I just dont know

Sorry for the late post and no picture this time.
The wedding fayre today was the busiest I have ever been to. Almost every photographer in carlisle was there.
I did look at they're work and still believe I am the best!
Lots of interest but no bookings from my home town today.
Maybe carlisle people just can't see how pure my work is! Maybe I should just face the fact that I will never be accepted by most people here. I did notice that my stand was the most meek out of all the photographers!
They had display material that put mine to shame! But surely its the actual photography that makes the difference.
Most people don't normally book on the day but I thought I might have some answers after today. I was hoping I would have bookings today! As it is I feel I have failed for today!

Well its the day before this big wedding fayre and I have just been preparing all my stuff.

I have a few albums to show and a slideshow of my favourite images to play on an lcd screen.

All I have other than that is my business cards, Pricelists and me.

For some reason I really beleive I'm going to get loads of Carlisle bookings tomorrow.

I am actually really looking forward to it but when I post my next bit tomorrow I am going to be in either a really good mood or a really bad mood!

Here's hoping I will have reason to be in a good mood.

We will see! I will post the results of the wedding fayre tomorrow after I know how it went.

An Experiment

I don't do much marketing aimed at Carlisle anymore as it hasn't really ever made much difference. The work still comes in from everywhere but Carlisle.

I have decided to do Cumbria's biggest wedding fayre this Sunday.

Its quite expensive but once again I feel the need to just try again to crack my home town.

Surely when people see the quality of my work next to the other photographers from this area, they will choose me. Surely I should come away with so many bookings that I can't take them all on.

Its not that I need more bookings, its just I would love to see 50 percent of my bookings coming from here in Carlisle just once.

If Carlisle people don't book me, those dates always get booked anyway by people that dont live in Carlisle.

Why am I so bothered????

To be honest I think its because its never happened in the 15 years I have done this, and every year I hope that Carlisle has evolved this time around.

If the traditional photographers are now offering a reportage option these days, are they just trying to cater for even the minority here, or are their clents finally realising that its better to have a true photographic record of their day rather than just the same mundane poses.

This is my home and I am hoping that its the latter.

I also hope that they will not confuse the veteran traditional photographers so called reportage work from the real thing.

Small City

So here's the thing. I live here in a small city in the North of England.

Right on the border of Scotland, Carlisle is a funny place.

When I first decided to do weddings differently, I should have known that most people here wouldn't go for it. The old school traditional wedding photographers have held the monopoly on weddings here for decades.

There are only a few that live in Carlisle that actually book me to do their wedding. The rest still book the veteran traditional wedding photographers.

So, if only a few from my home town book me to do their weddings, where do my clients come from?

Well everywhere other than Carlisle!!! I can think of the last few I did were from Liverpool, Preston, Whitehaven, London, Glasgow, Holland, and Amsterdam.

This has been the way it has been from the beginning! I have tremendous word of mouth business that comes to me. I get booked over the net by others who have been on my website.

I am regarded as an excellent wedding photographer all over the uk and internationally! If I'm good enough to do peoples weddings from all over the world, why can't I crack my my home town?

Why also does a successful Photography Franchise like Venture Portraits work all over the uk, but close down within a year here in Carlisle?

I never really liked Venture portraits, as their high contrast, cross processed look will date too quickly! It is no one photographers style, but more just something a lot of portrait photographers are doing right now.

However, if it works everywhere else, why did it not work here?

Some people have told me I should move to one of the bigger cities, but I like it here and always have.

It would be nice to be appreciated by my own home town! BUT I would rather be appreciated in lots of places for my talent, rather than being super famous in just one!

Otherwise I'm just David Hasslehoff.

Why a Wedding Photographer 2

So why did I become a Wedding Photographer?
Well to begin with,I just wanted to make a point, that wedding photography did not have to be done in the same mundane way everyone else was doing it!
I am also a bit of a romantic I suppose! Every wedding I do is done with great reverence! Alough many couples these days decide to just live together, there are still many that make this ultimate commitment to another person!
To capture the day they do this is to me always a great honour!
To see the brides tears of happiness as she views my photographs of their day is the ultimate compliment!
In other types of photography you just don't get appreciation in this way!
Maybe a Wow or a that's amazing, but such emotion is rarely shown whilst other photography is viewed.
My photography also will be shown to so many people and then their children, grandchildren and will be shown for many years to come!
Obviously the photos must be great or it would not be tears of happiness that will be displayed!
I love the challenge of not knowing what the conditions will be like at a wedding! I also feel slightly smug when the weather is poor! I know although everyone will still enjoy the wedding, they will think the photo's will not be very good. In fact it is in bad weather and low light situations that I am at my best!
Obviously I hope for the day to be nice like everyone else, but I have dealt with all weather conditions and I know it will make no difference to the quality of my work.
I consider myself a wedding photojournalist but I also love grande portraits that capture the emotion whilst showing the environment the couple are in.
So if I take photo's like the one above as well as the reportage, can I still call myself a photojournalist?
To be honest I don't think it really matters!
I just do it my way and in my style!

