Vaucluse Wedding: Katrin and Julian

"If you're living your life and you think to yourself, Ya know, I've got it pretty easy, then it's time to shoot a wedding. You'll experience stress at a level only radar operators monitoring North Korea ever achieve. A wedding ceremony happens once in a lifetime. There are no second takes, no room for mess-ups, no excuses." Scott Kelby was onto something when he started his wedding chapter in his The Digital Photography Book this way.

Because, well, it was a bit like that for me last Saturday.

Don't take me wrong, as always I had a blast and would do it again in the blink of an eye. The wedding was an intimate affair, simple, elegant and genuine. The couple was in turn romantic and playful, and Katrin's smile was enough to brighten up everyone's day. I thoroughly enjoyed being there.

However, the conditions were not exactly photography friendly, going from a dark church to a beach in full sun. So I crossed my fingers, closed my eyes (ok just one), and hoped for the best. Luckily, the Canon 5D mark II is pretty much a weapon of mass destruction and it helped me a lot along the way.

Now I think that a Bride who wears thongs on her wedding day is just really cool :)

I almost died (of joy) when I entered the Bride's room. I suspect she moved in this apartment just for the light in which her dress would be photographed on her wedding day.

One of the living room walls happened to be a giant mirror, just like that.

You just goota love the shoes the Groom's mother was wearing on the day!

 

 

Milk Beach Engagement: Katrin and Julian

I was nerve-wreckingly a bit nervous about this session because the couple only wanted one photographer and I had never worked alone before. Also, this was a TEST session, to check if I was up to scratch when (if) the time would come to photograph their wedding. If I failed, I knew I would forever disappear to the other side of the World (oops I already live there), bury all my photography gear (ok, sell it on eBay), and of course change my identity so that I could not be recognised in the street as that girl who failed the test engagement session.
Luckily for me the couple was fun and easy to work with, and Katrin looked like she came straight from her latest movie in Hollywood. I felt like I should be paying her to pose in front of the camera. Everything went smoothly and I was given the green light for the Big Day (still as a single shooter, how will I ever take sharp photos with wobbly knees??).

Now, did I mention the location?? Please do not contact me if you're not getting married at Strickland House/ Milk Beach, because I don't think anything can compete. On one hand you have a heritage building that looks like it's coming straight out of a movie studio, on the other you have a deserted beach with the city skyline in the background as an option. Forget the Eiffel Tower or Bora Bora, this place is the new black.

Where it all started

It's funny how people assume I've always been into photography, like my mum must have looked like a whale when she was pregnant with me because of my 70-200mm lens. When I say I do photography, no one ever asks how I got there; what happened that made me jump into it. Why photography and not pattern knitting?

I must admit, I do nothing to fight the myth. I live and breathe through my lenses and bore the hell out of everyone. When my daughter was born I thought we would become the couple with child that single and childless friends avoid from fear of talking dirty nappies and midnight vomits.  This didn't happen. I kept talking Lightroom2 and Photoshop, which still makes us the couple that single, childless friends AND families with young children avoid.

The truth is, I had a life before photography. Four years ago I thought Aperture was a brand of organic cosmetics. I used to do normal things like go out without a camera. When I looked at friends' holiday photos I didn't think that increasing contrast would add that extra bit of punch.

So how did I catch the disease? In 2006, I bought a DSLR camera: mistake #1! I even started taking photos with it: mistake #2! And then there was Suzie and Matt's wedding.
I naively brought my camera along, with one of my two lenses that came with the "starter kit". Like enthusiastic guests do, I started taking photos (I didn't know at that time that I was, in fact, pressing the shutter). We had a great time and went home. A few weeks later I made an album for them as a wedding gift, and upon looking at it Matt suddenly said "you could be a wedding photographer"! Looking back at those photos now I think he was just being extremely polite. Nonetheless, it got the ball rolling, and I've been matchmaking people ever since just to create weddings to shoot. Well, not exactly, but anyway, here are some shots I like from that very first experience: