Will Strange Wedding Photography @wsweddings - Tumblr Blog

Katy & Andrew on the Thames

Katy and Andrew must have had some credit with the Bank of Mother Nature, as their London wedding on the banks of the Thames co-incided with one of those glorious early springtime, mid-20s days. T'were glorious!

After a beautiful ceremony at Hammersmith Town Hall the wedding party walked en masse along the Thames path to the gorgeous Linden House.

Katy is an illustrator - an outrageously talented one at that - and was the creative masterminded behind a quite frankly perfect day.

#weddingphotography #lindenhouse #hammersmith #london #wedding #nikonpro #professional #professionalphotographer #willstrange #whitewedding #London Wedding

London Marathon 2016

Jo and I had a tremendous time cheering on the courageous runners of the 2016 London Marathon. I had my compact Nikon Coolpix A with me and decided to try and get a little creative with my photos. Thanks to some rather gloomy weather, I was able to stretch my shutter speed to about 1/4sec (at lowest iso and minimum aperture). Any sunnier and the photos would have been very washed-out.

A step-by-step guide to completing a successful photo expedition

A 'pro tips' post for you today. I undertook a London cityscape portfolio update over the weekend and figured I'd share the planning process that goes into my photo japes. It's a bit more involved than 'grab camera, leave flat'... Step 1 - How do you want your photos to be viewed? Photography for photography’s sake is great, but if you start thinking about how you want your final photos to be ‘consumed’ even before you leave home, you’ll probably find you get better results. This could be something literal like ‘get new wall art for my hallway’, or as abstract as ‘document this particular area of London so that my hypothetical grandchildren can see what things were like in my grandparents’ heyday’. A strategy will give more purpose to your photo jaunt. In my case, I wanted to shoot some portfolio shots to demonstrate my London-ness in promoting my super cheap London-only Wedding Essentials Photography service.

Step 2 - Where do you want to go? Chances are you may already have an area in mind, which is why you want to take your camera out and about. If not, now’s the time to choose. How far do you want to travel? Do you want to go somewhere familiar or new to you?

Step 3 - Do you know your way around? Decide on at least three specific locations - buildings, monuments, viewpoints etc - and do a map of your route. If nothing else, a map will give you a visual progress guide so you can keep a check on time.

Step 4 - What is your preferred location? Of all the areas you have listed out in step 3, have a think about which of them is your ‘must shoot’ place. What specific building/landmark did you have in mind when you chose the area? When planning your route, make sure this isn’t your first or last stop. You’ll want to use your first location as a warm-up and you might be tired of lugging around several kilos of camera gear by the end of your trip. Your A-game will be a couple of locations in. For me, Leadenhall Market was my ‘must shoot’ location as it’s publicly-accessible, very photogenic and frequently pops up on wedding blogs. It’s one of London's trendiest wedding locations.

Step 5 - Which day of the week and time of day will work best? Find out sunrise/sunset times and deduce when the best time of day is for your preferred location (see step 4). A quick Google image search of Leadenhall Market suggested to me that dusk would be the optimum time to photograph the arcade. I wanted the ambient daylight coming through the glass roof to be at the same strength as the artificial lighting inside the arcade. This meant I had to be there at around 5.30pm (half an hour before sunset)

Step 6 - What kit will you need? Standard, wide and/or telephoto? Is depth of field a consideration? I knew that my route would put me in close quarters with some monumental architecture, so an ultra-wide zoom on my main camera was going to be the order of the day. I also took along a small, light telephoto lens in case I needed the range (I didn’t). If you’re planning on covering a lot of territory, do try to keep kit weight to a minimum.

Step 7 - Can I start shooting now? Yes!

Berlin weekender, Feb 2016

Jo and I decided to make the most of the January sales and booked some cheapo flights with Norwegian Air to the wonderful city of Berlin.

We found it a perfect destination for a weekend break - dramatic architecture, incredible museums, thriving third wave coffee culture, and it was a darn sight cheaper than London. As ever, I took my trusty little Nikon Coolpix A with me and it did a great job of documenting our time there:

Jo ensconced in a book

Here's our great airbnb flat. You may be able to make our a snowstorm, which would be a feature of our first day.

