Just a quick note to wish everyone a great Christmas and New Year.

Apart from Christmas/New Year weddings, we will be taking some down time until 4th January, so please note that there may be delays in responding to any emails and vmails between now and then.

A special thanks to all the couples we worked with this year and to our 2010 and 2011 couples who have booked ahead. Despite all the bad news in the economy, it’s great to see so many of you are not letting things get in the way of your plans.

Be safe.

The World Press Photo organisation have archived a collection of images from the competitions beginning (WPP is a very prestigious awards body for photo journalism). Very little to do with wedding photography I know, but very powerful photography all the same. Even if this is not your thing, use the search funtion to find the overall winner for each year. There are some controversial images in there but certainly also an indication of the power of a single image. This is probably the best collection of this kind of work online:

http://www.archive.worldpressphoto.org/

Here are some of my favourites from the last three months. Click play to watch or use the fullscreen icon to the right of the controls for a better view…

It’s official - my partner in life is now also my partner in our newly formed business partnership.

Things have moved up a gear this year and Michelle has really helped to rein in the admin and behind the scenes side of things. If truth be told she has always helped out but this new division of duties has really helped me to put more focus back in to the photography.

I must admit I’m a bit of a control freak (!!) and find it hard to let go of certain things but at least now, I can spend more time on developing new ideas and approaches, put more time in to the technical and creative side of things and push on with producing the best quality output.

Speaking of which, I must get on and post some of the latest work!

There is a lot of talk among professional wedding photography ranks about converging medias such as video and stills. There is some very creative work being done in the US on this at the moment but it’s difficult to merge the two without giving up at least some of the qualities of either one.

Photojournalists have been doing it for years but they have given more emphasis to sound and stills than video. Sound especially is used very effectively to get their message across and to help flesh out the story (see www.mediastorm.com or www.edkashi.com for some of the best of this). I’ve been dabbling with sound myself recently on some personal projects. I’ve had very little time for those over the Summer due to weddings, so I decided to do some recording on a wedding instead. I’m not yet convinced that this is a product for the weddings market but the feedback has been very strong, so maybe at some stage down the line I will consider offering something along these lines.

Meg and Matt were my willing guinea pigs for this experiment. It was a very special ceremony with a great couple, so turn on your speakers to hear the results. Feedback welcome!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything but Summer for Photographers is like Christmas for the Elves…

Here is a little show with some of my own favourites from the past few months: