My wing-man for the day was the equally gorgeous David McNeil. Please enjoy this selection from their stunning day…

And last week, Pia and Ian were featured in getting Married magazine – on the cover and as a two-page special on their wedding:

Ending their day with an fantastic ceilidh, (it was exhausting just watching) it was an absolute pleasure to capture and to be part of it all.

It goes without saying that I absolutely loved every minute of this wedding (even after I twisted my ankle and spent the evening hobbling around on a crutch lent to me by the mother of the bride!) Second shooting with me was my good friend Jon Mold, who captured all the boys’ getting-ready shots shown here. Please enjoy this selection…

It was clear from the first moment I met Alex and Karl in their home in Ely that their wedding would be fun and informal and it certainly didn’t disappoint! I’d stayed the previous night in a local B&B close to their venue (I always do if I need to travel more than an hour’s drive away from home – just in case). Having started the day with a tasty breakfast, I booked out and drove the few miles to Haughley Park ready for action! It was a beautifully sunny and warm day. The family-owned venue is nestled in huge grounds and the glass sculptures created by Danny Lane and placed around the venue really add to the elegant and contemporary look.

After the ceremony itself, we were given full use of the exterior of the house and grounds (including the fantastic kitchen garden) and with plenty of time for photographs allocated (oh so important), we created plenty of memorable images – it helped that Alex and Karl have such a great sense of fun and were so up for pretty much anything – even an impromptu race! This certainly shines through in these photographs…

They had spent a long time putting all the finishing touches for their reception together, including vintage tea-sets as table centres, hand-printed luggage labels within a suitcase as their table plan, a picnic hamper and bunting everywhere in the barn – it all looked fantastic and everyone had a whale of a time – which is what weddings are all about! It was also lovely to see that the couple had used one of their gorgeous e-shoot images (from when we’d met at Wimpole Hall – click here to see it) in a frame to complete their family gallery on the cake table – many of my couples choose to use their e-shoot images in this way.

My assistant for the day was Charlotte Wessels, who did a sterling job on the wings – thanks Charlie x

Please enjoy these images and feel free to comment!

Charlotte and Lester tied the knot on the 18th December 2010 on the day that the south east of England had the biggest snowfall in one day for many years. Whilst the photographs in the winter wonderland looked magical, it meant that many guests failed to reach the ceremony in time (although most made it for the wedding breakfast, thankfully). A slight hitch with the power at the venue (Northbrook Park) also meant the meal was enjoyed  in candlelight, which actually made it much more Christmassy and intimate so nobody minded.

Here are the images of the feature and see some more photos from their wedding, previously published on my blog here.

After Bryony and Ryan’s engagement shoot at Poundon House in Oxfordshire (if you missed it, click here: http://www.kimhawkins.co.uk/blog/2011/08/a-poundon-house-e-shoot-with-bryony-and-ryan/), I knew just how good they would look on their big day and I was soo right! This was a wedding of two venues, two ceremonies, three outfit changes and two pairs of shoes (for Bryony – what more could a girl want on her wedding day)? First was the civil ceremony in the house itself with Bryony wearing an elegant sand patterned sari, after which the couple changed (Bryony in a wedding dress with sheer veil) for their trip in a vintage Lagonda sportscar for the religious ceremony in the beautiful village church of Marsh Gibbon. For the reception, Bryony changed once more, this time into an electric blue sari which was simply stunning. The massive marquee in the grounds of Poundon hosted the reception, which included some of the tastiest Indian food I’ve eaten!

Many thanks to Martin Price who, at very late notice stepped in to join me as my assistant and second shooter for the day.

Colourful, joyful and an absolute pleasure to photograph, here are some real highlights of Bryony and Ryan’s wedding…

And so off they went to get changed..

A final change of outfit…

I can’t wait to showcase my new Fine Art wedding albums, direct from a company called Red Tree in Kentucky in the US. Sitting perfectly alongside my fantastic Queensberry of New Zealand  matted albums, these are flushmount, which means the vibrant photographic prints are mounted back to back with a substrate inbetween – the result is a hard rigid page, made to last for generations for you and your family. It also means that your images can be printed larger on the page and can bleed right to the edges, which makes for a great dynamic design. Because there’s a seamless spine, images can be spread across the whole two pages, some examples of which you’ll see here. After the album has been beautifully handcrafted, your names are debossed on the cover – simple and elegant.

