posting a blog soon with a selection of images from the days shoot.

Thanks for looking

Matt

I knew I wanted an image that captured the atmosphere of both the surroundings and the mood of the wedding, but also an image that was somehow detached from the main event. I know the couple chose the carriage not only for its appearance but also because it gave them an hour and a half on their own away from everything and time to reflect. I wanted to capture this side of the couple’s personality and I had a feeling that if I took the time to walk away from the house, away from the guests I could get an image in both a place and a time that was significant.

The image I had in my head originally did not include their little boy in it. As it happens the child minder had walked down into the village with him and I was able to get the shot of him watching them go off into the distance. I really think the inclusion of this adds to the idea that this was not a shared moment. It has become one of their favourite images of from the day.

It is important not to see a wedding through the lens of a camera but to take to take the time to see and feel a wedding as it unfolds.

I thought this could translate at a local business level both as a way to gain access to products, skills etc. that might otherwise be cost prohibitive, but also as a great way to network and build relationships with other small businesses in the area. One way this has worked is a recent shoot I did with Martin Charles of Martin Charles Bridal Gallery and Donna Grant of Beauty Angels Processional hair and makeup at the beautiful Althorp House (you can read all about the shoot and see the images on my blog post). It is a great example of the benefits it can bring as not only did we all have some great promotional images to use, but it was also the main feature in the Bridal edition of Image Magazine in Northampton giving us some great exposure.

If any one party had wanted to charge for the services/products, then the shoot would never have happened. If there are any costs associated with the shoot, then these are shared equally amongst the participants. It was fun, great experience and we learnt some really useful things form the shoot, but more importantly it created a great professional relationship between a number of local business, a relationship that has benefited us all in one way or another since the shoot.

Each focus shoot will have a blog entry with details of the shoot and the images from the shoot. Links to the website and contact details for each person or business involved will remain on the site for anyone to view.

I now have another couple of shoots in the pipeline and hopefully many more in the future. So if you fancy getting involved or have a project in mind which maybe you have been putting off, get in touch and we can discuss the idea. Pop your details on my contact page, or give me a call.

Matt

I was recently asked to shoot the wedding feature for Image magazine in Northampton. I have worked with them before on a cover image for their face of Northampton competition so know the editor Ruth and together with my make-up artist Donna Grant from Beauty Angels, we were given free rein to go out and devise the shoot. Great, but also a little daunting at first. This blog entry is really to show the results of this shoot and to give you a little more insight into the process behind the shoot. I have also included links to the poeple I worked with at the end of this article.

Initially we were going to approach a couple of local bridal galleries and see if they were prepared to loan us the dresses in return for being featured in the magazine. However Ruth had put us in touch with a local designer Martin Charles who had a range of bespoke dresses which Image magazine was keen to feature. We had been keen to come up with something slightly different to the usual wedding shoot and using Martins dresses was a great way to achieve this. Despite appealing to a slightly smaller audience it was a great way for Image magazine to show something different to its competition but also provide Martin with some fantastic publicity as he was also due to open a new bridal gallery.

Now all we really needed was a venue suitable for showcasing Martins dresses. We looked at all the usual venues in the area but I really wanted to shoot at Althorp house, the family home of the Spencer family. It is a beautiful house and a significant part of the Northamptonshire landscape and coupled with this Image magazine had not shot there before. I contacted their press office and was amazed that they were prepared to listen to our ideas. We had no budget for the shoot, none of us were being paid and we were reliant on the good will of everyone involved. Althorp house were brilliant and after signing there non-disclosure agreements (and upping my public liability from 1 to 5 million pounds) they gave us access to the house for a day to do the shoot.

For the models I approached RMG Models with our idea. We knew that disaster aside, we already had publication of the shoot agreed so we asked if any models were prepared to give their time for the shoot in return for their images and tear sheets. RMG were particularly helpful and after a couple of days had a list of potential models that were happy to work with us that we could choose from. They are a great agency with great models on their books and it meant we could guarantee professional results both in terms of images but also from the models. I’ve worked with models in return for images before and it can be hit a miss in terms of the quality and professionalism you get on the day.

