This lovely black & white groom portrait of Mark, a straight forward wedding photograph you would say, but if I told you this was the only part he REALLY wasn’t looking forward to, completely not him I was told!  In fact Maria, his now wife, told me they have no really nice shots of him at all.

Both Maria and Mark wanted hardly any formal shots of themselves just natural ones, just “photojournalistic wedding photography.”

PJ, “photojournalistic wedding photography”, is a great style, I use it!  But how can you ensure your going to get the shots you need from only PJ, “whats happening at the wedding” and standing in the background…. being invisible.   Would you not agree that if you want action shots and photographs in the moment you need to get stuck in the action… most of all be in the moment…  not be invisible!

After discussing Maria & Marks wishes and requirements, all they really wanted was nothing traditional and a gorgeous album at the end, oh yeah they still hate their photo being taken!  Well… I said, you’ve come to the right wedding photographer. After running over my unique approach of mixing photojournalism with direction, then viewing my wedding albums at the Southport Studio to demonstrate how I create your story in the wedding album design, we all agreed I would be able to ensure those natural shots, but with allowing me to direct, not only would they get what they wanted, they would get something that exceeded their expectations!

For this shot of Mark I had the best man come with us, I try to do this on all groom portraits.  This meant I could use the best man as a figure for Mark to look at, but not only that with a bit of banter the best man did a great job of heckling Mark, allowing me to get the smiling and laughing shots without having to ask Mark to smile on my command, this meant a more natural end result.  I obviously positioned the groom for the light and composition first, then we just had a laugh.

And as my dad would have said… Voila!!