Dan Biggins

Making It All Worthwhile

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Bromley Garden Room London Wedding Photography

I’ll be honest with you – sometimes wedding photography is hard.

Don’t get me wrong – I absolutely LOVE photographing weddings (hopefully that comes across all through this website and via my photographs). Meeting clients, having a coffee with them (and occasionally a cheeky slice of cake too – mmm!) and then capturing their special day is a privilege, an honour and I really wouldn’t want to do anything else. However, there are times during a wedding when you’ve been on your feet for 10 hours, you’re gasping for a drink and your back is screaming blue murder at you. All you want to do is put your feet up and grab a nice glass of Malbec, but the first dance and cutting of the cake is yet to happen…

All this dissipates of course when my couples see their photos for the first time – all those hours running around with a bag full of heavy camera gear on a hot day become completely worthwhile. Especially when one of those couples sends me a card like this, which (I’m not ashamed to admit) brought tears to my eyes. Thank you Holly & Richard.

Making It All Worthwhile 1

Westminster Pre-Wedding Photography

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Westminster Pre-Wedding Photography

London really is the city that keeps on giving.

It always amazes me how you can live in a major city and always discover something new about it. This is exactly what happened when I recently photographed Hannah and Dominic’s engagement session in Central London. I’ve been to St James’s Park many times, but I discovered a new area of the park just behind Downing Street that I hadn’t seen before. It was here we managed to capture some gorgeous photographs in front of the fountain, just as the sun set behind Hannah and Dom and bathed them in glorious soft light…

Of course, there are many other fabulous locations in Central London to see, and we managed to include a few of these in the photos too. It wasn’t the warmest evening if truth be told, and being a Saturday evening meant there were a few (i.e. thousands!) of Londoners and tourists strolling about. We were also carrying lots of gear including a rather large flash, so I’m grateful we managed to avoid hitting anyone on the head with it on the packed Westminster Bridge! Thankfully I had my good friend and assistant Matt from Salt Photography to help me lug all the kit around the streets of London.

Most of all I’d like to thank Hannah and Dominic for being absolutely brilliant sports, and putting up with us while while we visited different locations. The final shot of this series was touch and go to be honest – I’d had the idea in my head for a while of capturing light trails while illuminating a couple, and thanks to Hannah and Dom’s patience I finally managed to pull it off…thanks guys!

Hampton Court Pre-Wedding Photography

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Hampton Court Pre-Wedding Photography

It’s a bit nippy in January, in case you hadn’t noticed. However, this has its benefits, believe it or not – one advantage being that normally popular and crowded tourist venues (such as Hampton Court Palace) are unusually quiet and bereft of visitors. This means that you can spend time there without the hassle of being buffeted left, right and centre by enthusiastic crowds, and enjoy some quality time with some rather lovely people.

Which is exactly what happened on Saturday, when I met up with Rianne and Aaron for their engagement session. We spent an hour chatting, enjoying the beautifully historic (and quiet) surroundings, capturing some lovely photographs along the way. Here are some of the best photos from the session:

 

5 Reasons to Have a Pre-Wedding Photography Session

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Kent Engagement Photography

You’re engaged! The question has been well and truly popped (so to speak) and has been positively reciprocated, so what’s next? Lots of wedding planning, obviously, such as booking the venue, buying a dress, arranging the catering etc, but how about booking in an engagement photography session while you’re at it? Why, I hear you ask? Without further ado, here are five thoroughly good reasons why you should definitely book a pre-wedding photography session*:

1. Get to know your photographer

When you hire a wedding photographer, you’ll be working alongside each other all day on your wedding day. All photographers have different styles and ways of working – some are quiet, polite and work in a relaxed and efficient manner (me, for example…!), and some….well, some photographers I’ve met and worked with are a little more…vocal, shall we say. You might prefer one way of working over the other, so the best way to find out what your photographer is really like is to book them for an engagement session. You wouldn’t want to fall out with him or her on your wedding day now, would you?

2. Feel comfortable in front of the camera

As I mentioned in my blog post 5 Tips to Look Great in Photographs, very few of us feel completely comfortable having a camera pointed at us. However, it’s your photographer’s job to make sure you feel relaxed when having your photo taken on your wedding day, and spending an hour or so in their company creating fantastic photographs certainly helps. When it finally comes around you’ll be completely used to being caught on camera, and you won’t hunch your shoulders up around your ears every time a lens is pointed your way!

3. You’ll receive fantastic photographs

An engagement session is a great opportunity to be creative – not just for your photographer, but for you as a couple as well. It should be a relaxed, fun affair – you can throw on some fancy glad rags, bring some props or a favourite pet along with you, and spend an hour or two in one of your favourite locations larking about with your significant other. At the end of the session you’ll receive some amazing photographs – doesn’t get much better than that.