As for the shoot itself, it would be a lie if I said I wasn’t a little apprehensive. The house is steeped in history but is still a family home. So you are surrounded not only by valuable antiques but also family heirlooms, irreplaceable as such. The last thing I wanted was a claim against my newly increased public liability. But the staff were great and we soon felt at home. Donna was assigned one of the bedrooms to use as the make-up and changing room while I went to various parts of the house to plan the shots. We had a full day, which on the surface seemed plenty, but with 3 models, each with 2 -3 dresses and looks, we knew time would soon get away from us. As is often the case with these shoots I stand around waiting for the models to get ready then get 20 or so frames before hanging around for the next. The shots are all a mixture of ambient light and Bowens flash and shot on a Canon 5d.

All in all I am pretty pleased with the results, as were all involved. When I was first asked to shoot for the magazine I expected to just have to go along and shoot. For Image magazine to leave us to produce the whole shoot showed great trust which I am very grateful for. We are just looking at the next project now.

Thanks for reading

Matt

Another important reason for deciding to spend some time on my site is search engine optimisation (SEO). I had been looking at the Google results (other browsers are available) for wedding photographers in my area as was not very reassured. For generalised searches I was not even appearing, or at least not before I had given up clicking to the next page of results. Flash sites are not good for SEO as the processes used by search engines to rank pages look for text content, and have limited support for looking inside flash pages. This has improved and may improve more in the future, but another worrying discovery was that recent research suggests that 33% of people are now accessing the web from mobile devices, and these do not support flash. That’s a third of web users not able to view your page.

As a new business I am concious of driving potential customers to my site and my research is suggesting that traditional forms of marketing for wedding photography, such as wedding fairs, are not returning the results they used to. That’s a topic outside of this blog entry but it helps highlight the fact that the most common way for people to find services now is the good old Google search. It is the first place I go when I am looking for something new. My research is also suggesting that people are looking for more from the internet now and that my site should provide content that not only attracts new customers but also helps build word of mouth within my target sector, and as we all know for wedding photography, there is nothing better than a business largely built of word of mouth. Blog pages are a great way to add this additional content and is very good for helping with SEO.

So I have moved away from my flash template site and am now working with a wordpress theme to bring my new pages to life. It is a bit of a steep learning curve to say the least as it is a product I have never worked with before. But a Google search on wordpress themes gave me a good number of themes that I felt I could work with. I already had a hosting package with fasthosts in the UK and within an hour I had the bones of a site I could work with. I have had a few frustrations. The initial theme has a strange error which was preventing the homepage gallery from loading, and despite the best efforts of support guys at fasthosts (who I would say have been very good so far) we have not go to the bottom of it. Out of impatience I downloaded a different theme which I actually now prefer, I was up and running in no time.

I now have a lot to learn about SEO and how to structure my content to give me the best results. It seems it is a little bit of a black art, but I now have a website that gives me the best possible platform to get those results. I am quite IT savvy and despite a couple of frustrations have found the process quite easy. If you have no technical knowledge then using this route may be more challenging than the usual flash templates sites favoured by photographers, such as Click Pic, Wix and others. However Fasthosts make the process pretty straight forward and their support is excellent. I may not get a handle on the mysteries of SEO and at that point may need to get in professional help. But I am now using one of the fastest growing platforms for web content and so there are a host of companies offering services in this area, and as the site itself is done, my costs in going to these professionals will be much reduced. And the costs to date, £95 + vat for a years hosting, $60 for 2 wordpress themes and a bit of my time. Not bad really.

My site is now a work in progress and I expect it to develop organically over time as my work develops and in response to my customers needs. With that in mind if you have any feedback or would like to know about the process, then please feel free to contact me here.

Matt