The beauty of being a wedding photographer in Birmingham is that we don’t have to look far for those gritty urban backdrops that a lot of our clients love, especially for their engagement session.

Our studio is based at The Custard Factory in Digbeth, just outside the city centre, and we can just head out in any direction and stumble upon all the stuff I love – colours, textures, lines, angles, natural frames and character.

Emily & Steve get married next week at Moxhull Hall and opted for the urban shoot for their engagement shoot. We explored the backstreets of Digbeth as the light was fading. I’m sure they won’t mind me saying that they’re not super-comfortable having their photo taken, but that’s a good reason why we do the engagement shoot. Hopefully, they’ll love their photos and realise that making photos isn’t anything to stress about and can actually be fun, but ultimately I hope clients will trust me to make the best possible photos on their wedding day. Come next Thursday, I’ll be ready to rock it

Here are a few of my faves from the e-shoot…

Margherita & Chris get hitched at the end of October in Bedford. And it’s Bedford where we met for their engagement shoot. An early evening session in the countryside which ended with a great sky as the sun finally set.

They already have one of my photos framed on their living room but it’s not one of them. It’s a large print of Jay-Z that I took at Birmingham’s LG Arena How cool is that?!

You just know their wedding is gonna be a good one now!

FAVOURITE!

I have so much good stuff waiting to hit the blog! Our website was diseased for a couple of weeks and, as a result, we’ve now moved server. All that has put things back a little and I now have a queue of blog posts waiting for their time in the spotlight!

First up though are Emily & Paul who get married at the super-cool Packington Moor in 3 weeks. Anybody that chooses Packington Moor as their wedding venue is already in our good books

For their engagement session, they suggested heading over to Lichfield (they actually live right near us) and I instantly agreed as I’ve never done an engagement shoot there before. I prefer new locations and like to just see what we find while exploring the area.

Here’s what we found…

Yesterday was our due date for the new baby. Weird considering he’s now a month old already!

He’s doing great though. Sleeping well and happy (asleep) most of the time. His big brothers keep wanting to play with their new little brother and our family feels just a little more complete. Our house, however, is feeling somewhat smaller!

To celebrate Jonas being here for a month we took time, on a rare Saturday off, to take some new photos.

If you missed it, you can still see the slideshow from when he first arrived by clicking HERE

For the past few years I’ve covered the V Festival at Weston Park in Staffordshire for SJM, the promoters of the event.

It’s only 25 minutes from where we live so I can get there quickly and come home at night to my bed and a hot shower in the morning. No camping for me with thousands of pounds worth of camera gear!

This year I was joined by my good friend Bianca Barrett and we aimed to cover as much as possible between us. When Bianca was shooting Kasabian, I was shooting The Prodigy. When I was shooting Kings Of Leon, she went over to photograph The Charlatans.

In between bands we did our best to capture pictures of the crowd and get some of the vibe of the festival. The line-up wasn’t amazing this year if I’m honest, but there were a few gems along the way.

I started Saturday with Example on one of the smaller stages…

We bumped into Seasick Steve backstage just before he went onstage. Here’s his number 1 fan, Bianca!

Shed Seven

Madness

Paolo Nutini – the man who never opens his eyes!

La Roux

The Kooks

Faithless

One of the best bands of the weekend, Frightened Rabbit…

Doves

Saturday night saw a quite spectacular sunset

One of me taken by Bianca

Imogen Heap

The Prodigy

Sunday saw the sun come out. Finally!

Feeder

Passion Pit

Another of my highlights – Joshua Radin. I had to shoot from the crowd though!

Paloma Faith

Apparently the ladies LOVE Liam from The Courteeners…

One for the girls then:

Newton Faulkner

So, if you want to video the gig, all you need is a Canon DSLR. And a few gadgets!

Editors

Trying to cover a festival properly means it’s almost impossible to see a whole set of one band but I managed to stay for the entire set when it came to one lady – Lissie.

I knew nothing much about her before seeing her at V Fest but I’m now a total convert. Amazing voice and fantastic tunes. Even better live than on record too.

Paul Weller

Bumped into Passion Pit in the backstage bar

Errrr….

The brilliant White Lies

Stereophonics

The enigmatic Mark Lanegan

Florence & The Machine

Tricky smokes a funny cigarette!

And finally…. Kings Of Leon

Thanks a lot to Wayne Larner and Kara from SJM, all the people from Cake and Evelyne for letting me escape for the weekend while she looked after 3 kids!

Here’s to V 2011.

November 10th 2010 will be the date of my very first seminar, taking place at Calumet in Birmingham. The subject is Music Photography.

I’m a little nervous about the whole thing and I don’t pretend to be an expert but I guess I have quite a bit of experience now and the guys at Calumet reckon there are people who will be up for finding out more about the world of music photography so we’ll give it a go

The topics I’ll be trying to cram in to 6 hours are as follows:

If you’re interested in joining us on November 10th, the cost is just £40 and you can book your place HERE

Thanks to Nick Pickles who grabbed this shot of me at this weekend’s V Festival.

Cath & Dave get married at Moxhull Hall this Thursday! That’s 3 days away. We did their engagement shoot 3 days ago. Talk about cutting it fine

On the day we almost had to postpone it due to the rain, but thankfully we were blessed with a break in the weather and headed to Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens where we explored the grounds, chatted about the main event and even found time for Dave to show us his trumpet!

Rom & Will found us after we were recommended to them by our friend and fellow photographer, Bridget McCann. Bridget will be at the wedding but doesn’t actually shoot weddings much herself so we got the job

And I’m SO glad we did get the job because Rom & Will’s wedding is going to be amazing! No, seriously, this is one I’m looking forward to more than most. Wait til you see their wedding photos on the blog next month and you’ll see why…

For their engagement session, I headed down to London town (I seem to be there a lot these days!) and we took a wander to their local park and the surrounding area and stumbled across some gems, not least the little vintage store not far from their house.

I have a lot of faves from this shoot but here are just a few…

Wedding photos here in a few weeks…

Melissa & Jonathan chose a venue for their wedding which has quickly become one of my favourites – Birtsmorton Court in Worcestershire.

The venue has beautiful grounds and picturesque buildings in every direction, making our job as photographers much easier.

On the day itself, the weather was glorious and we were made to feel totally welcome by the couple and all their guests. This is why I love my job!

Congrats to Melissa & Jonathan on a fantastic wedding and big thanks again to Anna for 2nd shooting with me on the day. 3 weeks later she was a bridesmaid at the same venue!

Thanks too to the staff at Birtsmorton Court who were great.

Can’t wait to see the finished album. It’s gonna be amazing!