Kyle and Rebecca met at church, and seem to me just perfect for each other. It's been a pleasure to get to know her too and to see them happy together. The wedding was beautiful and personal, with little touches that I'm honoured to have understood. The grounds at Wroxall are wonderful for wedding photographs, and it was also great to work with David Carr from renewal church, and to hear Kyle's father deliver the address to his son and brand new daughter in law!

At the last minute I decided not to mess around with car parks and satnav but just threw my gear in a backpack and hopped on the train. I think it's only the second wedding I've ever not used a car for. I took two cameras, and the 24mm, 50mm and 70-200mm lenses and loved it!

Natalie and Michelle are such a sweet couple as you can clearly see.

After the ceremony I led the guests on foot back to Brindleyplace while the happy couple drove over. Brindleyplace is one of my favourite places to go in Brum so it was really fun to cover a wedding here on foot. We went for a little stroll around...

And finally I left them to celebrate in the pub. Thanks again for having me ladies, it was such a lovely day and I'm glad I got to share it with you!

1. Larger image sensor, better performance at higher ISO. I mean, it's not exactly a D700, but every little helps
2. RAW files. YES.
3. Manual control. YES YES.
4. Two control rings, you can set aperture and shutter speed.
5. f2.0
6. Look how dinky.
7. Decent zoom. 

I believe it has exactly the same guts as it's bigger brother, the G10 (or G11, or whatever) but is actually compact, not "pretend compact still need a camera bag for it". That's why I wanted it, for carrying around, ideas, family shots, the usual.

Love you...

Last night I was in need of some inspiration so I headed to Brueton Park. By the way if you ever can't find me, I'm in Brueton Park.

I spent a while mucking about with this pretty/spiky stuff. Remember zooming is NOT composition. Moving is composition, then zooming is just cropping.

Some cool little flowers growing in the middle of the field. What are these guys? By the way I didn't even have the camera on tulip mode. These aren't tulips anyway so it wouldn't have worked.

Hey I'm writing to you from the second kitchen of this amazing wedding venue called L'Ortolan. I just finished the shots for the evening slideshow and I actually punched the air. Very happy this afternoon. Can't wait to show you.

I know lots of you are photographers yourselves and if you've never used a prime lens before, I'd definitely recommend trying it. For those that didn't know, a prime lens is simply a fixed focal length with no zoom. I always enjoy that puzzled moment when I hand a camera to someone and they scratch their head while trying to zoom. You zoom with your feet.

By the way we'll get to the difference between zooming and moving some other time. Plenty of magazines and 'experts' give duff advice on this. For now I'll just say, focal length does NOT affect perspective. Distance does. (Grrr)

1. Prime lenses give the best image quality money can buy. They are simpler, and have fewer glass elements, so there's less manking about of the light, and generally sharper images.
2. Because they're simpler, they're cheaper. If you got a kit zoom with your prosumer DSLR, don't lust after the 24-70 f2.8 for £1200, get the 50mm 1.8D for £100. Of course this is no help if, like me you also want the pro zooms as well.
3. Prime lenses can have much larger maximum apertures, letting you work in extremely low light in a pinch, or produce very shallow depth of field. But hey, don't overdo it. You're not a one trick pony are you?
4. My favourite reason for using primes is that they make you think. When you shoot with two or three focal lengths, you start to see the world in those angles, and understand BEFORE you raise the camera what you will see and how you need to move to juxtapose the elements of the composition. With a zoom, it's just irresistable to raise the camera to your eye, and twist until you have something 'reasonable' in your sights.

Here are the bad boys. The 24mm 2.8D is a great wide angle lens for the shots of the bride's room, when you want to get the whole scene in one go. I try not to use it for group photos much, except the 'everyone' shot if I can't get far enough away. The 50mm 1.4D is an absolute star. Last wedding I photographed, OVER HALF the shots were on this lens. Get the 1.8 version if money's tight, but this one is beautiful. And then the 85mm 1.8D I use mostly for engagement sessions and portraits. I use it less at a wedding because I tend to have the 70-200 f2.8 with me (can't give that one up!) but one shot I always want it for is a headshot of the bride. Sit her down somewhere pretty, stand on something or get close so she's looking up at you and say something stupid to make her laugh. Bingo.

Nikkor 24mm, 50mm, 85mm lenses

I still use my two main pro zooms, but for more specific reasons. Maybe I'll talk about them another time.

