Author: EJ Meade

Freelensing

The Timeless Blog

It has been a while, over a year in fact since my last blog post where I was rambling on about data recovery software. My other passion in life is illustration, creating my own imaginary worlds and this took precedent however I was almost too absorbed into this and had to remember that I also live in the real world. A real world which I very much enjoy documenting. So now I have put my imaginary world aside, ordered some new kit (lenses to be exact) and have been out and about with my camera again.

Basically, all lenses in all cameras are mostly parallel to the imaging sensor, the light sensitive bit of the camera that translates the light data into an image. Freelensing (and the tilt shift lens) follow the practice of not having a lens parallel to the sensor, creating very interesting shots where one half of the frame is in focus and the other isn’t. How this translates in reality is simple – I detach the lens from a DSLR camera and gently tilt it in different directions. It is basically a very cheap and creative way of using a tilt shift lens. A tilt shift lens is something that I have always wanted to buy however it is very low down the list for essential equipment for my events photography business. I have looked at videos on YouTube where people have used this Freelensing technique and all seem to agree that a 50mm lens is the place to start from. A lot of the images using this technique are stunning, one of my favourites is this image by a photographer called Hannah Donovan who created this ethereal image of a family on the beach pictured below. Of course I grabbed my lens and started to have some fun.

https://www.theclickcommunity.com/blog/the-art-of-freelensing-a-step-by-step-guide/

The first time I tried this, I found myself fumbling with my camera and holding my phone at the same time, clumsily looking for the instructions that other bloggers have followed online to do this technique. The first results I got were so poor with images that were blown out/ totally out of focus that my confidence was knocked and I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. There are a lot of ‘Freelensers’ who have used a Nikon 50mm lens because they can be deconstructed in such a way that the rear element (lens part closest to the sensor) protrudes out from the lens body. I have a Canon 50mm f1.4 USM which is very different to the deconstructed Nikon featured in other blogs because the rear element is flat with the lens flange. With this technique you put the focus into manual mode and set it to infinity, giving the maximum depth of field possible because the focus is now controlled by moving the lens independently to the camera.

The first freelens shot I took that I was happy with.

The first time I tried this technique I produced images that are too embarrassing to put on this blog however photography is all about experimentation so this is why I included the first freelens shot that I was happier with above. I really enjoy the line of focus that slices through the blur. The trick with this technique is getting used to the micro movements of the lens within its housing. Various blogs mention light leaks, however if I tilt the lens far enough to allow light leaks, the image is totally out of focus. This is because I am technically using an 80 mm lens due to the fact that I use a crop sensor. However when I am very forensic and slight with my movements of the lens, I get results that I am very happy with such as those below.

I like this shot because it makes it feel likes the background is pulling the cyclist forward, a different way of showing movement.

This renewed interest in photography is really helping me to appreciate living in a city which is rich in diversity and beautiful landmarks. Below is a shot of tower bridge where I want to emphasise the tower closest to me.

Tower Bridge.

The challenge with this way of shooting is that you really have to fire off the shutter multiple times to get the sharpest image that you can get as the lens is totally disconnected from the body of the camera so there is no communication. I act as the sole conduit between lens and camera body. The image below is an experiment I made where I filled the frame with as much as possible and this is where I really feel freelensing pops as a technique.

Random apartments and the city beyond.

So this is definitely one of those fun ways to photograph that makes me simply love my DSLR. I would never use a mirrorless for this technique because the little mirror that flips in a DSLR acts as sort of barrier between the delicate sensor and the gaping hole in the camera where the lens normally sits flush. There is more chance of dust colliding with the sensor if the camera was mirrorless because the sensor is so close to the opening of the camera body.

This is a technique that will be another feather in my photographic cap so to speak. I feel so thankful for those people who have written about it because these are images that really make me feel excited about photography, that make me feel the urge to get the camera and go out on my bicycle and let London and its charms swallow me up through the opening of my camera.

Hastily formatting an SD card…Gulp!

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There is no word to describe the feeling of dread that I had immediately after formatting my largest SD card in-camera. I did not do my due diligence and my check was cursory. The card seemed full of my portfolio images which are safely on my laptop and back-up drives however sandwiched in between my most recent job and portfolio images were some pictures I took on a recent trip to Vietnam and which are the among the best pictures I have ever taken on a trip. Feeling hopeless, I navigated to the 2022 folder on my laptop and their absence had me searching the web uselessly for options on whether or not it was possible to recover them. Being in a position where I am saving every pound I can to top up my equipment, relying on a free recovery option made my chances even smaller.

