London Photos

Yesterday I took advantage of a really cheap offer from East Coast Trains and had a day in London (£5 each way from Wakefield - unbelievable!) with Chris Chambers and a couple of other photographers.  It might seem a bit sad that on a day off I choose to take photos but it gives me a chance to experiment with different styles and camera settings so it's a lot different from photographing a wedding so it makes quite a change, although I do have a wedding in York soon with the York Eye right outside the Royal York Hotel, so this was also a bit of practice for that, so I suppose that there was a wedding connection with that.  Speaking of weddings I really must upload some more photos onto here from weddings from last year.

The Houses of Parliament just as the sun was setting

Westminster Bridge and the Big Ben

An atmospheric shot of Westminster Abbey

The River Thames with St. Paul's in the Background

A rather different angle for the London Eye

The Last Shot of the Night and I think my favourite before catching the tube to King's Cross for the journey back to Wakefield

Weetwood Hall and Maxi's - A Chinese Wedding

It's great when you do a wedding and you are then asked back to do the wedding of the brother of the bride, but when you are asked a third time to photograph and film the wedding of the third son then it's just fantastic.  You almost begin to feel like family as you know so many people there.  In fact at the meal in Max's restaurant in Leeds we were even invited to sit with the wedding party for the meal, so warm and welcoming is Chinese hospitality at a wedding.  It's also perhaps this familiarity with the family that allowed me to get that great photo of the father of the groom, as he was joking with me about how many times I had photographed him.  Chinese weddings tend to start off much the same as a traditional English wedding, with the bride in a white dress and a civil ceremony.  Once they move onto the Chinese restaurant things tend to be very different, with much more colour (always red), firecrackers, dancing unicorns, games and quite often some fairly serious drinking, usually undertaken by the best man, who, I must say, undertook this role with considerable enthusiasm!  There is always so much going on that it is a fantastic opportunity to get some great wedding photos!  Here is a selection:

Woodlands Hotel Wedding

Jenny and Mark were one of the first couples to book us for this year after seeing us at the Oulton Hall Wedding Fair back in 2011.  Booking so far in advance were once the norm, but more recently people have been booking at fairly short notice.  Last month we took two bookings for May with just three weeks notice!  May was also an anniversary for Magic Moments, as we filmed our first wedding on 1 May 1993.  It's so hard to believe that Anne-Marie and Andrew Shaw will have just celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary!  Anyway, Jenny and Mark were married at St. Peter's at Morley, before travelling the short distance to the Woodlands Hotel for their reception.  As soon as we started to take the guy shots at the church it started to rain, and as soon as we finished the sun came out - typical.  The sun was still out when we arrived at the Wooodlands and stayed out for the rest of the day.  We have been to the Woodlands many times over the years but it is now under new ownership and there have been many improvements for the better since it changed hands.