Hugely overdue!

Hey guys,

Sorry for such an overdue post I know it has been…too long since my last one. But here I am.
I’ve had lots going on recently, but I want to talk to you about my Italian wedding

Here’s the back story…

How this originally came about was a couple of years ago I was IT contracting for a small support firm in south London, I thoroughly enjoyed working for this place, and the manager, James soon stopped being a manager and quickly became a friend!

I stopped contracting for him in June last year as I had found a role closer to home but he had really gone out of his way to give me as much work as possible as he knew I was financially struggling at the time, something I massively appreciated and vowed to pay back however I could at some point.

Fast forward to January this year, James rings me and asks me to come down and have a night out with him and the others of the company for a catch up, so I go there and half way through the night James tells me that he and Elisa are engaged and are currently looking to set the date. This, for me…was my opportunity to help him in a way that I knew I could, I said to him without hesitation that if he could get me to Italy for the wedding I would happily shoot it for free, he was blown away by the offer and gratefully accepted

That was how I got the gig, and I felt enormously privileged that he would let me do this for him, I knew he and Eli loved my work and had said a few times previously about doing some shots of them for the mantlepiece.

Ok so fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, I’m on the flight and the pressure started hitting home, I WAS going to go all out for this, I was going to deliver them the highest quality photographs that I possibly could, they were not going to regret this in any way shape or form I was determined to put every mm of that sensor to good use!
I won’t go into intricate details of each moment of the day but (and other wedding photographers will know what I mean by this) Eli and James were SO into each other, it made working with them an absolute dream! I didn’t have to pose them, everything was just 100% natural and I feel this really does show well in the photos. It’s hard to describe, but unbelievably and somewhere you get couples who said “I do” 2 hours beforehand and are then really really awkward around each other!! And some of these people have been together years! But fortunately this was not the case. It really did make the day quite special for me as well…I’ve done over 35 weddings now and I don’t know if it’s because I knew these 2 on a personal level or what but it was quite an emotional and for me I got an incredible feeling capturing these two. I’ve not had that at previous weddings…I’ve always enjoyed them and been happy for the couple, but nothing on this scale before.

Pictures to be added at the end of this post – The wedding was shot at a place called Agriturismo in Italy near Milan. (Which was an amazing country with incredible food by the way and would highly recommend anybody go and visit!)

And the next thing I want to talk about is Richmond Park ah yes…lovely Richmond Park.

Mark who I assist had shown me countless incredible images taken of the Deer here, I had been itching to go for a while and after shooting a wedding with him at Parklands, Quendon Hall on Friday, the upcoming weather conditions for the next 2 days seemed ideal, so Sunday morning my alarm went off at 5:15 am (Yes, I was confused as well at the thought of such hours existing on a Sunday!) I loaded the camera with my Canon 135L lens and Mark picked me up shortly afterwards.

We headed there and arrived around 6:40ish – now, I wasn’t really sure what to expect (which made it all the more exciting!) I had never really shot any wildlife/nature before.

The first thing that took me by surprise is the amount of Deer there were! absolutely loads! I was expecting to see a couple but that is about it! This was reassuring, surely I had to get some photos of these, although one thing that I realised was that due to my focal length (135mm isn’t really long enough for this sort of work!) I was going to use my expert ninja stalking skills! (and by this I mean Mark showed me and told me what to do)

The whole ordeal was a very surreal and incredible experience, the Deer are almost mythical in some ways, SO majestic in the way they move and are in an almost natural habitat. Beautiful creatures to work with and take photos of. Overall I was very very pleased with the result!

Below I’m attaching 5 images from the Italian job and 5 from Richmond Park, hope you enjoy them!

In other not so exciting news I have 2 weddings left for the year! It’s been a brilliant one so far photography wise, I’ll have to make a point of doing a summary of 2011. Got quite a few home photoshoots coming up though so they are always good fun!

Here are the Italian photos:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
And now the Richmond Park shots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s it for now! I’ll try not to leave it so long before the next post and try to make the next one significantly shorter as well!

Thanks for reading!

Jake