Yarn-bombed bollards

The massive Fernsehturm TV tower - a smidge taller than the Eiffel Tower and the Shard

At the East Side Gallery, where a section of the Berlin Wall remains

We got caught in another snowstorm - wet and cold, but very photogenic (pro tip, using flash makes the flakes 'pop')

We sheltered in an instagram-tastic indoor streetfood market

The view from our flat. This was once part of East Berlin and the buildings were suitable utilitarian. I spent much of our weekend in awe of Berlin's cycling infrastructure.

We had a great trip to the dome of the Reichstag. Well worth booking in advance, unless you like queueing.

The holocaust memorial and its accompanying museum were an essential visit, though incredibly hard to digest.

We had travelcards and found ourselves with a bit of unplanned time, so hopped on a random train. I was overjoyed when I noticed that we were bound for Berlin's storied Olympic stadium - site of Jesse Owens' heroics in 1936, and of Zinedine Zidane's headbutt (and Panenka, let's not forget) in 2006. In hindsight, I'm not sure why we didn't prioritise a trip to see it.

Station for the U2 line

Soviet war memorial in Treptower Park

Nice signage

Potsdamerplatz

The Brandenburg Gate

Glass-topped lift in the Fernsehturm TV tower. We didn't last long up there as there was an element of 'play' in the structure, which we Jo found unsettling.

Bidding farewell to our lovely flat

Wedding Mums - a Mother’s Day special

To celebrate Mother's Day weekend, I would like to present to you a fine collection of some of my favourite ever wedding Mums.

If you know someone who would make a great Wedding Mum, why not check out my new London-only budget wedding packages.

(Apologies to the WeRateDogs Twitter feed for stealing their rating system)

MUM 1 - ROB'S MUM Unflappable - if you want a Mum to host c.30-odd on the eve of a wedding, create a bridal bouquet and provide copious entertainment to grandchildren, Rob’s Mum’s your Mum (not literally). Mum rating - 12 out of 10 Two bonus points for the nonchalance with which she delivered all the above.

MUM 2 - KAREN'S MUM Same wedding as above. A picture of unbridled joy and warmth. Never have I seen a Mum look so proud of her newlywedded daughter. Mum rating 12/10 Bonus points for walking her daughter up the aisle like a boss.

MUM 3 - ALI'S MUM Aka my Aunt Lilian. Pianist extraordinaire, creator of Lilian’s Lemon (delicious frozen dessert) with an unbowing ability to put up with a Strange spouse (more on them below). Mum rating 12/10 Bonus points for being Mum to my awesome cousins Ali and Julian.

MUM 4 - PREEMA'S MUM Stunning both inside and out. A warm and charming hostess with the mostest. Mum rating 12/10 Bonus points for putting up with a veritable phalanx of audio-visual professionals - 2 photographers and 3 videographers.

MUM 5 - SUSIE'S MUM Invited me to stay on the bridal barge rather than have me trundle home on public transport. Only declined because another guest offered me a lift to my frontdoor. Mum rating 12/10. Bonus points for being part pirate.

MUM 6 - SARAH'S MUM Rocked it so hard on the dancefloor that her achilles snapped. Mum rating 12/10 Bonus points for supplying me with a champion's breakfast on the morning of the wedding.

MUM 7 - LEKAN'S MUM Helped to organise a party for hundreds of guests. Immensely proud of her son, and a fixture on the dancefloor. Mum rating 12/10 Bonus points for undertaking this gargantuan wedding organisational feat in her stride.

MUM 8 - JO'S MUM Not strictly speaking a wedding Mum, my girlfriend’s Mum earns her place on this list by being just a magnificent Mum. Mum rating 12/10 Bonus points for being my football buddy.

