Laura and Giles | Portrait

I met Laura and Giles today to chat about their wedding in September and to have a little play with the camera. We had a quick gander around the wedding venue in Hassop before hopping over to Chatsworth to frolic with lambs. Giles regaled me with stories from his boyhood growing up in the area, plenty of hi-jinks took place in the Chatsworth grounds so the area had meaning. Giles has a real gift of the gab and I have a feeling his speech will be a goodun! He certainly had me and Laura giggling which always helps to keep things relaxed when taking photos.

I couldn't resist another play with double exposures ... I'm still working on this technique having only discovered it last week, but I'm enjoying the extra scope it gives for creativity. Laura and Giles are also fans of ANTP (America's next top model) so tried out their smizing (smiling with your eyes) ... looks like blue steel to me.

 All images ©KateCooperPhotography2014

Lucy and Alyas | Portrait

Last week I met with Lucy and Alyas to chat about their wedding in May, and while we were at it we had a gad about the Kelham Island area in the chilly spring weather to catch some pre-wedding portraits. When life gives you a late spring and no green on the trees, go urban instead.

 All images ©KateCooperPhotography2013

Mark and Lizzy | The Wedding

Cut to Old Years' Night, the end of 2011, celebrated with a trip to Nottingham and the wedding of Lizzy and Mark.

I'm not always the biggest fan of New Years Eve, much preferring a quiet night and large helpings of pancakes on New Years Day instead. So I was actually quite delighted to duck out of the dilemma of what to do by taking the opportunity to partake of someone else's double celebration - with a group of people who seemed doubly in the mood for a good time. (It did please me to return home just before midnight and hear about Dan's wild festivities of listening to a radio 3 documentary on the communication of sheep during lambing season).

So, some of my favourite things:
The relationships: I met with Lizzy and Mark back in October time, we talked wedding of course, but also talked a lot about Lizzy's new venture into setting up a photography business. It felt like a lovely connection - to both share some of the emotional processes that go on behind the scenes. I felt a gentle fondness for them both from this moment - which only increased on the day, in the quiet moments where the job of photographer and accompanier intertwine - and even more so chatting on the phone afterwards.

Leaving the church: A unusual highlight - but I realised I'd never been to a wedding where the couple exited the church to the sound of pealing bells, went straight down to their car and were waved off a by a crowd of their nearest and dearest with no hanging around. There was such a lovely pace to the timing of it.

The church: This was the church of Lizzy's late grandparents, where family Christenings had occurred, but also, co-incidentally, where the parents of Lindsay and Amy got married. I enjoyed the sense of these different family history's that I was meeting, just for a moment, before they went off to develop in their own directions, heightened by meeting Amy's new baby at this wedding.

The atmosphere: Helped no doubt by New Year's Eve and that people were staying in the reception hotel so didn't have to think about leaving; there was a sense that everyone was very much present to being there and having a good time. It was lovely to participate in the general sense of delightedness both of Lizzy and Mark as individuals and as a couple, and seeing a commitment to relationships shining through the way these two choose to do life.

All images ©KateCooperPhotography2011