4. Your photos are useful!

Once you receive your photos, I’m sure you’ll want to share them with your family and friends on social media, to show them all how utterly gorgeous you and your significant other are! How about using the photos for Save the Date cards? Or a signing book perhaps? How about a coffee table book to show off when you have friends over for dinner?

5. Your engagement is important

There are very few events in life that can be considered truly historic. I’d say there are four – your birth, your engagement, your wedding day and having children (if you so desire). Shouldn’t your engagement be something to be celebrated? Just as you’d fondly look back on wedding photos in years to come, shouldn’t engagement photographs be treated with the same reverence? I for one say they should.

* All wedding photography collections come a pre-wedding session, so drop me a line for more info!

5 Tips to Look Great in Photos

by
Kent Engagement Photography

Let’s face it, not everyone likes having their picture taken. The vast majority of us don’t look like Kate Moss or Brad Pitt, so naturally we’re reticent to be caught on camera. However, if you’re at a party or out with friends, and you just can’t avoid your friend and his / her smartphone camera, here are some tips to make sure you look your absolute best!

Don’t say cheese

You can’t force a smile, and believe me, it shows on camera if you try. When you smile, the muscles under your eyes naturally contract, so think of something funny, laugh with your friends or share a joke with the photographer. Your photo will look much better for it.

Eliminate the double chin

If posed incorrectly, it’s easy for even the thinnest person to look terrible in photos. To avoid the dreaded double chin, elongate your neck and push your ears slightly towards the camera. It’ll feel strange at first but you’ll look great, believe me!

Work out your angles

Standing straight on towards the camera is rarely flattering – for men it can work, because it accentuates the shoulders and as such can be considered a masculine pose, but for ladies it’s not preferable. Put your hand on your hip, cross your legs at the ankles and gently put your weight on your back foot, angle your body to the side and then turn your head back towards the camera.

Turn your back to the sun

This might seem counterintuitive but it works. When you face the sun you’ll automatically squint, but turning your back to the sun means you’ll be backlit, creating a more romantic feel to the photograph. There are two provisos to this – one, early morning or late afternoon light works best as it’s much softer, and secondly, the light behind you might fool the camera (it’ll think the picture is too bright and will automatically underexpose. Ever taken a snap of a friend when they’re sitting in front of a window, and wondered why they appear as a silhouette in your photo? Now you know).

Practice and relax!

If you need to, practice your posing in front of a mirror until you feel comfortable. Don’t forget to breathe, smile, relax and have fun!

Bonus tip – hire a professional

If you really want to look good in photographs, consider hiring someone with years of experience behind a camera, who can help you look amazing in every photograph. Now who could that be? Hmmm….

Greenwich Pre-Wedding Photography Session

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Greenwich Pre-Wedding Photography Session

I love pre-wedding photography sessions. I love Greenwich. I love photographing couples that are in love. Can you tell just how much I loved photographing Keziah and Rob recently in Greenwich Park?

It was a lot. A ridiculous amount, in fact. Yes, It was a bit chilly, granted, but the light was so beautifully soft and Rob and Keziah were so wonderfully friendly and chatty, that it didn’t really matter how cold it was. So one gorgeous couple + a stunning location + lovely weather = one very happy photographer indeed.

Like what you see? I’d love to photograph your pre-wedding photography session – please email me now!

 

Ghosts of the Past

by
Kent wedding photographer

When I was a kid, my Dad owned a reel-to-reel tape recorder. It was huge, clunky and prone to conking out on a regular basis, but I loved it. It provided me, my brother and our friends with many happy hours recording ourselves laughing, joking and generally fooling around. Those innocent(ish) hours of childhood were captured on tape for us to enjoy for all eternity. Or so we thought.

One fateful day it stopped working. No matter what we did to revive it, it steadfastly refused to work. We scoured the Yellow Pages (remember that?) to find someone who could restore it to its former glory, but everyone we spoke to provided the same answer; “That’s obsolete – we no longer support or repair that machine I’m afraid”.

I never did find out what happened to that reel-to-reel player, or indeed the reels that once used to grace it. As a result, those memories of childhood disappeared forever.

Echoes of the future

If we’re not careful, a lifetime of photographic memories could quite easily be consigned to the same bottomless dustbin of time, especially in this transient, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it digital age. At the moment we all enjoy the convenience of uploading photographs (or the ubiquitous jpg as it’s sometimes known) to our favourite social media channel, or looking at photographs of our friends and family on the technological wonder of our age, the smartphone. But what happens if the jpg file format is discontinued? What happens if those lifetime of memories, ensconced away on CD’s, DVD’s, hard drives and phones are no longer accessible? Or what’s the impact if CD’s, DVD’s, hard drives and smart phones themselves all become obsolete? The scenario is almost like a modern day version of Back to the Future – watch in horror as the memories of a life you thought you had disappear before your very eyes…

Preserving the Past

All of my wedding clients have received digital images on either a CD or a USB drive, because (a) that’s what I offer at the moment, and (b) that’s what they want (or at least, that’s what they’ve been led to believe they want, but that’s definitely another debate for another time). For a while now this has sat uncomfortably with me, especially after writing The True Value of Wedding Photography post and holding and touching my parent’s wedding photographs in the process of sharing those thoughts.