MUM 9 - WILL'S MUM My Mum, the ultimate matriarch. Two brothers, four sons, six grandsons, plus a Strange spouse who probably needs more looking after than the rest of us put together. Utterly indefatigable, incredibly patient and eternally loving. Mum rating 13/10 My Mum gets an extra bonus point, ‘cos it’s my blog and I make the rules.

Olivia & Marc

I bleedin' got flown out to photograph a wedding on the Cote d'Azur. Please do not share any of these photographs on social media channels.

Karen & Rob on a Dorset Field

Karen and Rob had a very home-made wedding day extravaganza in Rob's home village of South Perrott, Dorset. Their two priorities when planning were to ‘tie the knot’ (literally) in a humanist ceremony under a handsome tree, and to have a bouncy castle at the reception. They delivered those two things and much more at this extremely heart-warming day!...

Karen gets ready in a gorgeous thatched cottage...

Meanwhile, Rob and co undergo some preparations of their own down at the local pub...

...before making their way to the family home to get changed.

Both parties made their way to the wedding venue - a nearby field

A quick change of dress for Karen

Back to the field for a bounce!

Holiday to La Reunion

A few weeks ago Jo and I embarked on one of our annual ‘holiday of a lifetime’s to the Isle of Reunion. It’s an island the size of Dorset nestled between Madagascar and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. As there is a dearth of English-language information on La Reunion (it's a territory of France) I’m going to hand over control of my blog to Will the travel writer before posting just a handful of the 4000 photos that Jo and I took. Without further ado...

Lonely Planet got is SO wrong - Reunion is much better than they reckon

Do you own goggles? Take them! There’s coral and tropical fish-life just metres away from the beaches. Stick your face underwater and start that David Attenborough inner monologue. It’s stunning. If you’re into diving, I have no information for you, other than I think you’re a bit weird, and that I guess you should do that instead. Hang on, Reunion has sharks though doesn’t it? Don’t worry about sharks See that line of waves breaking about 50 metres out to sea? That’s being caused by a coral embankment separating the ocean yonder from the beachside lagoon. It’s impossible* for creatures the size of man-eating sharks to navigate over this natural barrier, so you’re safe to swim away. If you are still concerned, go for one of the beaches which has a Hasselhoff, just in case. Surfers and fishermen need to venture out of the lagoons and they’re the ones who are most at risk - sharks struggle to discern between surfers, fishermen and seals. *it may be possible, but seems very unlikely You don’t need to rent a car The guidebooks and blogs say that it’s borderline essential to rent a car for your entire stay, we proved those people wrong (ish). The bus network is simply fantastic. The ‘inter-city’ Car Jaune services and the local run-arounds all ran to timetables so we could plan our activities around our transfers to the minute. Having said this, the two days that we did actually rent a car were two of the stand-out days of the whole holiday. The Cascade Langevin waterfalls, Grand Brule lava fields, Puits des Anglais coastline and our essential journey up the Piton de la Fournaise would all have been very difficult, if not impossible, without a car. In fact, if we were to plan the holiday again, I’d probably push for a couple more days of car - the transfer from St Pierre to Hell-Bourg involved four buses with lengthy interchanges, and a car would have allowed us to get to the start point of a hike into the Cirque de Mafate from the Cirque de Salazie. Reunion is very un-photogenic Every photograph you have seen of the cirques is not representative of just how impressive they are (and we didn’t even see Mafate, which is said to be the pick of the bunch). The mountains and cliff faces are so high and steep that you either have to point the camera up or shoot on a very wide angle lens, both techniques serving to make the subjects look smaller than they are. It’s a tropical island paradise which ‘erupts’ 3000m into the sky within the space of 20 miles from the shore. It has three enormous land bowls, and one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It’s about as impressive a place as you can imagine. If you’re in two minds about going to Reunion, be led by the facts rather than the photos.

NB: I took the (excellent) decision to leave my DSLRs at home - all the below were shot on compacts - my Nikon Coolpix A or Jo's Canon S95

Quick stop-off at Mauritius airport

Reunion Island hoves into view

Craggy delights await

Stop 1 of 5 - Saint Leu on the west coast

Jo went paragliding

Me and this loveable rogue met Jo at the landing site

Kelonia turtle sanctuary in Saint Leu - breathtaking

En route to stop 2, Cilaos - all of the scenery

Stop 2 of 5 - Cilaos

It rained...