This made a stressful Thursday evening worth it!

Fortunately for me, something called Disk Drill popped up in a blog post about a guy who had spent ‘hundreds of dollars on scam software’ and the software scanned the SD card, which took about 45 minutes for a 128gb card. My heart was in my chest as I navigated the in-software browsing window and I could see the little thumbnails of images that I had so regrettably deleted. Helpfully, the software had a column which told you the odds of whether something could be recovered, ranging from ‘high’ to ‘low’. The software scans the card in date order, so frustratingly the images that I had stored on my laptop loaded again, one by one. I could not believe the the software was working, and I saw a tiny thumbnail of my prized Vietnam images that I had deleted. Excitedly, knowing that I had 500mb of recoverable data worth on the free version, I selected the images that allowed me to see if the software really worked and a dreaded pop-up filled my screen as opposed to my computer directory. I thought £88 just to rescue a few images was really steep and even if I wanted to dip into my equipment fund I did not appreciate blogs saying that you could have up to 500mb when the reality the free version is simply a scan to show you if the software worked. I have no idea if the images would make it into my directory/could be rescued so I left it alone.

So I did more research and found IBoySoft – another data recovery tool which was a little less slick than the Disk Drill software and would not let you view the images as the software did its job scanning the SD card. When the scanning was completed, I decided to try and recover one image to see if this was possible but alas, another pop up window with costs came up. If it cost, say £5 to recover 5 images then this would be something I would have definitely paid for, but for me the £88s and the ‘$89’ were just too much to recover a handful of images. I did not even know if the images could be recovered as people who had left bad reviews seemed to only be able to rescue low resolution thumbnails! I stared at the company’s annoying logo of a cartoon boy and tried to think positive thoughts.

This is where I decided an AI takeover is not imminent as each time I thought I had found software with a decent free trial, the words ‘WINDOWS’ were immediately below, and searching for free recovery for a Mac simply dumped be back with the Windows options. I had the wild idea of going to my dads house and using his PC and as I became more relaxed about this – after all I need to leave the M25 at some point – I found something called ‘EaseUs’ a data recovery tool with a free option where you could recover up to 2GB. Perfect! I installed this with high hopes and gingerly tried to recover one image I took of Train Street in Hanoi (a famous street where a train trundles inches past houses and businesses) and HOORAY! it worked. I managed to salvage 28 images in total, including my favourites. However, this did not equal 2GB whatsoever, I was only able to rescue 700mb. If there is one thing that I find annoying it is being misled. A pop up window came up when I tried to rescue an image of a slightly out of focus Buddha so I decided paying – wait for it – £88 to rescue that was not worth it.

There are other free options as well, such as Photorec for Mac but this is a where coding skills are required and with only a basic grasp of Python this would become a major time sink for me where spending £88 would make sense. However this cost of living crisis seems to have affected the bottom line of these data recovery companies and almost all of them have deleted the useful if limited functions of their free trials. For me, Data Rescue 6 was the worst one as you cannot even preview the images during scanning and when you try and recover your files, the directory window loads up and all looks promising until…you guessed it…a licence window pops up.

The purpose of this long drawn out, mildly whiny blog are to praise EaseUs who, despite misleading claims of a being able to download 2gb of data for their trial version, actually managed to allow me to rescue 28 images that are close to my heart.

A Proposal Shoot in the Shard, London Bridge

The Timeless Blog, wedding photography

This job was a real challenge, and the brief was to capture an intimate moment in an extremely dark space, 31 floors up into the dark orange London sky. The job had 2 parts, a shot in a dimly lit hotel room with a view of Tower Bridge and a shoot in Shard, the tallest building in the UK with among the highest restaurants in London. As always with a shoot, I visit the venue beforehand to gauge the correct camera settings that I will use to shoot with, especially at night. I could use a flash, and own a speedlight but it came with my camera as part of the deal and is the crappiest speedlight I have ever used, even confounding the course leader on my Trained Eye course. It would be akin to releasing an atomic bomb in an intimate restaurant, with flat, dull, mobile phone images as the fallout. It also goes against the images I like to create, especially a proposal. I enjoy the warmth of the images that I did capture during this job.

