Ok.. This could be one of my favourite shoots yet!

Denmark & Colin are planning a wedding in Shanghai next year. I’d love to shoot a wedding in China but at least I get to do their pre-wedding photos.

We decided on Warwick as the perfect location and spent a great day exploring the town and getting a good variety of portraits. Later in the day we visited the epic location of Warwick Castle where we were lucky enough to have the whole castle to ourselves after the general public had left. Amazing!

Big thanks to Katie and David at Warwick Castle for being so accommodating.

We began the shoot in more humble surroundings…

What a waste of a beautiful dress..

… to lock it in a cupboard never to be seen again after the wedding day!

Ok, so this “Trash The Dress” thing is misnamed. We don’t want anyone to trash any kind of dress. We want them to get back into that one dress they love so much they chose it for their wedding day.

We want them to take their time getting photographs they maybe couldn’t get on the actual day. Maybe it rained all day. Maybe the venue was limiting. Maybe you just wanted to spend time with your guests rather than spend hours getting the kind of photos you actually hoped for. No problemo!

Just like Samantha here, there is absolutely nothing to stop anyone getting back into their wedding dress for a photo shoot where timings, weather, guests, location and dirt on the dress no longer make a shred of difference.

I love these shoots. They’re great fun. Sam & Monty made my job easy too, bringing both their wedding outfits and and totally going with some of my weird ideas

Here are a few of my faves from the day…

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Elliott’s 4th birthday and Jonas’s 1st birthday (they’re 10 days apart) with a party at our home.

Evelyne went above & beyond the call of duty arranging something a little different. The AMAZING cakes & sweets were made by The Boutique Baking Company and all these photos were taken by our talented and lovely pal, Emma Case.

This party was also featured on the lovely Belle Bébés blog

Thanks to everyone who came along and made the party so much fun…. We have the best friends!

It’s always kinda cool to jump on a plane with my camera and go and shoot somewhere a bit different.

Carina & John get married in Essex next month but wanted to do their engagement shoot in the city they call home – Dublin.

We had a great day wandering the streets of a fantastic city, dodging the occasional shower and popping into a pub for my first ever pint of Guinness.

Carina & John were the perfect hosts and I’m now really looking forward to the main event…

I love shooting Rock The Frock sessions. We don’t call them Trash The Dress shoots unless they actually want to trash their wedding dress. Which they rarely do.

Rachel & Phil were married last August in Herefordshire but were greeted by some typically wet British weather and didn’t manage to get any of the kind of photos they were hoping for. I never shot their actual wedding but I was happy to help make some pictures for them when we met up on a chilly but brighter day in January.

The shoot began on the streets around our studio in Birmingham before moving to Sutton Park to get something a little greener. I love the variety we managed to get from one afternoon. And Rachel & Phil made my job easy.

Big thanks to Anna Clarke for helping me out on the day too.

Lisa & Jason are a great couple who get married in just over 2 weeks at the gorgeous Wethele Manor near Leamington Spa. It’s our first time shooting at the venue so I’m looking forward to exploring.

For their engagement shoot we met at their home in Coleshill and went out walking across nearby bridges & fields. It was good to be out in the countryside on such a lovely day rather than sat staring at a monitor like I am right now…

Action Replay are a Birmingham based rock band who recently entered a competition run via Kerrang Radio and Brum Notes Magazine to win a photoshoot with yours truly.

You may have already worked out that they won the competition

The shoot in question took place as part of a Music Photography workshop which I held this weekend as part of the Home Of Metal campaign. The workshop ended with us taking the band out into a deserted high street in West Bromwich and over the course of just 30 minutes or so I tried to demonstrate to the people on the workshop how I aim to get a varied set of images in a short space of time. The fact that, on this occasion, we were restricted with our location as well as a boringly flat grey sky added a little more pressure to get something worthwhile, but I hope you’ll agree we did ok.

All these images were captured within a couple of hundred yards of each other during our 30 minute shoot. You can check out Action Replay’s MySpace page to hear their tunes. They’re also playing live regularly if you like what you hear.

Thanks to everyone who came to the workshop, the good people behind the Home Of Metal campaign and, of course, the band themselves who made my job easy.

Some of you reading this blog will remember that late last year I flew over to Las Vegas to shoot Kerry & Dave’s wedding.

While I was (not really) in the neighbourhood, I decided to jump on another couple of planes and head out to the beautiful location of Solvang, California to spend a day with one of my favourite photographers…. Jose Villa.

I’ve been an admirer of Jose’s work for a long time. He shoots exclusively on film and the way he uses light and manages to capture beautiful images of people and details (and quite a lot of horses) means that I check his blog all the time and was just a little excited to spend a day in his company on one of his one-on-one workshops.

On the day I met Jose and his partner Joel at their home and was made to feel more than welcome. Jose is a super-chilled and friendly guy who is extremely generous with his knowledge. Over the course of the day we covered a huge amount, from how his business runs, how he attracts the right kind of clients and how he gets his weddings featured in magazines and on wedding blogs such as the massively popular Style Me Pretty. He also told me about educating clients about lighting, how he finds great light for his shoots and all about his pricing structures. We looked through his beautiful albums and he looked over my own work and gave me some honest and useful feedback.

After lunch we headed up into the hills near his home with a couple and I got to see Jose at work. We even drove past Neverland on the way! The most nerve-wracking part of the day was when Jose handed the reigns over to me and I shot the couple as Jose watched. Pressure!

I had such an amazing day and would like to say a huge thank you to Jose for his inspiration and for making me so welcome. He even took some photos of me and sent me the prints after I returned home. Thanks Jose. I hope to meet up with you again soon.

Here are some of the images I took on the day, plus one of myself taken by Jose (you may have seen it before – top right)

And here’s some I grabbed of Jose doing what he does best…

And finally.. me by Jose.