It’s 7.30am… hold on, who am I kidding? It’s 9am. I’ve just woken up. I go to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of rocket fuel, then sit down to check my emails. Scrolling through, there’s a couple of quote requests (nice), a two for one offer at Kaffeine (even nicer), Viagra spam (...hmm) and a reply from a client.
I click on the reply.
“Hello from Bali!” It reads. “We just wanted to thank you again for your important part in our wedding day. We had so much fun, and hope it came across in the photos! I guess we can see for ourselves when we receive them! Anyway, we hope you’re well, and we look forward to speaking to you when we’re back from our honeymoon. We’ll send you a message when we’re home, so that you can send our photos over. Many thanks, Sharon.”
A little passive-aggressive, and the in-line snap of nasi goreng taken on an iPhone wasn’t really necessary, but the message came through loud and clear. The lady wants her photos. However, there’s just one little problem. I photographed her wedding a week ago. Yes, a week.
A week isn’t even enough time for me to figure out how to turn off the Spanish subtitles on my TV after I sat on the remote. Hell, I’ve worn the same pair of pants for longer stretches of time.
What I’m trying to say is that a week is not enough. Not even two, or three weeks. Not when it comes to your wedding photos. Would you expect the same for your dress? I have known brides who start trying on wedding dresses two to three years before their big day, and if alterations are needed, they can expect to wait months. And that’s if you’re high up on the list; some bridal boutiques have a waiting list longer than Cher’s face.
Think of your wedding photos like your wedding dress. Or, better yet, think of them like Watenshi gin. Made from the “angel’s share” of gin collected during the distilling process, Watenshi gin is then poured into a hand-blown, hand-painted bottle finished with a silver feather which is (you guessed it) handmade. The process is so painstaking that only 36 bottles are made per year.
So the comparison between the most expensive gin in Britain, and wedding photography, is a little bit of an exaggeration – but parts of it are similar. The photos I choose to send you are all taken, hand-picked and edited by me. I spend hours poring over the different shots, tweaking each one individually and making sure that the end product is perfect. I don’t outsource my editing to some specialist sitting in front of a giant Mac screen in an airy office a hundred miles away, nor do I use filters or presets. It’s just me, with 15,000 cups of coffee and the passion that you hired me for.
Some of your friends might tell you about their ‘superman’ of a photographer who sent their photos over during the taxi ride home from the reception. Unfortunately, that’s just not my style. I’m the guy who will take just that little bit longer in order to give you your money’s worth.
So, don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about you. Believe me, after you got interplanetary drunk, tried to recreate a human pyramid and broke your maid of honour’s arm, I don’t think I could forget (unluckily for me, I didn’t manage to catch it on camera). I’m still working on giving you the best photos you could ask for, and I’ll be in touch soon.
