In the busy months I was spending up to 70hrs a week working 7 days and that’s just neither healthy or sustainable so I decided big changes were necessary in 2012.  We started the ball rolling late last year with a business coaching session to help work out the direction of the business and where we were headed.  The last 4 or so years we have been roughly 65% weddings and 35% portraits and we have decided to flip that to be roughly 30% weddings and 70% portraits.  Big change I know but one I am really looking forward to.

I love photographing weddings but doing 45+ a year plus portraits plus running a business really does take it’s toll.  When I shoot a wedding I invest quite a lot of time and energy into each one with meetings, pre wedding shoots etc to make sure that each couple gets a unique and amazing experience.  Now I don’t want to compromise this so instead of changing our systems and style I am cutting back the amount of weddings I do.

Now doing more portraits is a challenge that I can’t wait to sink my teeth into with the help on Sarah who came on board late last year.  We have already photographed heaps of  families, couples , pets etc and seeing the finished works of art leave the studio is a great feeling.

We have some big news to share in the not to distant future about the portrait side of the business and it will be announced here first once it is all finalised.

With the way Facebook is being used these days I am going to keep the blog going for general musings, thoughts, news and personal posts.  If you want to see our latest shoots etc on a weekly basis go check out our facebook page

No post is complete without a photo so below is one of a recent portrait shoot I photographed

This is why I love my job, this is the third shoot I have done for the Hoen family – one for each of the girls when they were 18mths old.  They are all beautiful and unique in their own way, this image for me captures each of their different personalities in the one photo – love it!

The last wedding was Meagan & Andrew’s last Saturday and for the first time in quite a while weather wise we had a brilliant day – the sun was out which I love the photograph in, it breaths life into the photos and you can feel the warmth of the sun just looking at it.

We had a ball with the energetic bridal party and as you will see from one of the last image we had a bit of Movember fun as well.

Maybe the main difference in this wedding (and it is something we have done a few times) is that we did the bridal party photos before the ceremony.  Sarah & Ben are a pretty laid back couple so when I suggested that we do it this way they were all for it, if we did it the traditional way because of time restraints we wouldn’t have been able to get the photos they wanted.  A few other differences is they also had a large bridal party of 12 and all the girls wore a different coloured bridesmaids dress – which looked brilliant!

You can’t help but have fun with big bridal parties, the energy is contagious and it really shows in the photos I think, it does take longer to wrangle them into position but that’s half the fun sometimes.

I photographed Sarah’s sister Tatum’s wedding (check it out here) not long ago so it was great catching up with everyone again and capturing another part of the families history.

I think you get a real feel for the day looking through the photos.

The difference with destination weddings to the ones I shoot in Melbourne is that you get to spend quite a bit of time with the couple and their friends and family in the days leading up to the wedding at dinners, drinks etc so by the time the wedding comes along you feel like part of the family so to speak.  Kara & Cliff are an amazing couple and Heidi & I have got to know them quite well and it was an absolute honor to be in Hawaii to not only document but to witness their wedding and we now consider them friends for life.  It’s also a bonus that their little angel Mataya and our daughter Lola are only a day apart in age and are now bff’s, they are very cute together.  Not only do Kara & Cliff rock but all their family and friends we had the pleasure of meeting were heaps of fun too and made our trip all the more enjoyable hanging out with them.

Now to the wedding – I will let the photos do most of the talking but just viewing Kara & Cliff together in the images you can tell that have a great connection and are head over heals for each other.  Being such an intimate wedding where 34 people had traveled from Australia and landed on a beautiful beach 1000′s of km’s away was such a buzz, you could feel the excitement and love as the crazy Captain Howie proceeded over the ceremony.

The reception is where the switch really got turned up into party mode (I was right at home), it was an amazing setting overlooking Waikiki beach on sunset cocktails in hand a traditional Hawaiian band playing in the background complete with hula girl, the perfect end to the perfect day.  Once the camera was away in the bag the cocktails kept flowing and we had a great night partying with all the other guests.

Thanks Kara & Cliff for an amazing experience I hope the photos do it justice.

It is great when wedding venues go the extra mile and create different and beautiful dishes for weddings as the guests and couple really appreciate the extra effort.  It also sets them apart from the traditional beef or chicken alternative.

Although I don’t usually do many shoots like this it was a bit of fun to mix it up and try something that I wouldn’t normally do.

Enjoy!

So below you can see a full finished album design from a recent wedding, which is exactly what Kate & Ben (click to see their original blog post) will be getting when they pick up their album later this month.  When someone not associated with the couple look through an album I want them to get a sense of what the day was like, the feeling, the mood and the couple.  If that permeates through from the design, treatment and images then I am happy that I have done my job and executed it well.

Does this album evoke an emotional response in some way from you and do you get a feeling of what the wedding was like and the essence of the day?, if so great that’s all I ask and it’s what my clients expect.

footnote – the first image is a single page and so is the last but the rest inbetween are double pages.