Yesterday I had a local wedding just a few minutes away in Ware, Hertfordshire when Natalie and Simon got married at The Sacred Heart of Jesus & St Joseph Catholic Church. Natalie was getting ready at Fanhams Hall and this where I met her and luckily we had fantastic weather considering the torrential rain we experienced the previous day in Ware. Wedding photography is always a pleasure but there are some days when everything just seems to come together and this was one of them as Natalie and Simon were a lovely couple to work with and when this was combined with good weather, great venue and friendly guests it all added up to a great day. I loved shooting in the church as it was light and airy and the priest hosted a magnificent service. A stunning vintage Jaguar then whisked Natalie and Simon to Ware Priory where the festivities continued into the evening.

From a wedding photography point of view the Priory is a fantastic venue as the grounds are quite spacious and tranquil with some small footbridges leading to the island at the rear of the premises and later on in the day we had some great light as the sun went down.

Natalie and Simon are heading off to the Lake District today for their honeymoon and I would like to take this opportunity to wish them well.

In four weeks time Laura and Paul will be getting married at Parklands Quendon Hall in Essex and I have ben fortunate enough to be selected as their wedding photographer. This weekend we met up to go through the final details and timings for the days and after that we took a walk in some woodland on the outskirts of Bengeo in Hertfordshire. Wedding photography is always a joy when a couple are this relaxed even though Laura wass suffering from quite acute neck pain, she’s a real trooper and didn’t mind traipsing round the woods!

Here are a few shots from our rambling and I’m really looking forward to the wedding as Parklands Quendon Hall is a great wedding venue.

It’s YOUR day

The date is set, the wedding venue is booked and then you realise there is a long list of things that need doing – flowers, cake, dress, colour scheme and most importantly from my point of view, wedding photographer. There appears to be an endless amount of Hertfordshire wedding photographers to choose from, so how should you make your decision? Prior to starting your search for a professional wedding photographer, consider what you want to achieve when the final wedding photographs are presented to you once your wedding is over as they are vital in rekindling the memories and emotions of your wedding day, provided the wedding photographer has done his or her job properly!

Have you considered the type of wedding photographs you want?  Natural, non-posed wedding photography?  Formal wedding photographs?  Or maybe a selection of reportage, documentary, and relaxed posed photographs? What you must also consider is how you would like your wedding photographs to be presented to you?  There are many options to choose from including beautiful albums, fine art prints, canvasses or maybe you would just like all the final digital wedding photographs on a DVD.

The client/photographer relationship
In my opinion one of the most important elements to consider when searching for a professional wedding photographer is to imagine the relationship you will have with the photographer on the wedding day itself. At some point I am sure we have  all been to a wedding and encountered the ‘sergeant-major’ wedding photographer – I am sure you the type. This is the sort of photographer who marches around barking orders at everyone and who thinks they are the most important person on the day and that the wedding day revolves solely around them.  You have to ask yourselves, do you really want this type of person on your wedding day?

How well do you think you would know your wedding photographer after a meeting at your home or the venue. Yes, you will have seen the wedding photographs they produce but have you seen how they work? Some time ago I introduced the pre-wedding photography session as it allows the bride and groom to build a relationship with their wedding photographer and see how the photographer works. It also gives me, as a wedding photographer, the chance to build a rapport with the couple and give them little hints and tips when taking some relaxed informal photographs and it gives the bride and groom a chance to get used to being in front of the camera. This helps them to relax on the wedding day and I believe this is reflected in the quality of the wedding photography images I produce.

Wedding photography styles
A traditional wedding photographer is one who is very formal and structured in their approach to wedding photography. Not so many wedding photographers adopt this style these days but if you go back 15 or 20 years this was how the majority of wedding photographers conducted business. Most of the photographs will be set up and the people in them will generally be positioned and ‘posed’ by the wedding photographer to achieve the results they want.

Reportage wedding photography is when the photographer documents the events of a wedding day in a journalistic manner and is very much a ‘hands-off’ approach to wedding photography. This style of wedding photography does not require much interaction with the guests thus allowing the wedding photographer to authentically document the day.  This style can also be known as photojournalistic wedding photography.

