Way back on Halloween last year I had the pleasure of photographing a wedding that was a bit different (which I love). I mention Halloween not because it just happened to be on that day but because the whole day had a very halloweeny theme (black cat handbags for the girls, black wedding cake with skeletons riding a motorbike on top). In fact, Alix and Luke themselves had a touch of the Halloweens about them in that they were a little bit out there (pink hair, epic beard) and a lot of fun.
Alix and Luke’s wedding is the second in my series of blog posts showing the whole wedding behind each of my entries in this year’s SA Professional Photography Awards (SAPPAs) – you can see the other one here. The SAPPAs are the state awards and are a prelude to the APPAs (national awards) held later in the year, they are viewed in very high regard within the industry and competition is fierce. There are a bunch of different categories from Portrait to Commercial to Travel to Wedding and everything in between. Back in 2013 I was runner up in the Travel category but since then I’ve only entered Weddings and was chuffed to be a finalist (top 3) last year. You can enter up to 4 images in a category and these images are scored by a panel of judges, the aggregate score across the four images is used to determine the three finalist in each category and from there the photos are all re-assessed and a winner for each category is declared (along with an overall winner). Here is my entry from this wedding.
The system is not perfect, but on the whole it’s very robust and fair. My biggest concern, and I appreciate that there is no way around this so it’s not a real concern, is that for weddings four photos over the course of a year gives a potential bride or groom no real indication about the consistency of the photographers work over the whole day and what they can reasonably expect from their wedding collection. To that end I will be blogging the entire wedding for each of my four entries, I think showing where these photos sit in the context of the whole day is a great way to show how I operate on the day and what else is captured.