On the Saturday I cycled through throngs of people enjoying their Saturday night out, and queued up for the security to access the Shard, surrounded by people in ballgowns and tuxedos. When I arrived at the restaurant my worst fears were confirmed – the place was totally pitch black! To top it off, the restaurant people also told me I was not allowed a professional camera! I had to slip away when the waiter was accosted by another customer and quickly scope out the restaurant to see where the lightest areas were/or where I could reflect light from. I went to bed very anxious that night. What is the worst thing that could happen? Create really grainy images on a mobile phone because my camera was thrown from the Shard and smashed by the restaurant staff. Then get unhappy clients.

The Aqua restaurant in The Shard London Bridge. Beautiful venue but very challenging to shoot in.

If it was not for my prime 50 ml lens or ‘nifty-fifty’ I would not have been able to do the job at all. I had to stop down to ISO 12800 which is extremely bad for any photographer, yet alone myself who rarely goes above 800 for fear of grainy – noisy – images. However it was either this or not have any images to deliver! My instinct was to naturally panic when I saw how dark the client’s table was, luckily it was in corner of the restaurant so I could have a bit more space to move around with my prime lens. However the shots I got were extremely poor, with the faces of the couple extremely grainy and difficult to make out, with the bright city lights behind them. I showed the guy who was about to propose and he handed me his Android phone which I had no idea how to use. I took some really bad pictures with a flash and after 5 minutes of using a phone to take photos as a paid professional photographer I had the idea to take the couple to a brighter area of the restaurant as seen in the above photo. Their faces would still be grainy at ISO 3200 however this is more of a native ISO to the camera so would be far better than those I took at ISO 12800.

This was one of my favourite shots of the evening, you can see her fiance’s face in the mirror, with the future bride’s face at the centre of the image.

However the client thought this was too public an area to make his proposal. A restaurant worker then came up and said a professional camera is not appropriate for the restaurant! This was my worst nightmare, the sort of thing that makes me nervous before any job. Just as I thought about shooting on the landing of the stairs leading down into the restaurant from the lifts, the Maitre’D of the shift very kindly offered us a private dining area around the other side of the venue which has a gorgeous chandelier in the centre, which casts a beautiful, intimate and warm light. My confidence rushed back, and I moved the chairs around and asked the couple to pose by the window where I got some shots that I was very proud of. In fact I ended up staying an extra 10 minutes so that I could capture more moments of the proposal. The images I created were exactly what I want to offer as The Timeless Lens because these are images that the couple can look at for many years to come.

The Trained Eye photography course

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To further hone my wedding photography skills and learn to capture the perfect moment I decided to enrol on a popular wedding photography course offered by The Trained Eye, a leading photography school based in the rolling Cotswolds countryside near Amersham. I found myself on a Monday morning waiting for a Metropolitan line train where I got off at Chalfont and Latimer then cycled on my folding bike along country lanes to a small village called Coleshill. This offered a refreshing change from the daily routine of cycling to the British Library through the heart of London!

After some refreshments, we were introduced to Mike Garrard who is the original founder, and Nadine Van Biljon who was originally in the course ten years ago and even pointed out the same chair she sat in. From there on I knew our group were going to be in great hands and that it would be a very intense three days of learning. The course is structured so that you do photoshoots on the first two days and then spend the third day learning more business relevant elements and of course photo editing in Lightroom. Despite having worked in photography for ten years, Lightroom was something of an enigma for me, and I definitely needed instruction. For me, learning through You Tube videos and online blogs brings up so much conflicting advice that it is easy to go down rabbit holes and end up at the end of the day just having scrolled down more of Instagram than I otherwise would have. So in addition to obtaining more shots for my portfolio, I would also have good instruction in the basis of mass photo editing. To top it off I lucked out with the course participants, a very proactive group who is maintaining a WhatsApp channel so that we can continued to get guidance and recommendations even after the end of the course.

