Ten Excellent Reasons to Book and lots of other ones too!
We care passionately about giving you a wonderful wedding photography experience … from the time that you first contact us to delivery of your album and beyond. Read the following carefully and you will understand how much effort, skill, talent and service that we will put into our photographic “partnership” with you. Ordinary is not enough, only extra-ordinary is acceptable here. It’s one of the most important days of your lives together, we appreciate that, and you can absolutely trust us to produce the goods!
Excellent Reason 1. Service and Care
It’s us!
When you book Rob and Fran to shoot your wedding, that’s who actually shoots your wedding! The work that we show you is also ours …. if you are looking around other photographers take a tip from us, make sure exactly who is turning up to shoot your wedding and that the work you have been shown belongs to that photographer – manufacturers issue sample album sets containing work by top-pros. Not many brides realise that some photographers attend “portfolio days” with models and a top pro telling them where to stand and when to press the button, these amazing shots are then proudly displayed on the photographers website as their own work … trouble is the top pro isn’t coming to your wedding to give guidance! Ask to see REAL wedding albums, shot in different lighting conditions and different seasons. It’s actually more difficult to take decent pictures in bright sunny conditions than overcast or rain. We stress again … make sure that you see REAL albums that contain REAL weddings.
Full time and Bricks and mortar studio
We are a fulltime, established permanent studio situated in the beautiful Wye Valley. We are registered Master Photographers, abide by a Code of Ethics and Conduct, have full public liability (£5m needed for Cadw properties), professional indemnity cover and all of our equipment is properly insured for all-risks. We have proper backups for everything we carry including spare cameras and spare lighting. We also have an associate photographer to cover illness/incapacity in case of dire need. If we are booked for your wedding we GUARANTEE to be there … if you’ve only met your photographer in a hotel reception and only have a mobile number it wouldn’t fill me with confidence. Also there are a huge number of part-timers out there for whom wedding photography is their “holiday fund” … what happens if the boss tells them they have to work on your wedding day?
Engagement Shoot
Shortly after you have booked we like to take you out for a photo-session to show you that you will look like you’ve stepped out of the pages of a glossy magazine.
It’s a “get to know us” session and gives you enormous confidence that you have the right photographers and you are going to look fabulous. It also relaxes the “camera-shy” bride and re-assures those who think that they never look good in photographs.
At this session we will explain how to stand to look your best and give you a few tips that will stand you in good stead for the day, we can also explain what we are doing and how it effects the final images.
You can see some of these shoots in the (link) engagement section . Everyone says that this session is really worth while.
Pre-Wedding Venue Meeting
About six weeks or so prior to your wedding you will normally meet with your venue wedding co-ordinator to discuss the final arrangments and flight-plan.
We like to meet you afterwards so that we can walk around the venue, deal with any queries with times etc with the co-ordinator and shoot a few more pictures (see if you remebered anything from the engagement shoot!).
Again it builds a level of confidence and rapport that really does shine through in your pictures on the day.
The more relaxed and comfortable you are with us the better the pictures.
Rehearsal
If you are having a church wedding then we try and attend the rehearsal, it gives us a chance to meet other members of the wedding party, but more especially gives a chance to explain our style and negotiate with the minister.
We believe in a relaxed, natural, authentic, coverage and the rehearsal gives us a chance to head off any issues with the church and venue before they become insurmountable problems on the day. Most venues respect our professionalism and allow us to shoot the strategic pictures that we need.
On the day
We might be thought old-fashioned but we want to blend in at your wedding and not stand out. We follow your dress code and believe in courteous and professional behaviour at all times. It’s your wedding and not our photo-shoot and we respect all of your guests and the occasion, with appropriate manners and decorum. We try to be as unobtrusive as possible … many of our thank you cards remark on our ability to be “working friends/guests”.
Accompanied Viewing
After the wedding we don’t believe in abandoning you with a proof book and tell you to choose your pictures. We invite you back to the studio and go through the images with you. Fran has already done a hard edit from the 1200-1500 pictures that we normally take on a wedding down to a more manageable 500 or so. Our experience and expertise is much appreciated at this stage and we can offer much advice on how the story flows, which pictures work with which other pictures and because we design the album in-house and were at the wedding we know exactly how to help you with your choices. We normally arrange some nibbles and a glass of wine and make this all part of a rather different (and pleasant) wedding photography experience. This normally takes three to four hours, but it does focus the mind and gets the job done.
