Melbourne Photographer | Wedding and Portrait Photography | Kids Photography | JD Blog

Well what a wild weekend and I’m not talking about the weather! as well as shooting a wedding in the middle of the crazy Melbourne weather this weekend I had a family reunion in Anglesea.  It is a bi annual event that has to be seen to be believed, this year we had just shy of 100 people turn up.  From newborns all the way up to the over 70’s staying in a dorm room type accommodation it definitely makes for a fun weekend.

It is great catching up with all the cousins, uncles and aunties every two years but next year I think we could do without the karaoke machine!

I have the pleasure of being the official group photographer and trying to organise 100 people into a photo is a lot of fun as you can see below.

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The oldtimers!

I have been pretty slack so far this year with my blog post as some of you have pointed out so I will endeavour to keep you updated weekly in the coming months!  I have been doing quite a few pre wedding shoots of late, we do these shoots to get our couples comfortable being photographed and to get some nice casual portraits of them before their big day.

Below are two beach portrait shoots we did recently involving the couples much loved dogs.  I love photographing dogs in family or couple portraits mainly because they are so unpredictable and they really make the whole shoot much more relaxing and tell the story of the couple by bringing out their personalities even more – also they are really cute and fun.

enjoy!

In light of the success of the best wedding photo of 2009 I have decided to do the same with our portrait photos from last year.  And as we took quite a few more portraits than weddings I made it a top 25.  With my portrait work I try to capture kids and families as natural as possible and try and bring out their personalities and relationships.  I have chosen a cross section of families, babies, children and couples from the year that depict my portrait work the best.

If you saw a picture on the blog during the year that you think should be included let me know and I will add it to the contenders.  So to place your vote click on ‘comment’ at the top of the post and leave your name and comment (one per person please)  The relevant family of the winning photo will receive a $900 voucher to used towards any past or future shoots with us as a prize for winning portrait print of the year 2009.  Also those who leave a comment will go into the draw to win one of 20 $300 vouchers they can use towards portrait photography themselves so get you friends and family’s to vote!

Apologies in advance if your photos aren’t included right off – we’ve just got so many we love this year we couldn’t show everything so I have kept the initial batch down to 25 with a bit of variety between them. 

the voting lines will be open for one week until the 16th February so get voting!

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Thank you to everyone who took part and voted in this and a big congratulations to Amanda for her winning photo.  Amanda will receive a mounted enlargement of this image as prize which I think she will be wrapped to have.  We had over 60 votes and it was great to read some of the comments and start discussion on the merritts of each image.

When I am photographing a wedding I am trying to photograph it with the couple in mind, what I mean by this is I find out a bit about them, their background and personality and use that to determine what pictures I take and what style is used.  This approach means that the images I take are different for each couple and have more meaning to them like this image because of the storey behind it.  Quite a few of the pictures that made the top 14 probably weren’t the most artistic or striking images I took but they had feeling and an emotional connection which really is what weddings are all about.