Wedding Photographer Kent

A pertinent question to ask a potential wedding photographer is, "What happens if you're ill?"

My response to this is:

1. I'd need to be really ill before considering the following options.

2. I belong to a network of Kent-based wedding photographers (seven currently in the group but growing all the time) who are prepared to cover for each other in the event of an emergency. Although it's impossible to guarantee coverage, the chances of all seven being booked on the same day are small. If that were the case, the chances that one of them couldn't pop along to your wedding for a couple of hours to give at least some professional coverage is smaller still.

3. I am fully insured for professional indemnity just in case the worst comes to the worst. I would also arrange a free family photoshoot to provide you with some beautiful portraiture.

Nothing in life is certain but a professional wedding photographer should be taking as many steps as possible to mitigate against the unexpected.

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Wedding Photography in Kent

For further photography-related information check out my compendium of tips.

I'm slowly updating all of the slideshows on my wedding galleries page.

I'm now using Adobe's Lightroom 2 and would recommend updating to this version if you're using Lightroom 1.4.

The key benefits for me are:

1. Local adjustments - rather than making global adjustments to the whole image you can use a customisable brush to make only local adjustments to all key parameters (exposure, vibrancy, contrast etc). This saves a lot of trips into Photoshop CS3. These adjustments can also be applied using a highly customisable gradient tool - very useful.

2. Postcrop vignette - vignettes can now be applied to only the cropped part of an image. In the previous version the vignette would be applied to the whole image even if cropped - effectively an oversight by the programmers.

Apparently the performance has been improved but I can't notice any difference (maybe because I'm using a high-end MacPro with 9 GB of RAM).

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Wedding Photographer in Kent

Even though the Canon EOS 5D Mark II has yet to be released its impact is already starting to be felt. Vincent Laforet convinced Canon to loan him a pre-production model last weekend and used it to shoot a short film in high-definition. Check it out here - HD film.

The results were so impressive that a lot of people struggled to believe it was shot with just an SLR camera. He's therefore just released all the original RAW files for download and inspection. Read the ongoing saga in Vincent's blog.

It will be interesting to see the impact this technology has on wedding photography. Roll on the release date!

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Kent Wedding Photographer Galleries

For further photography-related information check out my compendium of tips.

I'm in the process of updating my wedding galleries in order to reduce the amount of space they occupy on my website - check out the gallery page. I was previously using the 'Paper White' option from the Flash Gallery in Adobe's Lightroom, which stored 3 separate JPEGs for each image and then automatically displayed the biggest image it could on the visitor's monitor. Great for showing work off but galleries were occasionally taking up 50Mb of space! I've now switched to the Airtight SimpleViewer, still based upon Adobe Flash technology, but which uses 1/3 of the space.

Check out my photography here: Kent Wedding Photographer

Wedding Photographer Kent

Just a brief note for potential clients. Over 50% of my available dates for 2009 have been booked and I've had a flurry of bookings for 2010 over the past month.

If you're interested in booking me to photograph your wedding I'd urge you to send me an e-mail sooner rather than later. I only ask for a deposit of £100 to secure a booking.

If you haven't yet seen my photography then please click here: wedding photography in Kent

Kent Wedding Photographer

This weekend is my first wedding-free weekend for 3 months! Time to recharge the batteries and catch up with some photographic literature. I've got 'Hollywood Portraits: Classic Shots and How to Take Them' by Roger Hicks & Christopher Nisperos and 'Best Business Practices for Photographers' by John Harrington to read. Stimulating stuff - I hope!

I've just placed my pre-order for the Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Camera World, who are offering it with the new BG-E6 battery grip and an 8Gb Sandisk Extreme III compact flash card thrown in. It should be in stock on November 30th. I've got plenty of weddings booked in December and January so I'm looking forward to entering the ISO stratosphere as I venture beyond 3200 for the first time. I'll still be creating a custom noise profile for my new camera for use with NeatImage though.

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer in Kent

Lympne Castle Wedding Album

I've just designed an album for Tanya and Duncan, whose wedding I photographed at Lympne Castle in August - see their wedding gallery.

The album will be printed as a coffee-table style hardback book (15" x 11.5") with a printed dust jacket. They look terrific and allow you to offer your clients an album at a reasonable price. Check out my wedding album page.

