How I Work

To me photography is all about creating an emotional connection between the viewer and the image. Whatever I'm doing, be it in amongst a crowd of wedding guests or all alone on a beach at dawn, I'm striving to create that little moment that draws the observer into the photograph for a genuine experience.

That means I am looking at composition, exposure and colour (or absence of it) through the viewfinder, and trying to bring it all together into the mix.

For instance, dawn breaking over the Isle of Arran and the first rays of sunlight start to warm my chilly limbs.

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Or wedding rings, sitting waiting for the ceremony.

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I photograph in RAW, and process individual images afterwards. For the layman this means that I am working in the digital equivalent of the darkroom to maximise the quality and impact of each photograph.

This is something that many people don’t immediately realise. Unlike their personal cameras, I only produce the final JPEG images after examining each RAW file for its suitability and quality. Sometimes there’s little work to be done. On other occasions, I find myself extensively cropping and working an image to bring out something that was buried in the original. This sometimes happens with the reportage element of a busy wedding shoot: the original image, taken quickly, doesn’t initially look promising. However, a second glance reveals a little gem in there such as a guest’s expression.

The editing process is why wedding photography can seem expensive at first glance. In fact it can take up to a week to process a full day’s wedding coverage. Every image is looked at and worked on individually. This is what makes wedding photography so special, both to the clients and to me.