With a choice of covers in silk, pure linen or soft supple leather, luxury is assured. I chose for my samples a 10×10″ album in Crema leather and a 12×12″ in Pure Linen with a duplicate 5×5″ Parent album in the same material.

The printing really is beautiful and perfect – the colours are vibrant and the images almost have a 3D quality to them. The albums come packaged complete within their own white box, inside a soft carry bag and sealed with a white ribbon bow…just beautiful!

Enjoy these images of my stunning albums, which are available to order for your wedding images from today…firstly, the swatches of the cover materials available:

Kate and Charlie were married at Gosfield Park in Essex in July and chose a Pagemount matted album in ‘Gunmetal’, which is a Buckram cover material – a lovely contemporary material (and a little bit sparkly, too!)

I delivered it to my beaming clients on Monday evening and now they have their album to cherish forever, I thought I’d share some images of it with you. It arrived on these shores from New Zealand just last week and this is what it looked like…

They’re nothing special – some images of our cats (Sapphire, Wellington and Rupert – in the order they appear), the shed, the general untidiness that passes for our garden these days – but it’s great fun waiting for the negatives to arrive after finishing a roll and I love seeing the softness to the images  - film is also more forgiving than digital so even if you unintentionally make a mistake with the exposure, it’s still useable (unbeknown to me, the battery died halfway through the roll in the Bronica, meaning it took all the shots at 500/sec – on digital they would have been massively underexposed but with film? See for yourselves…)

I’m not shooting weddings on film (yet) but if you like the look of these images and would like to have your eshoot on film, please contact me. You don’t have to be a wedding client  - you may simply like a shoot with your partner just for the experience – get in touch!

First up, some shots taken with the beautifully made Conatx G2 rangefinder 35mm with Carl Zeiss lenses (best in the world) on Kodak Portra 400…

And now, the glorious medium-format, almost 3D quality, 6×4.5cm negative, Bronica with waist level viewfinder and 75mm PE lens. taken on Fuji Pro400H film…

Hertford County Hall on a sunny Sunday morning from a couple of years ago…

When I was a teenager living at home in north London, my Dad was the person who (during the summer holidays – he worked for a newspaper in Fleet Street doing shifts), would take me to different places around London where I could merrily take pictures with the camera he’d given me – a 35mm Canon Sureshot. He knew a lot about the city and its history and as well as photography, I’ve picked up my love of London and its history from him as well. During one of these trips, we came upon Butler’s Wharf, part of the old London docks on the south side of Tower Bridge (I loved dereliction then and I still do – don’t know why!) I was in my element and began snapping away at the crumbling warehouses with their ancient walkways, long since useful to anyone. But Dad would stop me occasionally and ask me things like, “Why are you taking that shot?”, “Why don’t you get down low to make it look more dynamic?” and “What about getting some foreground interest in that shot – it’ll look much better”. Because of Dad, my snaps became much (I think) more interesting and it made me think about viewing scenes from different angles before taking the shot – not just shooting the first thing I saw. Every shot used to cost money with film – not like digital where you can hammer out 50 shots and choose the best one – for free.

A few years later and Butler’s Wharf is a magnificent regenerated development so the old buildings I loved when derelict, I still love now because they’ve been saved for years to come – the history is still present within them. Dad passed away in 1996, but a lot of times when I’m at work shooting weddings and engagements I can hear him, guiding me, “do you think there may be a better angle to take that shot?”

So here are some old images of Butler’s Wharf from around 1983 and the figure you see in some of these images is Danny, my Dad, who said, “I’ll stand in some of your shots so people get a sense of scale from the buildings” – I’d never thought of that, either!

I’d been shooting this scene through gates to the right of this but Dad spotted the old crate and suggested I use it to add foreground interest and a sense of scale to the scene.

There were posters all over this wall, made to look old – Butler’s Wharf was used a lot for filming things like Jack the Ripper and period dramas. Some of these posters are made to look like news bulletins, mentioning the battle of Waterloo (1815).