As a wedding photographer in the leafy county of Surrey, south-west of London, I often found myself having to deal with unexpected alterations to the weather, amongst other things.
It is part of my work that I must be prepared for all eventualities - a wedding day is such an important occasion and to get it all wrong would be unforgivable.
A guest at one of the smaller nuptials for which I had been hired as the wedding photographer,
taking place in Guildford, on a glorious summers day, strolled over to give me his opinion of the best way to photograph a wedding, as I was packing away my equipment after taking the formal shots beloved of so many couples, with family and closest friends arranged in a charming, if somewhat stiff, group on the rather narrow steps of the registry office.
Usually, I tried to show no sign of ever having been approached in this way before, although I dont think I have ever done a wedding without at least one guest trying to give me a last-minute course in wedding photography but, on this occasion, I was unable to contain my amusement and I found myself asking the rather portly gentleman in question whether it was my appearance that gave him the impression I needed instruction, or his belief that the couple who had hired me as their wedding photographer had been mistaken in so doing.
Naturally, the gentleman was very apologetic and I assured him that, far from resenting the advice I received from wedding guests, I often learned something that I might easily have missed - if not about taking photographs then at least about the way people view the subject of wedding photography in general.
It has been a long time since I was a wedding photographer - the last of my students is due to retire soon, which might give you some idea of just how long - but I still take a keen interest in the weddings that take place in the areas that I used to frequent and in the wedding photographers who handle both registry office and religious weddings.
In some ways, nothing much has changed about weddings over the decades and yet, in other ways, things have changed quite a lot since my day - one of the most popular wedding photographers in Surrey today, and deservedly so, is a young ex-Northern woman (well everyone is young to me, its true, but I suppose she must be in her mid to late twenties) whose name, I am told, is Kat Hannon. Her background as a photographer is extensive and she brings her skills in reportage to her wedding shoots in a wonderful manner.
My nephew came over with his laptop the other day and showed me the most remarkable series of pictures which, I have no doubt, will be pored over by the couple themselves and future generations too, with pride and fascination.
Obviously, I told him, this must be a very famous couple - perhaps it was a sign of encroaching senility that I didnt recognise them. Young William laughed and told me that, far from being famous, this was the wedding of his next-door neighbours in Leatherhead. The bride is a secretary and the groom a computer systems analyst, apparently, but you would have been convinced, or at least, I certainly was, that they were the stars of some first-class drama production - a romance, undoubtedly, or something of the kind.
Just as I was wondering whether traditional wedding photography really had become a thing of the past, an absolutely excellent formal group shot of the wedding party came up on the screen. Isnt the Internet marvellous? I dont think I will ever quite be able to take it for granted! Somehow, Kat Hannon manages to combine reportage with traditional wedding photography and produce a truly wonderful way for a couple to look back on this important moment in their lives.
There were some wonderful intimate shots of the bride and her attendants, applying last-minute mascara and laughing at some aside, that nervous tension in their faces being completely absent in the next shot. There was an excellent photograph of the happy couple when they clearly thought themselves unobserved, grinning into each others faces like a pair of children who had managed to sneak out of school - if it were my wedding, I must say I would have been thrilled with the photography and I did experience the tiniest pang of regret at being past my sell-by date, but only for an instant!
