That’s right .. I am now extending the services I offer couples.  In addition to wedding photography, I can double up as a limo service with my red soccer-dad van.  And I get a solid thumbs-up!

On the way to the photo location, Megan and Brendan’s limo broke down along the highway.  I was following them, so I pulled over as well – Megan and Brendan just took it in their stride and we continued on to the location to meet up with their bridal for the photo session.  (The proper blog entry with a selection of images from their wedding will be up in a few days.)

And to think that some of my friends insist my red mini-van isn’t sexy.

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.

As I move into the 2008 wedding season, I thought it is time to look at last years weddings, and to review what I’ve put on my blog, to think about new samples for the upcoming year. Looking back over my work of the past year, there are always images that pop out as clear favourites.

This year, I’ve created a slideshow of my very favourite images from 2007. It was hard to narrow it down to just 150 images, but I managed. And these images represent what I think is the very best of my wedding photography work from last year. Enjoy!