Hours spent on your wedding
As you read this you will understand that there’s far more to this than turning up on the day and shooting a few pictures. We allow 50 hours per wedding from start to finish … and is the reason that we normally only do 30 weddings a year. This ensures that you get proper service, our full attention and we can deliver things on time and within agreed budgets. When you look at our pricing and work backwards you will appreciate that although you may think the price high, the value for that money is amazing (especially when you knock off the VAT and take out the album cost). In our experience, there are no short cuts to the highest quality results … it takes what it takes and costs what it costs … and we make no apologies for this market position. Our couples have to 100% happy and WOW-ed with their album … it lasts a life time.
IT and archiving
It’s important to make sure that your precious photographs are safe. We have a formidable array of computer hardware, network attached storage, proper “industrial strength” backup procedures and in case of fire, flood or theft, off-site storage facilities for all of our work. I won’t bore you with RAID 5 and all that jazz but rest-assured nothing is going to happen to your images, we have TWO dedicated linux servers whose only function is to continually back up the PC’s and work in progress throughout the studio. We have put a lot of thought and investment in making sure that we have a no-fail environment.
I recently had an email from one of our 2005 brides who had had her house burgled and wedding album taken, the only thing they were completely devastated over was the loss of their wedding album. The only thing that they cared about replacing was …. their wedding album. Fortunately with our archive system we were able to save the day and reproduce the album.
Excellent Reason 2.Two photographers
There are considerable advantages to having two photographer coverage at a wedding, there’s a lot to cover in a short-ish period of time and we try to make our wedding photography as unhurried and unfussed as possible, whilst still making sure everything is done. Here are a few advantages of having Rob and Fran as your wedding photographers:-
Husband and Wife team, both award winning in their own right
Rob and Fran both have Master Photographers Association awards for their wedding pictures. This means that we have been adjudged by our peers to produce outstanding work of the highest creativity, consummate skill and excellent quality. We both strive for the pinnacle of technical and visual excellence, combining a mastery of the medium with our “vision”. We bring this mindset to every wedding that we undertake … and produce consistent, stunning results, whatever conditions the day has in store for us. It’s all in the light … the camera literally “only” records what’s in front of it. In simple terms it’s where you stand relative to subject and light, where you point the camera and when you press the button. To get those simple terms spot-on however takes skill and a life-time of practice and experience. We could shoot your wedding on high street disposable cameras and still produce stunning results.
Each have own photographer for preparations
With a lady photographer there’s no embarassment when putting your dress on and because each of you has their “own” photographer and the cameras are time sync’d when we run the images together for the viewing you can each see what the other was up to at the same time! Quite often the groom is sat in the front pew and the bride’s still in rollers!
It also allows us to grow “organically” with the wedding, not missing any of those little moments and allows us to blend in like chameleons.
No enforced time discipline
And there’s no push from the photographers to do anything on a time-line because we have to be somewhere else to get pictures. It’s a gentle, effortless, un-rushed progression through the day.
Two angles through the day
This is one of the major advantages. After the preparations we take different positions to give you a selection of pictures. Fran at the back, Rob at the front, Fran at the side. Here are a selection of shots that perfectly illustrate the benefit of two angles.
Two viewpoints
Rob generally shoots wide and up and down, Fran with a long lens, close-in form the side. A brilliant way to capture the atmosphere of the wedding, especially with groups of friends milling around and head shots of your guests enjoying themselves. In this confetti shot you get two pictures covering the same moment in time.
Two perspectives
Fran has a “feminine” eye and picks up the “cutey” moments that male photographers just fail to see. Here is a perfect illustration … Rob taking the bride and groom looking out from the doorway into the rain and Fran just spotting that their daughter Olivia was peering around the door at the same time to see what Mum and Dad were looking at. It’s the same picture, seen differently by two skilled and talented photographers.
Twice as much coverage
It stands to reason that if you have two photographers shooting all day then you are going to get twice as many pictures than from a single photographer. Also there is more chance of capturing those “decisive”, “fleeting” moments with two pairs of eyes. This gives you many more choices when it comes to selecting images fro your album.
Excellent Reason 3. Skill and talent
Photography at this level is not about equipment (although we do use top level stuff), it’s about “see-ing” and anticipating and capturing, fleeting moments, recording emotions and the “soul” of your wedding. It’s the feeling that you get when you look at an image that matters, more than the content. Henri Cartier Bresson, probably the greatest documentary photographer that there has ever been, coined the term “Decisive Moment”, capturing the decisive moment is a reflex born of experience and anticipation. In photography if you haven’t pressed the button as you see that moment, it’s gone for ever. If you can’t “feel” the image then it’s not a successful picture.
This is a skill and talent that takes a lot of experience, dedication, practice and application (and the reason many couples are devastated with their pictures when they engage a keen amateur or a friend “with a good camera” volunteers).