Why Wedding Photography

Anyone who wants to be a Photographer eventually choose's which direction they wish to go and what type of photography they wish to do.

So why did I choose Wedding Photography? To many it would be the last path they would take in Photography as there's so much responsibility, and you only get one chance to get it right. You never know what the weather will be like, or if the lighting will be any good.

There is also a lot of competition from other Wedding Photographers, which I put into three different catagories.

The Poor Traditional Wedding Photographer

As a traditional wedding photographer you would have set poses in mind, and use them at many weddings.

It was seeing traditional wedding photography that almost put me off being a wedding photographer full stop. Instead around 15 years ago I decided I wanted to do weddings but my way.

I was sick of seeing the same poses used over and over again. The poses themselves were wooden and also dare I say a cheesy.

You could also see that some of the couples were not comfortable in the poses they were put in.

There's nothing wrong with portraits done at weddings as long as the couple's themselves are comfortable and there are the dynamics between the couple and the photographer.

I still even now see very little that has changed here up North.

As the years have gone on I have seen that the same Traditional Photographers who's work I hated are now offering a reportage option.

Looking at what they class as reportage is laughable at the best of times. They seem to think turning a digital file from colour into Black and white suddenly makes it reportage.

They don't even get their blacks and whites right. Instead they look like an awful washed out grey.

This often shows they have either never printed black and white prints themsleves whilst in their days of using film or that their transition from film to Digital is not working for them as they have no understanding of computer programs such as photoshop.

The new breed of Uncle Bob

Yes there is another new breed of Wedding Photographer who never ever used film but became interested in photography since Digital has become so accessible.

This is often the Uncle, the Friend or just the guy who wants to have a crack at it because they think they can make some easy money.

They often have no real understanding of photography, but think they can just take hundreds of photo's at a Wedding so they know some of them will be ok.

They don't charge much, but their Photography reflects this with bad composition, overuse of flash and out of focus rubbish.

The Skilled Wedding Photographer

Although here up North they are few and far between, there are actually some good wedding photographers about. Unfortunately there are so many rubbish one's its hard for the good ones to be found.

The Skilled Wedding Photographer can call themselves Traditional but have that dynamic that although the main body of their wedding photography is Portraiture, these portraits do not look wooden but natural.

They can call themselves Wedding Photojournalists and simply capture all of the moments beautifully with portraiture being only a small percentage of what they take on a wedding day.

They can think fast, use natural light and superb composition in the blink of an eye.

So with all this competition, and hard conditions to deal with, Why would I choose Wedding Photography? And what category am I in?

I will tell you in my next post!

In the Beginning

I thought it best to start with how my obsession with Photography began so here goes.

My first Influence came as a child from the least likely of places.

My father was a pastor and guided me in many ways to do with being a christian, but one of the ways he influenced me was from nothing he spoke of to do with beliefs or to do with God.


In fact he never really spoke of photography or other worldly things as he would put it.

He did however love photography and had a natural eye for taking great photographs and also some fantastic skills doing home movies both use of cine camera's and in editing them afterwards.
The camera's were always left lying about and inevitably I picked it up one day and went out taking photo's with my best friend Marcus Doyle.(My dad has a lot to answer for, as Marcus is now also a professional photographer!)

The camera was just a Canon Sureshot compact and after the first batch of photographs came back I knew I was hungry to do more, but I needed my own camera and more control than a compact allowed. My first camera I bought cost me £5.00 from my Science teacher. It was an oddball Minolta camera that was and Slr but the film format was 110, not 35mm.

I really wish I had kept it just for sintimental reasons but it had to go as well as 110 format was very low quality. So I bought a Practica 35mm Slr for about £40.00 which I used for about a year. There have been many other camera's since then but there's no need to go into all that.

The fact was that unintentially my Father started me off on the path I am on now. Ironically he still does not see being a photographer as a proper job.