‘Wedding photography’ easy?
Why is ‘Wedding photography’ so disrespected? I have just completed another assignment as a Suffolk Wedding photographer and I cannot understand why the genre is treated as the poor relation of photography. The excellent ceremony was given by celebrant Dawn Rees (see b&w photo below).
A number of years ago, my photo partner, Andrew Florides, was commissioned to do a two day fashion shoot in Knightsbridge. The renowned Bermuda based clothes designer, rented a house with models hired from the much acclaimed ‘Storm Agency’. The house was filled with quite an entourage from the fashion world. Andrew set up a large backdrop with several studio lights and took a few test shots with the models. The owner of the company was delighted with the first test shots and after seeing another batch of images, said she would like to give Andrew some advice. Expecting feedback from the day’s shoot, she proceeded to critique his website: “Andrew darling, you must remove your wedding images from your site, if you want to be considered a serious photographer”. Andrew was taken aback with this and asked: “Why?” She then lit his fuse by saying: “Anyone can be a wedding photographer”.
Andrew, a Suffolk Wedding photographer, then responded with: “I beg to differ and the best way I can explain myself, is by referring to our fashion shoot. Look around us, there is a controlled studio lighting rig, where we have tested the results and it’s a constant. Also, there are plenty of staff around all focused on making our fashion shoot a successful one. In direct contrast, weddings are full of variables. Different lighting conditions, unfamiliar locations, changing characters all expectant and within a thoroughly ruthless schedule. Additionally, you are being hired by people who are likely to be employing a professional photographer for the first time. Unlike this fashion shoot, there are no opportunities to reshoot, so the photographer must really know his camera well. On top of this, one must coordinate sometimes several hundred wedding guests, whilst the venue caterers are breathing down your neck. From arriving at the bride’s home to sitting down at the reception, the work load is relentless, sometimes going on to 2 or 3am. Then after the wedding the topic of conversation is usually how everyone is looking forward to seeing the results, the memories. A giant responsibility. Isn’t it ironic that the hardest and most skilful work on my website, is the one you wish me to remove. The fashion shoot is ‘a walk in the park’ compared to a wedding photographer providing excellence, for his clients.” There followed a silence that rarely can have been so articulate. It was a ‘touché’ moment on a grand scale and on behalf of all belittled wedding photographers everywhere.
If you have an up and coming wedding in the family, I urge you to read our ‘Wedding prices’ for a Suffolk Wedding photographer. And ours together start from £2,000.
Advice that clearly explains what you may expect to receive, in return for some very differing price levels. You may also read our very pictorial ‘Wedding Photography’ book, with lots of useful advice.
By Roland Blunk
A hard rain…
Don’t we all, deep down, truly despise conformity. Who’s spine does not quiver at the sound of Mozart’s ‘Figaro’ being blasted over the prison tannoy in ‘Shawshank’, or Schoolboys being coaxed into standing on their desks in ‘Dead Poets’. Without art, we are not human. The ability to imagine and to take that imagination and turn it into reality, is one of the things that is really unique about humanity.
When Dylan wrote ‘A hard rain’s a-gonna fall’ in the summer of ’62 at the impossibly young age of just 21, he opened the window for creative liberation within everyone, taking people out of their domestic entrapment and into a wider utopia. And to put this song into contemporary context for younger readers, we were just weeks away from what many feared would be nuclear war between Russia and USA. Dylan, so the myth goes, wrote each line as if it were the title of a song, fearing he would never have time to write more:
Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well-hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
By Roland Blunk, well just the blog. Dylan wrote the lyrics plus another five verses, although I would be happy to claim them!
Traditional skills
I watched intrigued as Suffolk ‘Thatcher’ Tim Ellis went about his work. In this case it’s a top-up to the more complete job of 18 years ago. And of course a great photo opportunity.
Tim Ellis learnt his Thatching skills more than thirty years ago under the stewardship of Peter Buckley, from the Cambridgeshire village of Elsworth. Peter lived in Elsworth most of his life, working with his Father Sidney Buckley. Peter had a ‘disagreement’ early in his life with his father and was bundled off to Norfolk on a five year apprenticeship. This was at Farnhams Thatching Company with a history going back centuries and a client list that included the Royal family. Sid died around 1970, literally whilst thatching, whilst his son Peter died in 1992. Tim has now been working entirely on his own for more than than twenty-six years.
Tim told me that everything he does and the tools he uses, have not changed for over four hundred years. The one change is that he has a Mercedes truck, to replace horse power.
A night at the Circus
I was recently invited to enjoy an evening of Circus theatrics and naturally I took my camera. I took these shots and many more from just one vantage point, being seated a few rows back.