I can take an illustration from another walk of life that makes it easily understandable … I can buy the same equipment that Gordon Ramsey cooks on, I can buy the same ingredients … believe me there is NO chance I can produce the same meal! Even if I was a good amateur cook (I’m not!) the chances are it would all go pear shaped when the pressure came on.
Top-tip: If you care about your wedding photography hire the best professional you can afford. YOU ABSOLUTELY GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!
Excellent Reason 4. Lighting Skills
To get depth and dimension into photographs one has to understand light. The quality of the light, the direction of the light, the contrast, the size, the shadow and the shadow transition area all effect the “look” of a photograph.
We are trying to represent a three dimensional object in the two dimensional plane of a photograph, this can only be achieved by light and shade.
An interesting “college” style exercise is to photograph a white snooker ball on a white background so that you can see a spherical ball and the background …. if the lighting values are the same then you get a plain white sheet of paper. It’s a perfect example of how lighting must be controlled. Flash on the top of your camera isn’t going to produce the right result!
Rob comes from an exacting commercial photography background and is a master of lighting … you can immediately see the difference in a properly “lit” image. This doesn’t mean lots of flash or artificial lighting but being able to “see” and “use” available, natural, light effectively. Rob and Fran’s images have this quality of depth and dimension and look as though they are leaping “off-the-page”.
On a wedding we bring a range of lighting equipment and modifiers including, diffusers and reflectors, two portable flash packs with four heads (this can light the side of a building in the dark!) and try and avoid on-camera flash at all costs as it kills the atmosphere and dimension.
Nothing happens by accident.
Excellent Reason 5. Picture Optimisation
What is captured in the camera is only half of the story. Every image that goes into our albums is opened, assessed, colour balanced, contrast enhanced and then gently air-brushed to get the absolute best from the image. Probably best illustrated by an example …. the picture on the left is what came out of the camera and the image on the right is a finished album picture. (If you would rather have less retouching on your images that’s fine too … we will follow your instructions).
This is where the majority of the time is involved and also where Rob and Fran’s unique style is forged and is also the reason that we are reluctant to provide a “shoot and burn a CD” service … that would be short changing the couple and providing an inferior result than to the one we know can be achieved.
We are not in it for a “quick buck”, we follow a passion to create a unique wedding photography experience for our couples with an album at the end of it that will re-kindle the feelings and emotions of the wedding every time it is opened.
A final product that is timeless, elegant and will stand the test of time and be an authentic record of a wonderful day.
There are no compromises …..
Excellent Reason 6. Top of range albums
With all the work that goes in to producing and processing our images we will only use two album manufacturers that have passed our stringent requirements. We have a craft-maker for our story books, which are all built by hand and a New Zealand company, Queensberry, for our traditional albums. These albums are absolutely top-of-the-range and absolutely gorgeous.
[Duo pic and Story book pic]
Excellent Reason 7. In-house Album Design
Fran designs the albums. We were at your wedding and we experienced the “vibe” of the day, we have also spent a lot of time with you, one way and another, so who is best to design your album and capture the spirit of the day? Yup, Fran! The whole process creates an album that has a soul of it’s own … it is it’s own story and more importantly has it’s own magic.
This concept is difficult to put into words … but it’s immediately apparent when you hold a Rob and Fran album. It talks to you ….
It’s a gift to be able to juxtapose images that build on each other and make a whole greater than the sum of it’s parts … we are lucky that Fran has it.
Choosing what are probably the best albums in the world is all part of our no-compromise, the-best-we-can-do-for-you approach to our wedding photography.
Excellent Reason 8. Web hosting and buy on-line
No need to worry about proof books and consolidating orders for the rellies. After your viewing we are happy to put the whole viewing on-line for three months, accessible by password through our server with a buy-on-line facility. We print the details on your thank-you cards with a 25% discount applicable for the first fortnight of on-line activity.
Excellent Reason 9. Delayed Delivery of Hi Res album pictures
A year after your album you can ask us for a DVD with the Hi-Res final production images that are in your album at full size together with a pdf of the layout so that you have control of your wedding photographs and if something untoward happens to your album you can re-build it. We don’t sell these, we give them to you as part of our service, it’s our view of proper customer care ….. you make a big investment in us as your wedding photographers … that investment should be protected.
Excellent Reason 10.Track Record
We are proud of our track record and are happy to put any prospective bride in touch with (literally) any of our past brides for a reference. We have a growing file of thank-you’s, emails and testimonials that make us glow when we read them.
If you are looking for something with that “X”-tra factor for your wedding photography then drop us an email or give us a call today!
Excellent Reason … One extra for luck
Fun, fun, fun ……..