Memories

23 January 2012

My daughter and her brother. The beginning of her love affair with the camera?

        I have just been reduced to tears by looking at my daughter’s website! What does she do?

She’s a wedding photographer! In Spain, on the Costa del Sol.

        She introduces herself with a lot of the childhood photographs that I took of her.  It must mean something. 

     She takes beautiful, romantic images of her clients in delightfully warm, sunny and exotic locations. Maybe it’s knowing that my next lovely couple will be travelling into the Brecon Beacons for their reception that is producing a momentary frisson of envy in me.

As the queen of hearts in a little video I made of her and friends in the 1970's

     Looking back over some of her childhood photos I see that there is definitely a romantic element to many of the pictures I took of her and often a dramatic theme to the videos. 
The next one, I can't remember what it was called, but the making of it involved three 
broken down cars, three AA call outs, the (putative) director being, very reluctantly, 
coerced into becoming the leading man and the immortal line,

    "You be wet girl." 

I don't remember what was supposed to happen in  the script but I was reading a lot of 
Thomas Hardy at the time.  

In the 1980's "under the spreading greenwood tree?"

But I am grateful that despite the bits of flooding, moving house, lost crates and 

suitcases and the various other disasters that occur to photographs in the course of 20

or 30 years, I still retain as many as I do, that will continue to provoke entertaining and

sometimes emotional memories.

Every parent should have one.

Mum's worst nightmare, a man with a motorbike

         I think what I'm trying to say is you never know what memories will want to record and remember, so start soon and record everything.

For more romantic images and happy memories, see the bridal couples on my website

Cherubim and Seraphim

Wedding day chores for the bridesmaids.
Did I mention that it is the matron of honour's job to look after the little ones?
Good thing the matron of honour is her Mummy!

Wedding day nerves

Wedding day doubts

"I don't think I've had the training for this!"

That's quite enough of that nonsense

Wedding cherubs at play

Wedding day putti:
No need to create a list of chores for  these little darlings. Their function as pages and flower girls at our weddings, is to make everybody smile! 

Maybe some of them can strew a few flower petals or try and carry a train? 

However the less able they are with their designated tasks, the more enchanting they become.

For more beautiful cherubs on my website just click here

Back to Front Address the Dress

  The wedding photographer never sees the moment  the bride sets out to choose her dress.

       Do brides buy wedding magazines for months in advance and keep pages of the styles they like? Do they rush to the high street and try on everything in sight? And what about the net? We don't know if anybody ever decides in advance to buy a wedding dress on-line or only in desperation after weeks of failing to shop until they drop and only succeeding in trying-on until they drop. 
       Somehow it doesn't seem very romantic buying a wedding dress on the net. So is girlie enthusiasm and anticipation of the shopping spree ahead of them a necessary part of the build up to the special day?
       Or do some families decide to keep costs down and look on Ebay perhaps? Maybe they should. I’m amazed by what I’ve seen. Gorgeous creations with amazing descriptions: 
       One shoulder, with mermaid and trumpet (oh how I want a mermaid with a trumpet), champagne flower, organza flower, and dozens of sweetheart necklines, lace ups, and bright satin waterfalls. 

The arrival of the bride.

      There are dresses puffed up like parachutes, dresses squeezed like tubes of toothpaste, headless silhouettes, and models wrapped and strapped like Egyptian mummies.
        I’m surprised at how snow blind you can get just checking through a few pages of these fabulous angel cake creations.

For more wedding photographs on my website just click here

The wedding over, the bridal couple leave the church

          From Disney to da Vinci, via Watteau and St Patrick. 

         What are these names, railway stations, racehorses? Probably. But on-line they are wedding dress designers and there are thousands of them. The models are elegant, pouty, sultry, gorgeous,  cute, haughty, sexy, glamorous or downright ordinary but none of them look remotely like a bride.

            Why is that?
             What is the difference between models in wedding dresses and a bride?

              It's the excitement, the glow, an aura surrounds the bride. The models may be graceful, beautiful, and have wonderful figures, but not one of them has an atom of the pride and joy of a real, live bride in her dress, on her day.

For more wedding photography and brides in beautiful dresses visit my website