Although based from from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, we work throughout the UK.

This can be a good option for your wedding as it gives you full use of all the images to use online, print or make into an album. Online there are many print houses offering a very high quality service. Also, for the wedding couple to spend time selecting and design the layout  can be a great experience, bringing back many of the memories from the day.

Our wedding on  disc package is £650

We have covered many weddings in Harrogate and gained a lot of understanding from both the photographer’s and client’s perspective. Many people say that they really don’t know anything about photography, but you do….

Professional Photography is really just doing what you would do yourself, just better!

When you come to look at how much to pay for wedding photography, approach it like taking-on any professional. Think about how many hours you would want them for on the day and allow time after for editing and processing images. During a wedding you can take 500 images so even just basic process can take 4 hours. Then simply think about what a reasonable hourly rate would be and multiply them up.

There are also some material costs, especially with albums. Some of our albums cost £500 to us to have printed.

Watch out for the cheap initial prices but a package that goes up greatly when you want to add a few extra hours, some extra prints or an album even.

Think carefully about what you will definitely want and what you may want in terms of prints. If you negotiate that you also have the images on disc then this isn’t a problem as you can print away as you wish.

As an example, say you want a photographer from 12am until 9pm with an album.

9 hours on the day plus 5 hours post processing at a rate of £50 per hour is  £700

add an album, £300 then a package price of £1000 would be good value.

For most of our work we use a Nikon D3 and D3x bodies with a variety of lenses. They are built like tanks and can take a lot of abuse. They are also, big, heavy and take a while to get out of a bag and fix a flash to. As an addition we have bought what is a pretty standard compact, a Sony DSC-HX9V  (to be precise!)

What a revelation.

It just shows how photography has changed and how accessible really good quality photography is.

A tiny unit that will take 1080P video one minute then zoom from as wide or as far as you are ever likely to need. The interesting thing is though how it does the thinking for you. A photographer will look at an image and quickly work out where the focus points are the exposure, if it will need flash etc. I haven’t managed to catch the little compact out yet on how it copes just with a press of the the on button.

What else though, well image stabilisation so you can get away with a ridiculous zoom without shake, face detection, blink detection (so it tells you when you photographed a blink)

A pro camera with big glass will always have the edge over a small compact in ultimate image quality. But this little compact takes you a long way there.

It’s not going to be the main camera for a shoot, but it will be coming along for more casual press work.

This was a test shot for a new chocolate cake company that will shortly be opening up in Harrogate. True artistry in chocolate, this cake has a centre of chocolate sponge but with folds of white chocolate layered around it.

Traditionally the album was the centre of the wedding photography. A traditional album would use maybe 3o or 40 images, meaning relatively few of the images taken were used.  As technology developed with albums allowing printing direct to the page you could use many more of your images as each page was individually designed often using more than one images.

In addition to the album, the bridal couple and parents would order a few prints for the mantlepiece and these were generally the more formal or posed group shots.

Things have become much more relaxed now with couples looking for more casual shots both during the day and into the evening.

In the days of film photography photographers using medium format, the preferred format to give the quality for larger print enlargements, a camera was limited to 12 shots on a roll. This made for a much more considered approach before the shutter button was pressed.

A modern professional camera can take 1,000 shots without the need to change battery or memory card and at 10 shots per second if you really need to!

This has made for a more risk-free approach with many more images taken in the anticipation of capturing the image. In reality the photographer partly creates an image and partly just captures it in the right way.

What people want to do with the wedding photographs has changed and has moved away from printed media. A computer monitor is never going to be same experience as looking at a good quality wedding album, it will be just different.

Having images online with platforms like Facebook gives the opportunity for your wedding photographs to be viewed bu many more people than would see your album or prints. It also gives the opportunity for interaction with people commenting.

Many photographers have reacted to this demand by offering electronic images, either as high quality images so that the client can print as they wish or just web-sized images.

This change has not pleased some photographers as the sales made with additional prints were often viewed as just more profit in the bag from a client.

These were for Harrogate-News and the News item can be read here Knaresborough Duck Race 2012 and the Duck Race 2012 – Results

Prince Charles attended a freedom parade in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire.

See the main news item for full details http://harrogate-news.co.uk/?p=7781