It’s unlikely that anyone will have a need for ‘Circus photography’, but if I can deliver this from one fixed point, I could so much more with a broader brief. If you have an event that you would like to treasure, please just contact me.
White on white
I have just returned from wintering in Central Southern Italy, where the Apennine range of mountains runs down the spine of Italy. The visual subtlety of winter mountain landscapes in low cloud conditions, can have a silent almost ethereal quality to it. The beauty here is evasive and almost impossible to fully capture on Nikon. And a complete ‘whiteout’ absolutely impossible, beyond displaying a white page. Even those that do not ski, can non-the-less, still fall in love with ‘white’. This journey has been invaluable research, for my next ‘Mountain Photography course’
These photos were shot nearby the beautiful mountain town of Pescocostanzo, where I am occasionally hosting my ‘Mountain Photography Courses’. Set in the Abruzzo region of central southern Italy, this ‘undiscovered’ gem sits at an altitude of 1,400 metres. With paved and cobbled streets, old houses and a history of lace making, the town provides a perfect photographic backdrop. ‘Pesco’ is very much a loved ‘secret’ of Romans and local Italians alike. The area boasts four Michelin restaurants, with little more than 1,200 residents in the town itself. And so I am including lunch each day at one of these excellent mountain restaurants, with my Italian photography holiday course. Please enquire if you are curious.
The Hotel I have selected is a classic ‘Castello’ style hotel, although not quite a ‘castle’ as we might imagine. However it is both a beautiful and classical Italian building, untainted by modern embellishments and full of original details. This hotel on it’s own is full of photographic treats, and enough to keep you busy from arrival to departure! Do contact me if there is not a future date currently visible, as it may be in the planning.
by Roland Blunk
Black & white beauty
The beauty of black and white photography is in its skewing of reality. The escape from colour offers an opportunity to create almost within an alternative dimension.
The medium perfectly suits portraiture, as colour somehow becomes an unnecessary distraction, intruding on the character of the subject. You can see and read more of my portrait work and how to book me here.
New sales ideas
I am planning to ‘time travel’ back a complete century to 1917. And after informing ‘post Edwardians’ of the good news that the war is nearly over, I will hit them with my great new business plan.
I am going to inform them that placing fashion branding on the outside, rather than tucking it behind the collar, is the way forward. If this goes down well, I am going to suggest that since there is more visible surface area on the outside, the logo should be at least ten times that of their concealed predecessors. And finally if they buy into this idea, I am going to suggest that they should price their garments at least double that of their ignorant competitors. Oh and of course there will be a small fee for this advice, as well as time-travel expenses.
by Roland Blunk
Photography/design lecture
I was invited by the ‘Friends of Beccles’ to give a talk two weeks ago on my Suffolk photography and graphic design career. I discussed some of my current photographic work on this site, as well as past design assignments. These included work for the BBC, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the V&A Museum as well as local businesses.
Above: A design id proposal for a Suffolk Health Club.
Above: A cover design for the ‘Radio Times’ from the BBC’s programming magazine heyday, with a circulation of 3 million+.
Below: Three Royal Shakespeare Company promos.
I was very pleased to received rather splendid feedback from a ‘full house’. I have since been invited to present another Suffolk photography and graphic design lecture next year. What the audience said:
“Thoroughly enjoyed last night. He was brilliant”
“I would like to say what a delight and huge pleasure it was to hear Roland Blunk speak of his work and his passion in photography. Thoroughly entertaining evening”
“May I take this opportunity to express my thanks to Roland Blunk for the fascinating talk he gave . . . to his photographic and design work . . . I found myself totally absorbed in the variety and expertise of his work”
by Roland Blunk
‘Hunters in the snow’
The secretary of the ‘Chelsea Arts Club’, my home in London, made a great observation in support of reproduction art:
“Neil McGregor, the then Director of the National Gallery, was a passionate supporter of reproductions. He believed firmly that, just as it can take a few listens before a new piece of music really takes hold of us, so, often, we need to spend time with great art before we feel its power. It was heartening to those of us in the publishing company to think that someone who was sent one of our postcards might feel just a little of the power of the original – and that in fact their encounter with the real thing might be enhanced by spending time with a copy.
Because nothing compares, does it, with that moment when you see for the first time an original work you have only ever known before in reproduction. I’ve never forgotten the stunned joy I felt when in Vienna I unexpectedly came across Bruegel’s ‘Hunters in the snow’, a print of which had hung on the wall throughout my childhood. The sheer thrill of the work’s palpable presence, its numen, was overwhelming. What’s more it was thrilling to know where the painting actually lived, what wall in which room of what building it called home – and it was thrilling, too, to understand the scale of it for the first time.”
by Roland Blunk picture by err Bruegel