...a lot...

Cilaos day 3 - the rains stop and the skies clear! (ish)

Classic backpacker look

Hairy bus ride out of the Cirque de Cilaos

Stop 3 of 5 - gorgeous seaside town of St Pierre

Guy with an iguana on his shoulder sipping a Smirnoff Ice and watching the sunset

Quick detour to Great Yarmouth - not really, this is St Pierre harbour with a full rainbow

St Pierre beach - pretty windy that evening!

Never tired of seeing Piton des Neiges appear on the horizon

We rented a car for a couple of days, during which the weather very much played ball...

In 2007 La Reunion's (hyper)active volcano Piton de la Fournaise had a huge eruption which created an enormous lava flow into the sea. No-one was harmed. It took six years for the ground to cool...

Amazing car park dogs

Les Cascades de Langevin (Langevin Waterfalls). Just incredible...

Plage Grande Anse - still the first day of the car rental, we packed in a lot!

Day 2 with the car - driving up the Piton de la Fournaise on my birthday!!

This was as close as we could get to the summit - it was experiencing a period of discumbobulation, though sadly not enough to spew out the lava that we were so hoping to see.

A 'tek-tek', one of the many endemic bird species on the island

Jo modeling the hire car

For an idea of the scale of this place, try to make out the cars in the laybys on the straight road...

Barely mentioned in the guidebooks, this gorge was enormous

Back in St Pierre for a birthday sunset

En route to Hell-Bourg, four hours waiting at a scary bus stop

Stop 4 of 5 - Hell-Bourg

The Piton des Neiges towers over Hell-Bourg. Shot during the early stages of an 8-ish hour hike.

The inside of a fern plant

After about two hours of solid up-hill we reached this view of the Cirque de Salazie from the Gite de Belouve

We forged on for another couple of hours to a (very oscured) view of the legendary Trou de Fer waterfalls

Return trip to Hell-Bourg via the Foret de Bebour-Belouve

Another friendly/hungry dog. I wanted to adopt them all!

I had looked up the lunar cycle before we went to figure out which would be the best night for some astro photography - it was such a relief that there was an unusually clear night! This was shot on my compact camera on a gorillapod tripod perched on the roof of a car.

Our last morning in Hell-Bourg - such an amazing village...

En route to St Denis

Stop 5 of 5 - Saint Denis, the largest town on the island (and home to the airport)

Amazing picnic - too humid to be outdoors!

Our Airbnb host gave us a lift to the airport - merci Roger!

Never has anyone been so sad to be boarding a plane to Mauritius

Next stop Lond... hang on - plane diversion due to passenger being taken ill (we were assured that they were fine in the end). Stop 6 of 5 - ROME!

The Pantheon - somehow missed this place on my previous trip to Rome

We were shattered by this point but still managed to soldier on to the Piazza Navona

Castel Sant'Angelo

Fly-by

My gorgeous, brainy girlfriend Jo recently graduated with a Masters in International Business and Politics from QMUL. Rather than have a staged bunch of formal photos in front of a non-descript background, I offered to take some family shots on location in the campus grounds. We hadn't factored in that lectures would still be ongoing during graduation week, so I guess it was inevitable that this would happen...

Journey HR - Case Study

The lovely folks at HR consultancy, JourneyHR underwent a rebrand a few months ago. They demonstrated huge wisdom in hiring my long time office mate and friend Catherine Jordan to mastermind the graphic design and general creative direction of their project. Whilst redesigning their website she suggested that it might bring a dose of friendly bonhomie to proceedings to have some photographs of the team featured on certain key pages.

