Portraits on Settle Carlisle Railway

Last week we took a steam train journey on the "Fellsman" over the famous Settle and Carlisle Railway, a 70th birthday present for my Dad. As I imagined the train was full of train enthusiasts all eager to take photographs of the engine! But for me the real interest lay in the crew, a group of guys who all clearly loved their job. We had a 10 minute waterstop at Appleby where I managed to grab these portraits before we were back onto the train en route to Carlisle.

http://www.settle-carlisle.co.uk/

http://www.statesmanrail.com/

Eaves Hall Wedding

When I was asked to take Wendy and Andrews wedding photographs, I knew I wanted to create a photo essay for them. A concise series of images that would tell the story of their day. I also wanted to make sure that I was inconspicuous and discreet so I could shoot in a photojournalistic style.

Whenever I've looked at wedding photos that are the traditional posed images, to me they always seem quite generic. Yes, they are nice images (and have a place in the documentation of a wedding day) but they don't necessarily show the emotion and events of the day or the true personalities of the people in them. They are fundamentally a record of the people who attended the wedding. The one thing I would want from my own wedding photographs is to be able to re-live the events of the day as it unfolded, to see moments and details I missed at the time, to feel the emotion of it all once again.

For me the day started with the bridal preparations. I thought it was important to capture these moments as part of the story. None of the images below were staged, I observed, anticipated and shot when the moment was right. I’m a natural light photographer and the light in the bridal suite was beautiful, with lots of soft diffused daylight flooding in from the french windows.

 

 

 

 

 

When I presented the images to the couple two things made me realise I had created the images I had set out to achieve. Firstly, tears from the couple as they told me the “images brought back the emotions of the day” and secondly “we never noticed you taking the photographs”. Perfect…..