To mention what was learnt could take several blogs but there were parts of photography that always eluded me and my understanding, especially the rule of thirds. Up to this course, my compositional abilities were purely as a result of eye only, and framing things to the centre of the image however now I have many more ways of composing photos up my sleeve. The way the rule of thirds was explained meant that it barely took me five minutes to understand it. However when looking online in an unstructured environment, I would be staring befuddled at videos or at worse, buffering circles as videos failed to load on my laptop. As someone who suffers from elevated frustration due to Aspergers/Autism, this method of unstructured learning really fails me. So the outlay for the course was more than worth it for me.

Bliss in the Bisham Abbey grounds

The first venue we went to was Bisham Abbey, simply a gorgeous venue which was built around a 13th century manor house originally designed for the Knights Templar, a European religious army with branches mostly in western Europe. It was a challenge to focus the couple in front of the main door due to the myriad of fire escape and security signs posted over a glass partition door. One could edit those out however this is another example of where my current job in heritage digitisation differs – in my main job at the moment I do not do any photoshop work on items because they need to be kept as faithful to the original document as possible. However, with wedding photography you are creating memories. Unless you are photoshopping an estranged uncle or even the bride herself out of the frame, there is no problem with removing distracting elements. After all, as a new wedding photographer my aim is to build memories through my art, and removing distractions is part of that goal.

This image offered a real challenge in photo editing as there is a car immediately behind the faded fire escape sign to the left of the door! I gave myself 30 minutes on this image as I wanted to try and see if I could remove the clutter in that time to give me practise for when I need to manually edit images in a strict timeframe for real jobs. I was very happy with the result. Obviously I will try and limit my use of Photoshop itself because a) I always like trying to get the best results in my RAW images in the shot and b) Photoshopping takes away some of the originality of the image. Now the venue is probably falling foul of several health and safety laws without those signs! At the end of the first day, we went to a small church in the grounds where we were shown just how low the light is in traditional churches, and by extension a lot of wedding venues.

The beautiful backdrop of Stoke Place

The second day involved a trip to Stoke Place, a large boutique hotel and conference venue where we were split into two groups and given time with the models to shoot in the grounds and in one of the bedrooms. I really enjoyed the more intimate setting because it meant that I could get a lot of use from my poker sharp 50mm lens. The low f-stop meant that I was able to get bright images in what was otherwise a low light setting and meant that I did not have to use flash, something that is definitely not recommended in some wedding venues!

Why I did a Portfolio Building Workshop 

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Another lesson I have learnt is that starting a business does not bypass the classic catch-22 situation where you need a job to find a job. In my case, it is you need a portfolio to get a portfolio. Only after getting a portfolio can you even think about advertising yourself to become a second /main shooter. Obviously if people cannot see that you can shoot events and weddings then you will not be booked!

I decided to go on a journey and email a bunch of wedding venues that I could imagine my clients getting married in. Keeping my wedding shop contact in mind who kindly offered to lend me a wedding dress, I reached out on a few Facebook groups to find some potential models/photographers and collaborate and share the cost of a venue for a portfolio shoot. My autistic brain was working over time and I reached out via email as I could not imagine calling over the phone. One of my coping strategies when reaching out to strangers to offer/ask for something has always been to shield myself via email, Facebook chats or some form of the written word.

I had some responses from a couple of venues that gave an hourly price and I ascertained that if it was shared between people this would be very reasonable. In return for modelling I would get great images for my portfolio and the model would get great images for their portfolio. I formed a WhatsApp group from some contacts who reached out via a Facebook post I put up on a group offering to do portfolio shoots. A perfect way of avoiding the old catch-22 mentioned above. However, reality always surprises you! 

In reality, I’m a photographer starting out and do not have a cast iron list of contacts. The WhatsApp group I formed collapsed like a box of cornflakes falling off the side of a kitchen counter. Each flake i.e. contact scattered away and was never to be heard or seen again. Despondently, I deleted the recalcitrant WhatsApp group and had a cup of tea. With a level head, I did some research online into how to get a portfolio together and I found out about 36exp who do a portfolio builder workshop in a gorgeous venue, St Georges Church in Bloomsbury. Yes you have to pay but after making some rough calculations it seemed to be a far better prospect than trying to arrange a bunch of strangers to do a photoshoot. I would not have to worry about paying £200 for a venue that I’d end up sitting in the middle of and staring at my phone in, alone. Having a portfolio without people would look very strange on a website of someone who is supposed to be an events/wedding photographer.