Catherine was good enough to recommended me for the commission and put JourneyHR in touch with me. After agreeing on a photography package - a combination of shooting time and the number of optimised images to be supplied - I gave myself the task of recce-ing the area where the shoot was to take place. JourneyHR work out of a private members' club in Soho, so their idea was to have some indoor shots in a handsome meeting room at their HQ before heading out to the streets for some location portraits. I had a concern that there might be a lot of foot traffic in certain areas of Soho during the shoot - which would be bad for background randoms and unwanted spectators - so, about a week before the shoot, I travelled to the area at the same time as the shoot was due to take place to scope out some quiet, nicely lit areas close to the members' club. It swiftly became apparent that Soho would be too busy in the late morning coffee run time slot, so I ventured north of Oxford Street to Fitzrovia, where I found beautiful streets, an excellent combination of bounced light and shade, and, crucially, a minimal number of pedestrians. It was perfect!

When the day of the shoot came, everything went incredibly smoothly. The indoor portraits necessitated only a couple of different lighting set-ups, and we were making our way to the streets of Fitzrovia before long. Thanks to the recce we were able to make a beeline for a spot that I had already pinpointed for portraits and we acheived what I believe to be the best shots from the whole shoot.

A couple of months later, JourneyHR contacted me to request some more photos - business was booming and they had expanded! This time around the shoot took place a little earlier, so we were able to take all of the photos in Soho Square, a mere stone's throw from their HQ. The weather really played ball that day and the sun gave us some gorgeous, warm light which was being bounced off all the surrounding buildings. We shot an updated group shot and then some individual portraits under the little pavilion in the middle of the square.

Long weekend away

Just some photos from a long weekend in Dorset...

#OnBlackheath

****Bad joke alert ****

To celebrate the birthday of my girlfriend Jo, I decided to give her the Elbow....

The BAND, ‘Elbow’ that is.

****End of bad joke alert, any bad jokes below are unintentionally bad and should be chuckled at politely, including this one****

The mini-festival 'On Blackheath' took place on Jo's birthday weekend, and, as fortune would have it, Elbow were headlining. Jo saw them at Glastonbury a few years ago and regularly lauds their performance as one of her all time live music highlights. Naturally I snapped us up a pair of tickets and come Saturday we were Lewisham-bound.

The festival was branded as 'family-friendly', which meant that during the Elbow set, Jo was treated to about an hour of full-on middle-aged twerking from the lady in front whilst she stooped down to placate a bored child.

This minor point of hilarity aside, the musical entertainment was absolutely top class. The Manic Street Preachers played a quasi-co-headlining set prior to Elbow, performing a good mix of their biggest hits and more niche tracks for the hardcore fans. Elbow's set was phenomenal - Guy Garvey's voice is a national treasure, and the band were exceedingly 'tight'.

All the below pics were shot on my still-amazing compact, Nikon A.

#onblackheath nikon photography festival london music

Ali & Lee

Oh happy day! What an honour it was to photograph the long-anticipated (!) wedding of my lovely cousin Ali to her fian husband, Lee last month in Sutton, South London.

Proceedings started at Sutton Register Office and the party then went en masse to UNO Tapas for a delicious array of small plates, fine wines and hilarious speeches.

My remit was to cover the ceremony and to take a handful of formals, but the emotion of the day got the better of me and I couldn't help but snap away throughout the day.

#wedding photography #Wedding Photographer #wedding #bride #groom #newylweds #london wedding #surrey wedding

