Marking Days, marking Di ..

Eighteen years! It's 18 years today since Lady Di died in a car crash. I can't believe it's been so long! I was lucky enough to photograph her twice, including this trip to Altrincham when she 'launched' a canal barge called Prince William. Boy, I'll bet she enjoyed that day...

It's a Bank Holiday so of course the weather is dismal, but I'm delighted that my old pal Tish got a gorgeous late summer's day for her Wedding to Simon on Saturday. Have a look at it here! I worked my socks off and was absolutely shattered by the time I left at 9.30 in the evening, so I don't feel any guilt at all for the fact that I've had a lie-in and am taking it easy today. In fact, what the heck am I doing writing a blog?...

All at sea ..

Off to the seaside today, but no paddling in the waves for me. Southport is the location for the Wedding of Tish and Simon, and I'll be packing up and heading off there in just over an hour. I'm not saying a word about the weather - not after last Saturday's unbelievable turnaround - but I'm just hoping it stays decent so that we can get some shots on the boating lake. Yes, the boating lake, but I won't be getting my feet wet there, either. There are some pedallo-type 'boats' - in the shape of swans! - that the bride and groom have said they want to be photographed in, and who am I to turn down a great photo-op like that?
Pix on Facebook later, if I haven't been carried out to sea ..

No, Thank YOU...

Thank you! Yes, a genuine thank you to all the lovely brides and grooms who book me to shoot their Wedding photography. Thank you for letting me be part of such an emotional and exciting day and thank you for setting me the fast-moving, ever-changing challenges on which I thrive during a Wedding shoot. "Proper giddy" is how tomorrow's bride described how she and her fiancé felt when I sent them an email last night. I mean, come on, how can you not be thrilled when you know you're part of something as big as that in someone's life? Actually, with Tish, tomorrow's bride, it won't be the first time I've shared all that, as she's the first bride for whom I'll be shooting a second Wedding! Her first was way back in the early 90s when she wore a fantastic black dress in a brilliant punk Wedding!
So, to her I say Thank you .. again!

The patience of a saint ..

I was in a church yesterday .. without a bride or groom in sight! I was, in fact, shooting the church itself for a new website and quite enjoyed the luxury of being able to move all over the place - indeed, was positively encouraged to do so - without coming under the disapproving eye of an officiating vicar. I've been waiting almost two months to do these photographs. The vicar's diary and mine just haven't matched up and, when they have, we've been thwarted by - you've guessed it - the flippin' weather. The frustrating thing was that, yesterday, the weather played ball and I headed out, only to find that the sun was in exactly the wrong place for an exterior shot of the building. I reckon 6.45pm is the best time for a good shot and so the waiting begins again! Blimey, you need the patience of a saint in this game ..
  

God bless America ..

Interestingly, I now get more readers of my blog from The States than I do from the UK! Hi, y'all.. and thanks for checking in! I wonder what you make of my typically English humour, and my good ol' British rants and moans! It'd be nice to hear from one or two of you, if you have the time..

How much difference is there between American and British Wedding Photography? I know that, on my travels, I've come across a couple of American photographers giving talks about Wedding photography, and it comes across as so much more based on 'set poses' rather than spontaneity or free-flow. One guy was even selling a small book of images of 'set-poses' which a snapper could clip to his or her key-ring so that they could work their way through a 'repertoire' of poses. This, I shuddered to hear, was so that the photographer didn't get sued by the couple if they missed off a shot from the collection! Yowzer! I don't think I'll be working in America anytime soon ..

Whether the weather ..

Do not ever - ever - let me blog about the British weather again! On Saturday - as you'll have read - it seemed as if all hell was about to break loose over the gorgeous plains of Cheshire, with tornado warnings and torrential rain promised as the day progressed. I was gritting my teeth and packing towels and a waterproof jacket as I set off for Saturday's Wedding.  What happened? It was the hottest, sunniest Wedding I've shot for bloomin' ages! Having said that, I'm not complaining, although shiny Wedding guests and dazzling sunshine did throw me the odd challenge or two on the day. It was great to be back at Willington Hall, too. Have a look at Emma and Dan's page here...

I was thinking, though. Surely it can't be a coincidence that - on a weekend when the Met Office got things so spectacularly wrong - they also lost the contract to supply weather forecasts to the BBC. Of course it can, but go with it, folks! I just think they're spelling it wrong. It should be called the whether!...

Nice day for a wet Wedding ..