Fashion wedding photography takes it’s style from the fashion industry and in particular the glossy magazine type of images.  This approach concentrates almost exclusively on the bride and groom using poses with more than a hint of ‘attitude’ and is very suited to contemporary, urban weddings.

What is my style? To be honest I do not like to pigeon-hole my style of wedding photography and I simply introduce myself to couples as Colin from Greenlees Photography and tell them I am a Hertfordshire wedding photographer. I always tell my prospective clients that my style of wedding photography is my own and I believe I have developed my approach to wedding photography incorporating the all best bits from the different styles of wedding photography and this is reflected in my how I capture those timeless moment from a wedding.

Recently, a friend who is a very well respected wedding photographer in his own right, commented that he could immediately recognise my wedding photographs and I took this as a huge compliment as it shows my style is uniquely identifiable and is a validation the work I have put in over the years. When I asked him to define it his reply was that it is the “Greenlees Photography style of wedding photography”!

Why do wedding photography costs vary so much?
The price of wedding photography is always an important consideration when a couple is selecting a wedding photographer for their wedding day.  I am sure you have seen some wedding photographers who charge as little as £250 to photograph a wedding, but what every bride and groom should ask is “Are we getting value for money?”.  There have been many occasions when wedding guests have commented to me that it must be easy being a wedding photographer, their perception is that we just turn up for a few hours, snap a few photographs and go home. Obviously, it is good to hear that I make it look so easy, but the reality is quite different.  Before the wedding takes place there are meetings, pre-wedding shoots and planning to take into account and once the wedding day has finished, the work of being a wedding photographer has only just begun. The photographs are meticulously backed up, reviewed, edited and the final touches are applied to ensure the final photographs are pleasing to the eye in terms of composition and aesthetics.

When your professional wedding photographer photographs your wedding day they should be in possession of professional grade equipment and they must have spare equipment in the event of failure or even theft. You might think the latter scenario is far-fetched but a couple of years ago I had a camera and lens stolen when I was doing the wedding photography at a high-end wedding venue. As a professional wedding photographer I was able to use my back-up cameras and lenses but the main issue was the camera had about 180 wedding photographs on there that could not be replicated.  How would the ‘cheap’ wedding photographer with one camera have coped with this situation? Professional grade equipment is a world away from a standard digital SLR camera and lens that some ‘wedding photographers’ may own and you must always ask them what they would do in the event that they cannot use their camera for whatever reason.  This equipment does not come cheap and when you factor in the cost of additional cameras, lenses, flashes and the amount of peripheral equipment required such as computer and software, lighting stands etc and you can soon appreciate exactly how costly the correct equipment is to buy and maintain.  There are other considerations when looking to hire a wedding photographer and two of the most important ones are that they must have professional indemnity insurance and public liability insurance both of which protect the wedding photographer and more importantly, the bride and groom.  You must also ask yourselves if it is worth taking the risk by employing the services of a cheap wedding photographer offering their photography services who ultimately may not be able to deliver what they have promised because once the day has gone there is no second chance to get those wedding photographs.

I hope this has been useful to brides and grooms when considering their wedding photography requirements and if you would like any further information please do not hesitate to contact me.

Colin Greenlees

Greenlees Photography – Hertfordshire wedding photographer

Last year I had the pleasure of meeting Stuart and Sam who booked me to do their wedding photography. Letchworth Hall Hotel in Hertfordshire is where they are getting married in a few weeks time so we met up today to go over the final preparations for the day and to take a few photographs. The grounds looked good but the it was a touch windy to say the least – so blustery in fact that at times it was difficult to hold the camera steady! The wedding sounds like it is going to be an interesting day with a lot of the guys wearing kilts due to Stuart’s Scottish heritage and I’m really looking forward to it.

Here are a few images from this afternoon:

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Claudine and Maurizio live in my village and I was fortunate enough to be asked to be their wedding photographer back in September. The ceremony was at the Church of St Andrew and St Mary in Watton at Stone and was followed by a reception at Tewin Bury Farm Hotel where yet again the weather was bright, sunny and warm. Everyone had a fantastic time at this very relaxed wedding and there was hardly a dry eye in the house following the speeches. These are just a few shots from the day.