As 2016 approaches, I’m currently addressing what I want to offer my clients, and what I want my business to stand for. I want to provide a special service that they just won’t receive anywhere else, and this includes providing physical products. I suppose the word I’m searching for here is authenticity – I’m analysing everything, from how I capture process my photographs (and the equipment I use to do that), to how I present myself when I meet clients (I want them to meet “me”, not a sales-driven, pushy version of me), to how I deliver their final wedding images. I know you’re thinking, “Well, he would say that!”, but I’ve been looking at a multitude of wedding albums and presentation products lately and genuinely believe that a tangible product is the only authentic way of presenting my client’s memories. I accept paper fades and disintegrates after decades of exposure to light or grubby fingers, but my parent’s wedding photos have been well looked after and still appear as new as the day they were printed. While these photos exist I’ll always be able to look at them, whereas photographs that reside on a floppy disc or zip drive may well be lost forever.

Rustic Wedding Workshop – Regents Park, London

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Rustic Wedding Workshop Regents Park London

When it’s just stopped raining, the ground is wet beneath your feet and the temperature has dropped to around freezing point, what do you do? You grab a camera and head for the nearest park, of course!

Us photographer’s are an odd bunch, let’s face it. Whenever there’s an opportunity to capture beauty we’re first in the queue, come wind, rain or shine. Yesterday had all three of those elements in abundance, but that didn’t stop a group of us enjoying the fantastic Rustic Wedding Workshop Meetup group, as hosted by the insanely talented Alex Borbilas and Lisa Lobanova, who together make up Wedding Fairytales. I’ve attended a Family Photography Workshop with Lisa before, so was really looking forward to this one.

The day was broken up into three parts, two of which were of particular interest to me. The first third covered setting up a wedding photography business (which I know a fair bit about, obviously, but there was still some valuable information contained in this part). The second was a photoshoot in Regents Park (brrrr) with two fabulous models who were absolute troopers. As you can see from the photos below, they weren’t adorned with the warmest clothing you’ve ever seen, but smiled all the way through the session (as did co-host Alex who didn’t have a jacket with him, and started to turn a rather strange shade of blue. I’m shivering just thinking about you mate…!) The third part was perhaps of most interest to me, and touched on branding and marketing with an hour covering Lightroom post-processing at the end.

I had a great time – it’s always fantastic meeting up with fellow photographers and discussing style, technique and lenses (yes, the Canon 135L f2 is a must-buy, fellow workshop attendees:)), and Alex and Lisa were brilliant; enthusiastic, inspiring, happy to share their knowledge and both had a great sense of humour too. Thanks to both of you, and hope to see you again soon!

 

Amy & Ben – Sneak Peek!

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Bromley Garden Room London Wedding Photography

East Dulwich, we meet again – how the devil are you?!

To be honest, if every wedding I photographed was in East Dulwich, I’d be a very happy bunny indeed. I spent five very happy years there, so when Amy and Ben asked me to photograph their wedding in Bromley and reception in East Dulwich, I jumped up and down on their sofa with glee, hugged one of their neighbours for over an hour before running down the street with my top off*

(*I made that last sentence up. But boy, was I happy).

I first met Amy & Ben back in May, and in July I photographed their engagement session in Crystal Palace Park.  We all got on really well that day and together we captured some lovely photographs, so I was literally champing at the bit to photograph their special day. And it certainly didn’t disappoint – they were both as lovely as I remembered them from back in July, and their two children Millie and William are absolutely gorgeous too!

I’d also like to thank all of their friends and family for being lovely and extremely friendly, and most of all Amy and Ben. Congratulations to you both and I hope you have many happy years together as Mr & Mrs Gidney!

 

Isobel and Tim – Sneak Peek!

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Bromley Registry Office London Wedding Photography

Forrest Gump once said, “Life is like a box of chocolates”. By that, he could have meant one of two things:

  • Life is wonderfully varied, full of different flavours and you’re never quite sure what’s going to come next, or
  • It may taste good, but eventually it’ll make you fat

I’m guessing it’s the former?

Anyway, I allude to Mr Gump because when selecting photographs for this very special sneak peek, I was literally spoiled for choice. There were so many wonderfully warm moments on the day that I was tempted to post the wedding in its entirety here, and be done with it. However, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait another week or two for that. In the meantime, here are some carefully selected chocolate box moments from the day.