Here I am, setting sail for today's Wedding at Willington Hall. Well, it might as well be, the amount of rain we've had over the past few hours! Depressing to think that's our lot for this pathetic summer and I'm afraid you can talk all you like about an Indian Summer, but it's not the same as knowing you have three or four months of - potentially - gorgeous weather stretching forward ahead of you!
No, I've written off this year's summer!..

Still, today's lovely couple have something stretching forward .. a whole new married life together! Sun, rain, hail or gale, I can't tell you how exciting it is to be the one to capture those first few hours of newly married life! Oh, I'm all cheered up again now! Anchors aweigh...

News update: Torrential rain warnings now in place!

News update #2 : Wet? Were you joking? It was the hottest, sunniest Wedding I've shot in ages. Hang your heads in shame, weathermen!!... 

When will I be famous? ..

Shirley Baker is getting a lot of attention for her photography at the moment, and quite rightly, too. It's a shame she died last year! However, she's posthumously packin' 'em in at The Photographers' Gallery in London, and has featured in The Guardian and Daily Mail in the last couple of days. Her photographs, though - of children playing in the road, women chatting on street corners, men 'loitering' as she calls it in her exhibition title  - remind me a lot of ..

Erm ...

Ah, yes! My photographs! Yes, I see lots of similarities between our work - the only difference being I was shooting all of my archive from the tender age of fifteen and sixteen years old and hadn't specifically set out to record a 'passing era'! I've made a little montage in tribute to Shirley, who I met once many moons ago and a lovely lady she was, too. You can click on it to see a larger set of images. My photographs are now represented in London by the same Picture Library that looks after Shirley's work and I hope I don't sound too churlish but I do hope my work gets a little recognition in the coming years, too. Ok, I'm jealous, and perhaps patience is a virtue, after all. Bear in mind another of my snapper heroes, André Kertesz, didn't gain recognition for his photography until he was well into his latter years..

I'll just have to wait and, yes, of course I'll remember you when I'm famous!...

The day after ..

Hard to believe that yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the Manchester Air Disaster. A Boeing 737 caught fire on the runway and killed 55 people, and I was dispatched to Salford's Hope Hospital by the Manchester Evening News to photograph any casualties arriving at Accident and Emergency. In my mind I can't actually remember photographing a single arrival and was, to be honest, rather disappointed - bearing in mind I was a keen and eager 25 year old press photographer - that I wasn't covering the 'main story'. The thing I remember most, though, happened the day after this horrible event. I went to Turner's 'chippy' in Eccles for my lunch and literally - literally - had my chips wrapped up in my colleague Mike Grimes' grim but great photographs of the burnt-out shell of the jet. Today's news - as they say - is tomorrow's chip-wrapper. I have never had a better illustration!..

At least Wedding photographs have a longer shelf-life, and as the Wedding Fayre at The Mere draws closer I've been featured in a little on-line 'booklet' that they've produced, offering new brides and grooms little snippets of advice for their 'Big Day'. My pearl of wisdom is this ..

"Don't stress too much about everything being "perfect" on your Wedding Day. You'll have already worked hard to make sure your Big Day reflects your personalities, so just let the day flow as it will and it'll be all the more enjoyable for being relaxed."

Worth bearing in mind when you realise just how quickly the 'Big Day' becomes .. the day after!

Pin it ..

Phew, I'm all pinned out! I've just spent the whole morning adding over 100 new images to my Pinterest Wedding board. I thought it was about time for an update and I'm really pleased with how it's all looking now. Click on the montage to see it larger ..

So, off we go into the second half of August and I still have another two Weddings to go before the month's out. Next week sees me back at Willington Hall - one of my favourite venues - and then the week after I'm off to Southport to shoot the Wedding of an old friend of mine. It's actually her second Wedding and yes, I did shoot the first one .. way back in the nineties! It'll be odd to be photographing a 'bride' for the second time but hey, despite my rose-tinted slushy old view of marriage, I have to accept that they do sometimes break down! Just don't try and pin this one on me ..

No flies on me ..

Well, that's 55 ticked off and I've got a whole year to get used to the idea now! Back to the coal-face today and the hard graft that is ... well .. photographing flowers for my Florescence series! I know! Tough life! Anyway, I was busy spotting one of my shots of a holyhock this morning when I 'spotted' a greenfly hiding underneath one of its leaves! Reminded me straight away of the flower-girl I photographed with a greenfly on her nose! Perhaps that should be my new project!
You can click on the pix to enlarge 'em! ..

Off for a meeting later with a company who want me to shoot their new website photography for them. Probably involve a whole day in a factory, so I doubt there'll be an aphid, greenfly or ant in sight. Still, when it comes to corporate photography, there are no flies on me ..

Happy Birthday to me ..

It's my birthday! No work will be done today! Rather, we're off to the beach and, although it won't quite be 'Surfin' USA', we're aiming to have a damned fine time amongst the dunes at Formby!..

Catch you on the morrow ..

Roll away the years ..

Go on! Ask me about The Tubes! Go on, 'cos I'm dying to tell you!..

I went to see them on their 40th anniversary tour on Saturday night and they were .. fantastic! Forty years on and - oh, boy - the lads have still got it! Admittedly it was, as Lesley said, a bit like a Saga Holiday coach outing - and that includes the audience! - but I don't think I've ever before seen such joy on the face of a performer! The lead singer Fee Waybill just couldn't stop smiling and laughing and joking with us all. It was superb! Forty years? Man, they just rolled away ..

Anyway, excitement over and back to normal again. As usual in August, work has dropped off a little so, as I mentioned the other day, I've finally had some time to start shooting new work for my Florescence collection. These are the first digital images I've shot for it, and it amazes me now to think I photographed every single image before this on film! Yep, colour trannie, Mamiya 645 with extension tubes and a lot of coloured paper! Up close and personal with plants again, though ..
man the years just rolled away ..  

Makes me spit ..

I've just realised it's the start of the football season today; nine months now of pansy-fannying around by over-paid grunts all competing for best actor awards in the 'Falling over in intense agony' category of next year's Oscars. But the thing is, what's with all the spitting? Why do footballers feel the need to spit all the time? Cricketers don't spit, rugby players don't spit and I can play two solid hours of badminton without feeling the need to spit once. Not once!..

It's common again these days to see young men - and the odd woman - feel it's ok to spit as they walk along a public footpath. Yeah, I'll just gozz right there, right where you're going to walk! By the way, did anyone else grow up calling it 'gozz' or was that just us oiks in Eccles?..

If footballers are role models then I think they need to stop and have a good look at themselves. I think their arrogance and smugness is what's carried across to a lot of young kids these days, and the idea of mutual respect and good manners is going down the drain. Exactly where they should spit, come to think of it ..  

The past! It's the future ..

Today is Day Two of the four-day Rebellion Punk Festival in Blackpool and I wouldn't have minded going but, bloody hell, as much as I love punk music I don't think even I could stand four solid days of it. That's ok though 'cos, tomorrow, I'm going to see The Tubes, on their .. wait for it .. Fortieth Anniversary Tour! Yes, I think it's definitely true to say my musical taste is well and truly rooted in the past. I think I've reached a point in my life where all the music I'll ever know and love is filed - alphabetically, of course - on the shelves in my music room. Don't get me wrong, I'd dearly love some new band or breakthrough sound to blow me away but, from the heady heights of 55 - my birthday's on Tuesday should you wish to send chocolate or Jack Daniel's - all I hear is derivations of the music I loved the first time around. Well, derivations and utter crap! I've written before how it depresses me that a 20 year old today would think Sam Smith or Ella Henderson are 'good' music and I want to slap 'em with a wet haddock and ram some UK Subs or Jeff Buckley down their earoles..

Still, each to their own and anyway, I can't hear your protestations with my speakers turned up this high. I'll just leave you with a shot from my old press photography cuttings. I saw this geezer at a gig back in the early 90s, when the sight of a mohican was almost as much of a shock as it was the first time around. I loved the needles of hair, spiked up with flour and God knows what, and imagined him tending to it with a comb like this! The chap - Lionel, by the way! - was only too happy to go along with my idea and I would like to think that, as with me and The Tubes tomorrow, he and his spikes will be pogoing like buggery at Rebellion..

The past! It's the future ..

Colour me bad ..

It's happening, it definitely is! I'm succumbing more and more to the world of 'unreal' colour - the photoshopped landscape where white is yellow and true skin tones have gone out the window! I can't help it! I'm surrounded! I haven't got a chance! I can't watch a film now, or an ad on the box, or look at another Wedding photographer's website without being wrapped in false colour, and it's starting to rub off!..