Nikon Coolpix A

As DSLRs are mighty heavy, and arguably overkill for those leisurely strolls along the Thames with the other half, I recently decided to treat myself to a point-and-shoot. Chief among my considerations was image quality; I was aware of a number of cameras that could near the quality of a professional DSLR, albeit with a considerably more limited feature set, so I already knew I wanted one of them. I also knew I wasn’t particularly fussed about wi-fi, fancy viewfinders, 4k movie modes, huge zoom ranges etc, I just wanted a device that could capture excellent quality RAW stills which I could then play around with in post-production to create my ‘masterpieces’. So, with that in mind, I took a trip to nuts-and-bolts comparison site DXOmark to compare the sensors’ merits - this shows which cameras will produce the best quality image files by gauging their sensors' performances in low light, and assessing how much highlight and shadow information they are able to capture - a factor called 'dynamic range'. It swiftly became apparent that the large-sensored compacts on the market were very much the way to go - from the latest Lumix LX series all the way up to Sony’s full-frame behemoth, the RX1. I was particularly keen to get a camera that I could have with me at all times, which meant that it had to be small and light. This meant foregoing a heavy zoom lens for a fixed focal-length. I tend to shoot on ‘prime’ lenses so this was in no way daunting for me. So, I whittled list down to four: Ricoh GR, Nikon Coolpix A, Fuji x100s, Sony RX1. The last two were ruled out quickly as they were slightly larger and heavier than the former (nothing to do with their respective £1k and £2k price tags, honest). It was at this point that I discovered just how many people on the internet have been mulling over the Ricoh GR vs Nikon Coolpix A decision. There are reams of discussions about their respective merits, and I know I’m risking adding to the surfeit of information on that by posting this blog. It turns out that the two cameras are near-identical in terms of features. Both use sensors that are the same size as those in all but the best DSLRs, and both have fixed wide-angle lenses. Reviews generally favour the Ricoh on account of it’s user-friendliness and better JPEGs out of the camera. However, given that I own Nikon flashes as part of my DSLR set-up, that I’m entirely used to the idiosyncrasies of the Nikon menus, and that I intended to shoot only in RAW format (negating any in-camera JPEG processing), my final decision was an easy one - the Nikon Coolpix A. As chance had it, one of my favourite used camera shops - London Camera Exchange - had an mint condition, used Coolpix A in stock which I was able to snap up. When I finally got my hands on the camera I was overjoyed by what I held. Terrific build quality, excellent ergonomics, diminutive size, excellent screen. A couple of hours later, after a photo safari of the area around my Kennington office, came the proof of the pudding - viewing the RAW files on my wide-gamut monitor. After a swift mental adjustment to remind myself that these weren’t the 36 megapixel, full-frame files from my D800, I was very pleasantly surprised. The images are actually a lot closer to those from my main camera than the size and budget of the Coolpix A would suggest. Highlights and shadows could be reigned in by huge amounts (the sign of a quality image sensor), it had abundant detail due to the omission of a low-pass filter (google it), and as it’s a compact, the lens and sensor could be precisely matched up for optimum results.

Over the past couple of months I have taken the little marvel on holiday, to family get-togethers and even to a wedding for some guest-tography. On each occasion it has been an absolute joy to use.I actually wouldn't hesitate to use it in a professional environment, as a second body to my main camera (think wedding group shots when you want to get a quick wide-angle snap). Some samples....

#coolpixa nikon nikoncoolpixa coolpix camera review photography photographer

I recently took a brief trip across the Atlantic to the amazing city of New Orleans. On the approach to my stop-off in New York

Little bike tour on an unruly bike. Back-pedal to brake, you say?

Hitting the streets

(Yes that is Noel Gallagher).

Last Monday my Dad managed to secure some plum centre court seats for day 1 of Wimbledon 2015.

Tradition/protocol/habit dictates that the previous year's champion kicks off the centre court action on the first day, so it was that we got to see Novak Djokovic launch his defence with a win against grass court specialist Philipp Kohlschreiber.

Next up came Maria Sharapova vs Brit Johanna Konta. Sharapova backed up her reputation and outclassed her opponent. To be fair, the match looked a done deal as early as the coin toss - her sheer size must be so daunting for 'Masha's' opponents.

Our final scheduled match was French Open champion and all-round scraggly fella Stan Wawrinka against a poor sap who had the mis-fortune of being drawn against him in round one. His was the most emphatic performance of the day - 130mph serves, massive groundstrokes. A much better watch than the more defensive-minded Djokovic. We also won in 3 sets. Following the conclusion of his win, we received the news that they were to provide us with a bonus match featuring American up-and-comer Sloane Stephens. She duly won easily in two sets. So, four matches, all straight sets wins for the favourites without even a whiff of an upset. Even though the tennis was slightly lacking in drama, my Dad and I had a terrific day out!