Conveying a joyous moment (even if it is just banter with the models!)

Anyways, I digress. It is amusing to imagine what could have been a disastrous day because for a similar price to a big room the 36exp course would offer a) access to a stunning venue built in 1730 with the most brilliant chandelier and spiral staircases, b) the time of two different pairs of models and c) help and tips from Andrew Mason, a well received photographer on the London scene. 

I therefore decided to book a place on this course, and dived straight in.

It was very comforting to know I was going about the right way in which to shoot the models. As someone who has suffered from some serious self-doubt it was great to know that I was on the right track. In fact I got to experience the wonders of the 50mm prime lens, or the ‘nifty fifty’ as it is known in the world of photography. Once I got home from the course, I went straight onto eBay and ordered a decent 50 mm prime lens which is like handling a jewel! It gives an incredible bokeh effect which can be used to highlight portraits against a blurred background and allows you to shoot inside without the use of flash. There were many bits of advice that I took from the course and I became more emboldened to do some street photography as well.

The classic Nifty Fifty or 50mm lens, a new addition to my lens collection.

So who is My Ideal Wedding Client?

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If I simply answered with ‘someone who pays me to photograph their wedding’ then this post would end right here. 

Ok, so how about a wedding client who is friendly and good to work with and who likes my photos? This is slightly better and puffs out a paragraph with more words but still does not really answer the question. The creator of the Facebook group ‘How to run a successful wedding photography business for beginners and profs’ put up a really useful video that gave me some great questions that I didn’t think to ask about who my ideal client is. Armed with these questions, lets explore who The Timeless Lens is aimed at. 

  1. What is the age of my proposed client? I would say between 30 and 90, so quite a big range! 
  2. What is their occupation? They would work in a diverse range of fields ranging from the Heritage and Cultural sectors, the creative industries to being bricklayers.
  3. What are their interests? My clients would have an appreciation for the creative industries and arts. They would enjoy travelling around and exploring different places. They would perhaps enjoy going to an art gallery, catch a play at the theatre and enjoy the architecture around them. They would be interested in history and/or have a love of reading and learning.
  4. What is their sense of humour like? To give a very rough idea, the couple would have a cooky, fun sense of humour and appreciate comedies like Peep Show (UK), The Office (both UK and US), This Country (UK), Extras (UK), Spaced (UK) amongst others. 
  5. What is their idea of a great night out? They appreciate a night in a laid back lounge setting, perhaps with R&B and singers with rich vocals. Perhaps they would enjoy an alternative music venue like the Camden Jazz Cafe or Notting Hill Arts Club. Perhaps the Rich Mix is more of their thing. The music would not be so loud that people would have to shout to hear each other. 
  6. What would the couple’s ideal stag/hen do look like? The couple would each have a city break as their respective stag/hen dos with a night out as described above. A typical daily activity could range from wall climbing to crazy gold, a city centre spa to a ‘hot tug hot tub party’. 

This is a small list of questions. I won’t have too many because already my type of client is a small slice of the roughly 250,000 people who have been getting married every year*. However they do give me a snapshot of the sort of people who wish to work with me (and who I also wish to work with). Already I feel that this has given me a great boost for my marketing drive because I feel more in control of who I will be working with. A good client for me would be someone who is a clear communicator and also has similar interests so that the first initial meeting (and subsequent meetings) are unlike a formal business meeting but simply fellow humans enjoying chatting about photography and how a special day can be recorded in the best way. 

*https://www.guidesforbrides.co.uk/business-information/marriage-statistics-for-2016-whats-changed

The Next Step – Trying to Stage A Model Shoot

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So I decided to try and email some wedding venues with the same approach I had for the wedding dress shops, admittedly I only emailed 10 venues however I cherry picked the venues that thought would best suit the sort of clients I’m going to be working with including the place I got married which was the Hackney Round Chapel in East London. I felt very happy having spent a Sunday doing this and if nothing else this made me feel productive. After all, setting up a business is not going to bring about instant results for each and every task (or any at all for that matter), as I mentioned in my last blog.