When digital photography came into my world I used to fret for hours about skin tones and true whites - still do - but now, hey .. no sweat, I can just just throw a Lightroom preset over a shot and .. Ta Daaaa.... instant fix! I guess false colours have just become so ubiquitous that we all now accept them. Certainly the younger generation does, what with Instagram and filters on their phones. A young girl of about eight years old, in the studio for a passport, asked me the other day if I could do 'Pop Art'! She wanted a 'Hockney' type presentation of her images, along the lines of the kind of things she can do simply on her own mobile! What a modern world we live in ..

Anyway, presets are in for me now and I just bought a whole raft of them from Ebay yesterday. Not sure about some of the names of the filters though. Bad Romance? Killer Love? Emotional Blue? I might like the effect but I think I'd better keep the names away from the brides when I give 'em their images ..    

Bloomin' lovely ..

After yesterday's doom and gloom a little brightness has cheered me up, in the form of a few gorgeous flowers from my garden. Yes folks, I've finally got round to shooting some new additions to my Florescence series, and about time, too .. half the flowers have already gone over!..

On that point, and to hark back to yesterday - Oh, if you have to, Martin! - I am starting to panic a little about our great British summer. Or, should I say, the lack of it! Another few weeks and that'll be it done! To be honest, in my mind I'm practically already in 2016, talking to brides about their Wedding plans for next year! Hey, maybe I could grow their bouquets for them? Bloomin' great idea!..

No it isn't, Martin! Just stick to your photography ..

Sad ..

I swear to God I'm coming down with SAD, the Seasonal Affective Disorder! Just where is our English bloody Summer?..

I'm sitting in my office with a fleece on, as more rain clouds gather and a cold blustery wind threatens to snap the top-heavy dahlias in the garden. It's horrible! In desperation I've turned to looking at old holiday photographs, and thought I'd share a travel shot from a flight to Greece I took a couple of years back...

Of course, I'm NOT suffering from SAD and don't mean to make light of it. What with all the crap that's going on in the world right now I know damn well I'm doing just fine. The sum total of my 'gripes' this morning is a pimple on my forehead and an achy shoulder from overdoing the press-ups yesterday! Puts it in perspective, doesn't it? Maybe I'm just sad for how the world is right now .. 

Good things come in threes ..

Three things happened during my Wedding on Saturday that meant it really stood out from the norm! (Editor's note: There's a norm with Wedding photography??) ..

The venue was our local church in Culcheth, and it was the first time I'd worked with the new vicar. I'll be honest and tell you he laid down the law 'good and proper' as soon as we met, basing - as is so often the case - his entire working relationship with photographers on one bad experience of an idiot with a finger stuck to his motordrive. Well, I'm pleased to report we got on famously, and I know we're going to get on well together from now on ..

The second thing that was different was that the bride lived practically right next-door to the church, and I was able to zip between shooting the bridal preparations at the house to the pub across the road where the groom was er, chilling .. and back to the church to shoot the arrival of guests and so on. It was really convenient! As the bride came out of the house I ran across to photograph her getting into the car - something I'm never normally able to do - and then I jogged back to the church .. photographed her ten second journey .. and then photographed her getting out of the car at the other 'end'. Most amusing ..

The third thing that happened was that I was 'mentioned in dispatches', something that has never happened in all the years I've been shooting Weddings! I was photographing the speeches at the reception and, as usual, that involved a lot of giving out of gifts. Flowers for the Mums, whiskey for the ushers .. that sort of thing. Suddenly, the bride picked up a little bag and said "This is for Martin, our photographer who, I'm sure you'll agree, was really amazing, fantastic and brilliant today" (It was something like that! I can't remember exactly as I was in shock!). But how lovely! A little box of delicious chococlates just for me! So thoughtful. Well, like these young snappers at Saturday's Wedding, they always say good things come in threes..

Healthy, safe! ..

Hard hat? Check! Hi-Viz vest? Check! Safety goggles? Gloves!!? Check! ..

Good grief, anyone would think I was going down a 300 metre mine-shaft yesterday, rather than standing on the edge of a building site, fenced off in a 'safe' area away from the diggers, just to take a PR photograph of a councillor holding a garden spade! Health and Safety is going nuts! I just thank my lucky stars they decided that, after taking all our shoe sizes, we didn't need to wear steel toe-capped boots after all!..

There'll be none of that nonsense for this afternoon's Wedding. In fact, if it wasn't for all the gear I carry to a Wedding, I wouldn't even need my car today! Everything that's going to happen is so close to my house that I could walk between the bride's house, the church and the reception venue. All very safe, and all very healthy! Just don't tell anyone that I'll be climbing up a ladder to shoot the group shot..

PS: Check out the event here... Look, it's me!!