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photographer in Kent

Canon 5D Mark II

An exciting day for wedding photographers who use Canon equipment - the EOS 5D Mark II has finally been announced and with a stunning specification - 21.1 Mp with ISO from 50 - 25,600. Another 3-stops in ISO sensitivity over the 5D (and matching the Nikon D3)! This opens up the possibility of shooting in a very dark Church at f/4.0 or more, no more ultra-shallow depth of field. Image size will be 5616 x 3744 pixels, giving increased forgiveness with cropping. The shutter is engineered to give 150,000 exposures (compared to the 5D's 100,000 - a longer usable life). It will feature the 1D's well-received highlight tone priority feature, great for dealing with wedding dresses in bright sunlight, and a much improved screen (3.0 " TFT LCD, 920,000 pixels, automatic 3 level brightness adjustment, 170 ° viewing angle, dual anti-reflection - 'Clear View') and live TTL display of scene from the CMOS image sensor - 'Live view'.

I'll also be able to double up as a videographer now with the high definition movie recording feature. The price is £2300 and it should be available in November.

Key Features

New 21.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor with improved EOS Integrated Cleaning System (E.I.C.S.)
New Full HD 1080 resolution movie recording
3.9 frames per second continuous shooting
High performance DIGIC 4 providing superb image quality
Maximum 310 large JPEG images in a single burst with a UDMA card
3.0″ VGA (920k dots) Clear View LCD
ISO 100-6400 (expansion from 50 up to 25,600)
9 AF points + 6 Assist AF points

Check out my photography here: Kent wedding photographer

Wedding at Marine Hotel, Tankerton

I had the pleasure of photographing Suzanne and Steve's wedding at the Marine Hotel, Tankerton yesterday - see their wedding gallery. And what a lovely day it was - no clouds and no rain.

Since it was a late start for the ceremony (4:45) we had gorgeous evening light for the bride & groom portraits and group shots. Those colours have not been saturated in post-production - that's precisely how they were! We popped down to the beach for a few shots and Suzanne was perfectly happy to take her shoes off and go for a paddle - my kind of bride!

Check out more of my photography here: Kent wedding photographer

Photoshoot at Ashford International Hotel

I'm photographing Nicola and Michael's wedding at the Ashford International Hotel in December and they booked me for a photoshoot at the venue on Saturday.

They are a very charming couple and the venue is fantastic for photography. Lots of interesting architectural spaces and modern art combined with fun lighting. I'm definitely looking forward to shooting this wedding.

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Wedding at Tunbridge Wells

I had the pleasure of photographing Clare and Alistair's wedding at St Paul's Church and The Spa Hotel, Tunbridge Wells on Saturday - see their wedding gallery.

We had 15 minutes of blue sky and sunshine at the start of the wedding but then a huge storm blew in bringing the monsoon season with it. St Paul's Church was absolutely stunning and the Vicar very relaxed about photography. He was happy for me to wander around the Church to get the shots I needed - a rare luxury. There were lots of tungsten spotlights in the Church which allowed me to shoot at ISO 1600, f/4.0 (another luxury) but the white balance had to be severely tweaked in post-production.

We then moved on to The Spa Hotel and quickly cleared an area in the dining room to take the group shots. The gardens looked beautiful but the downpour continued outside. I had a good scout round the hotel and found a room with terrific light for some bride and groom portraits - there is always some to be had.

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photographer in Kent

Wedding at St Augustine's, Westgate

I had the pleasure of photographing Katie & Simon's wedding at St Augustine's on Friday - see their wedding gallery.

Fortunately, St Augustine's is a lovely spacious venue as we were limited to staying inside due to the weather - wind and rain for most of the day. It was also very overcast which meant light levels were incredibly low inside. I shot at ISO 1600 & 3200 all day.

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Family portraits at Deal beach

I had the pleasure of photographing Julie and her family at Deal beach on Saturday morning. The sun was so strong we had to take shelter under the shade of the pier, which limited our freedom to move, but we had a productive shoot nonetheless. Posing people just besides the sea does have its risks though - particularly when large waves come in!

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photographer in Kent