The responses I received from venues made me realise how naive I was being! The venues who responded quoted prices for a photographic shoot that I could only afford on receiving business so it is a bit of a catch 22 situation. How do I get the perfect portfolio shot without having to spend a large amount of money? The most helpful response I had from here was from a venue called The Asylum, which hires out the main space hourly for a reasonable amount of money. The phrase Speculate to Accumulate is perfectly appropriate here and in setting up a business I need to accept that there will be upfront costs that need to be accounted for. All part of a steep learning curve!

Image taken from https://asylumchapel.co.uk/weddings – this is the Asylum Chapel, a striking wedding venue.

Meanwhile, I have been using Facebook and have joined some very helpful groups including ‘How to run a successful wedding photography business for beginners and profs’ and ‘UK Wedding Photographers’. A photographer at the Honeywood Museum Wedding Fair also recommended various second shooter groups that I joined. Basically, a second shooter is someone who works (lurks?) behind the main photographer in a wedding. My learning curve has been very steep in setting up this business as, again simply putting your name on a second shooter job does not make an opportunity. In fact, going via the second shooter route only served to cause me a lot of stress and if course insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. Having no portfolio is not going to create any opportunities here at all! The Facebook preview also does not publicise my website in the best way and subsequently it gets lost in a sea of logos from photographers with more established websites. Yet another thing to learn – how can I point websites to the image of my logo on my website, as opposed to the generic image of Strasbourg Cathedral that I took?

Crabs in a barrel – my feeble attempt at touting for business via a Facebook second shooter group

Groups such as ‘How to run a successful wedding photography business for beginners and profs’ have been set up with the intention for people to get advice and share experiences about the setting up of their business as opposed to simply being a platform solely for established photographers. Therefore, I find this sort of a group very nurturing and supportive. One of the great pieces of advice I gleaned was how to really get an accurate picture of the type of client I wish to market my business to. Ultimately, this is who I need to think about when staging my portfolio and make sure that it can more accurately reflect the style of shot that my business, The Timeless Lens, will deliver. My next blog post will therefore talk about who my ideal client is, aside from someone who wants to employ me to shoot their wedding of course!

A Huge Lesson – Always See The Small Wins!

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Posting a Facebook notification and waiting for the wedding jobs to roll in would be a) really naive and b) completely underestimate the challenges that lie ahead. Unless I knew of anyone having a wedding and/or was close to another wedding photographer things would not be simple or easy. Also, my helpful wife always tells me that Facebook is not the answer. In hindsight, she is right. Facebook offers an easy way of procrastinating and scrolling through endless high speed videos featuring Crafty Pandas, hipster wood working shops and bio-resin, then briefly engaging with a wedding post presented to me during endless scrolling. Instagram, Twitter and even Gumtree were presented to me as valid additions to my online presence to create business links. That is not to say Facebook is unhelpful, but it is just one tool in the box so to speak.

As well as touting my wares on social media, I needed to think outside of the box. What if I approached wedding vendors with a free service to get my foot in the door and build a portfolio? One cold Sunday I found myself pounding my keyboard and I emailed over fifty wedding dress shops around London that would suit the sort of clients that would appreciate a few creative photos in their wedding album. My initial approach was that I would offer my photography services so that their to-be clients could show themselves in trying on dresses to their families and friends. Some of the shops who I emailed included Heart Aflutter Bridal, Bridal Reloved, IndieBride Bridal and just for the name itself, Fur Coat, No Knickers Bridal. The replies I received ranged from extremely helpful, to a polite no thanks and finally to an angry message that made it seem I asked the proprietor for a glance up their customers knickers. 

This exercise proved to be positive because in the 50 I messaged, one replied offering me the chance to borrow a dress for a model in a photoshoot that I would set up for my portfolio. My old personality that expected instant reward for work would be shaking in disapproval. Not only was this offer extremely helpful, more importantly I built up a foundation to a good relationship with this vendor through email. I guess this is my ‘planting seeds’ stage of the business. If another Sunday is spent emailing vendors (maybe I try wedding planners next time) and I get one helpful reply, well in 10 weeks that would be 10 different relationships to add to my directory. Fortunately, I have a full time job in museum/library photography that I can keep going while I establish this business.

