Spontaneity, genuine expressions and gestures, the things that make each bride and groom individual - these are things which I continually hone in on when photographing a wedding or engagement session.  Even when I’m working with the couple, directing them, I am still looking for something real - something uniquely ‘them’, as we collaborate in getting wonderful images of their wedding.

What I find are those genuine moments where the bride and groom interact with each other .. and that’s what I give back to them in the photographs I show them.  Quite often there is a found moment, a gesture, an action which just … works.  Really works. And if that moment happens during the engagement session, we often come back to it and use it as a starting point during the wedding portraits.

And so it was with Alli and Colin, whose wedding I photographed late in 2006.  The first image is from their engagement session, and the second image is one of a sequence from their wedding portraits.  At the end of their engagement session, I had taken a series of images of them sitting on a grassy spot at the edge of a lake.  As they stood, Colin helped Alli up.  Alli, being a dancer, leapt up into the air and straight into Colin’s arms … and it looked wonderful.  I asked them to do it again, so I could get a better angle against the dramatic sky.  They did and it made for a fantastic image!

I had hoped to find this same image again during their wedding portraits, but the wedding day was a different setting, with different clothes, different light.  It was just a different day.  Alli was slippery in her dress, and Colin could barely hold onto her.  When I asked them to recreate the moment from their engagement session it wasn’t quite the same … and yet, it made for another striking photograph that was very much who they are.

So just by working with something we ‘found’ in their engagement session, using it as a starting point and playing around with the idea, and then extending it on the wedding day, it evolved it into another image which I simply love.