Here's an example of the thinking I was talking about before. With a zoom, I might have been tempted to frame the shot purely of Rebecca and her brother as they entered the church. But by including a little more at 50mm, I moved around (you see me ducking and diving in front of you a lot more with a prime lens on!) and found that including a little of the dark wooden church door to the side, and the half-lit bridesmaid looking on, we see more context and understand the moment a little better.

If you haven't ordered an album yet, this A4 20 page storybook is only £280, and contains around 50 photographs. I can even produce them if I didn't take your photos but you have the right copyright permission.

Here's just one particularly sexy black and white spread. Give me a shout if you want to take a closer look at any sample wedding albums!

Andy and I shared the honours as best men for the day, and I can't tell you how much I enjoyed being personally involved in a wedding for two true friends who I love.

Steve asked me to take as many photographs as I was able to on the day, but I knew from the beginning that if I was going to do a proper job as a best man I wouldn't be able to capture everything. So I asked my good friend and fellow wedding photographer Peter Blanchflower to come along. We ended up with about half the photos each in the finished edit, and I could never have done it without him. If I'm not available for your wedding day ;-) you should give Pete a call. Thanks Pete!

These rings are very special indeed. Steve and Andrea visited a jewellry workshop to create their own rings themselves. They showed me pictures of all the different kinds of shaping and finishing processes they did to create them, with a personal inscription on the inside.

Getting ready with the guys...after a quick dash the day before to Moss Bros to collect the correct waistcoat!

At this point I must give a shout out to Beechfield House. Even though it's nowhere near Birmingham (it's actually near Bath) it's worth mentioning because it's such a wonderful old home with excellent food and helpful staff. Special thanks to Rachel, Claire and Mia for looking after us so well.

I came up quickly before the ceremony to see Andrea and the girls before they came down. I am used to seeing beautiful brides and paying them genuine compliments, but in all honesty, Andrea stunned me a bit. SO beautiful. Steve is a very lucky fellow!

Result! 'Nobody' lost the rings. Phew.

After the ceremony we braved the outdoors. In fact Steve had been hoping for snow. He and Andrea are very adventurous outdoorsy folks. We came to Beechfield House in Steve's fully kitted out Land Rover. In those movies where the world is ending and the earth is covered with snow or sand and only a handful of brave hardy souls remain, Steve will appear over the horizon in his landy, handing out hot chocolates.

Oh and Andrea is a paramedic, so she's pretty much hardcore too.

Taking photos in one of those suits is harder than I thought. Here is the classic 'showing the bride how awesome she looks' moment.

"Andrea, do you think you could take off the coat for a couple?" told you...hardcore.

Couldn't resist...

What a family! I've seen other groups refuse to go outside in far lesser conditions than this. Thanks again to Pete for his unique sense of humour in making everyone laugh!

In the evening we did the photo booth setup so guests could have silly pictures taken and write risky things on the blackboards. There are plenty more photos (sorry for picking lots with me in!!) but I'll leave it here and once again thank Steve for being my best buddy, for asking me to be his best man and to photograph his and Andrea's special day. I wish you all the luck and love in the world. And we'll be chilling out with a beer in that hot tub in your new house before you know it!

Next weekend I'll be back at the NEC for the National Wedding Show. If you're coming, please do say hi - we're on stand A40 just inside the door on the right. The show is a great chance to meet loads of couples in person and for them to see lots of different suppliers on one day. It's great for dresses, which are all in one place.

catwalk at 2011 wedding show

How long has it been for you?

First is my lovely friend Hannah, who married her fiance Joe in Frinton on sea, with a wonderful reception at her parents home farm. Hannah and Joe are two people who are rich in friendships and love, and the number of family and friends who came to celebrate was huge! Also, they can really sing in that church, I couldn't help but grin.

James and Jess were married in an intimate ceremony at Highbury Hall. Jess is a wonderful character - these sneaky shoes hidden under the dress are totally in keeping with her fun spirit!

Such nice, seasonal decorations for the tables. I think it took them hours to collect these perfect leaves!

John and Gill's wedding was in Nuneaton, with a reception at the Royal Court Hotel in Coventry. This was my first outing for the remote pocket wizard flash system, which added a little something to lots of the portraits we took later in the day.

Finally (for now) Nigel and Judi were married in December, in St. Patricks Earlswood. It was so great to see the family all involved in the day, and they are such a sweet couple it's been such a pleasure working with them. The reception was held at the very stylish Compton Verney, where families posed amongst portraits of generations from many years ago.

Only two more weddings from last year to talk about!

Here's just one. I took many more but our target was to choose ten good portraits. You can see my ten strangers here.