Also, it is wrong to do nothing until you procure a model, sexy venue and gorgeous lighting. This all or nothing approach is no good. Sure, it is vital to have these but if I don’t have any other plans on a weekend and no models then staging some still life shots and shooting beats scrolling into oblivion on Facebook. I enjoyed fluffing up my wife’s wedding dress and experimenting with the terrible, dull light outside that I had available during those dark winter days. Many professional wedding portfolios feature still lives and details of the day so why not recreate these myself in my small flat? Perhaps the most ubiquitous example of this is the wedding ring shots. So I place my wedding ring on my wife’s veil to practise doing this, with results that exceeded my expectations. I then tried to be playful and use the wedding ring as a prop in a Star Wars lego set (don’t ask, a gigantic Lego Millennium Falcon was reduced by almost £200 and I HAD to have it, but unfortunately I cannot claim it back as a business expense). I will always find creative ways to showcase someone’s special day, even in a blank cluttered room with poor lighting.

Not allowable as a business expense! Playful experimentation with the camera.

Trying to Start a Photography Business with Autism

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So far in this blog, I’ve looked at my reasons for starting a wedding/events photography business and have touched upon some photographers whose work I admire. 

However, in this entry I want to talk about the trials and tribulations of setting up a business as someone who is on the autistic spectrum. How can you demonstrate your talent when you don’t have a portfolio? It is not enough to have a website with stock royalty free images. These mixed in with some travel pictures of my own do not show off my talent at all. 

There are a lot of websites out there giving flawed advice in starting out in the wedding photography business. One example of such sage advice is ‘building a portfolio for wedding photography is easy for anyone’ which is hyperlinked to a dead end article asking ‘if you are tough’ and stating that ‘working with a few established wedding photographers is not a plan’. The truth is that building a wedding portfolio may be easy for SOME PEOPLE but certainly not easy for me. 

In a nutshell, how do you even start a portfolio if you don’t know anyone? You need a venue, models, wedding dresses to even get a basic picture (pun intended). 

So, starting a business is a challenge in a league of its own for me and I have the additional obstacle of not having contacts in the events/wedding industry, and a tranche of unhelpful online advice. How can I start building a successful business? The first step is a good web presence, with a solid logo. 

With the help of Holly Connolly https://www.connollymediamarketing.com/team I have put together this website and she has enabled me to start understanding SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) where my blogs can show up in Google when people type in words relevant to my business. So I have a great web foundation to start with. 

However, maintaining a blog presence online is like watering a plant, it needs weekly updates yet it has been a few months since I updated my blog. There is only so much research I can do in the work of wedding photographers before running out of material, especially when I haven’t started building a comprehensive portfolio of wedding shots.

The Challenge – transform this into a viable wedding photography business!

So this is why in the next few blogs I wish to talk about my experience setting up this business. I believe transparency is vital in establishing a client base. So join me as I inject some humour from my personality into this blog and make a very plain and informative story of setting up a wedding photography business entertaining!

Thinking outside the box

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“You don’t take a photograph, you make it”-Ansel Adams

Another reason why wedding photography excites me is that it is as varied as you want it to be. From documentary styles capturing spontaneous joy, to images that convey a brooding intensity of space there are so many angles as to how a special day can be captured. On my journey into researching the wedding photography industry, images like the one below captured by a wedding photographer called Fiona Walsh add an element of play and intrigue to the wedding album. A long exposure and a playful use of a bright continuous photography light create a piece of art as well as a beautiful capture of a momentous moment in a couples life. This really is a literal translation of Berenice Abbott’s quote about photography being ‘Painting with Light’.

Credit: Fiona Walsh https://fionawalsh.co.uk/

Thinking outside the box does not just involve playful use of lights however, the photographer can position themselves outside of the confines of simply shooting the couple from the same level. For example, the creative use of a staircase to capture a couple by Iain Gomes shows how the photographer can capture both the beauty of a wedding venue and the couple at the same time. The elliptical staircase here is used as a frame within a frame which drives the viewers eye directly to the couple having an intimate moment at the piano.

Credit: Iain Gomes https://www.gomesphotography.co.uk/gallery/signature-images/

Photography is one of those arts which is very easy to learn but difficult to master. Wedding photography also adds the fun challenge of creating a story that the couple can look back at through these beautifully created shots. The challenge of being artistic with my wedding photography whilst at the same time shooting in a documentary style is one that I am looking forward to. The images by the photographers mentioned above are a perfect illustration of the creative documentary style I wish to work with.