My Favourite Wedding Pictures

If you have read this blog recently then you will see that I have put together a collection of my recent favourite images - which contains around 150 images taken over the past 6 months. We'll I have gone a small step further and I have narrowed this down to my favourite 50 or so images. This is, of course, an entirely personal and subjective exercise but it is one that I get immense pleasure and is one of my main motivations.

There are a range of images that to me work well - a good proportion are black and white, with some colour - but overwhelmingly they have a simple approach and a compelling impact, to me at least.

I was speaking to a fellow professional on the weekend, a videographer, and he was commenting on how much is possible these days to edit pictures and adjust them on the computer. I replied that we have a much more simple and less artificial approach in that we look to do as much of the creativity when we take the picture rather than afterwards - and almost all these pictures have received fairly limited processing.

Here is the link to see the show, it takes about 5 minutes to play, start to finish.

See my recent favourites click here. This will open in a new window and will take a few moments to load, so please be patient.

Album Designs

We are very interested in how our images are presented and as professionals we see the difference good presentation makes to images. This year we have invested in the services of a graphic designer - Ness - who has worked with us since we formed PureLight. She did all the original branding for the business. There is most definitely a need for graphic design with more contemporary album layouts, to make sure there is a flow and consistency across the whole album. This is, of course, a different skill from the one required to take the photographs in the first place - which is part of the reason why we asked Ness to help us with this. It also means we can focus more of our efforts on taking the photographs.

Here are links to two recent layouts from Ness. One is for Ash and Geeta, who were married in May, and the other is for Claire and Gareth, who were also married in May.

See Ash and Geeta's layouts by clicking here. This will open in a new window and will take a few moments to load, so please be patient.

See Claire and Gareth's layouts by clicking here. This will open in a new window and will take a few moments to load, so please be patient.

We work to a system where we (or should I say Ness) provides the initial design and then our couples can make changes. This is so much easier for our couples, as the task of choosing pictures for the album is one that many find very difficult. We always think pictures look their best when they are in the context of an album or even a slideshow - where they tell the story of the day.

Happy viewing and thanks to Ness for all her hard work and excellent designs.

Recent Wedding - Sarah and James

Well, all seemed to go well in London - such hot weather - and I arrived back around 3pm on Sunday afternoon. I have just uploaded the images for James and Sarah, who were married in Wales (we do get around) on the 28th June. They live in a lovely spot near Welshpool, on the North Wales / English border. Sarah knew a bride (Lizzie) and I had photographed her wedding in 2006 and so Sarah made contact with us last year.

Here are a few of the pictures. You can see more of their pictures at the recent wedding gallery.


I loved these colours (above).






I really like candid pictures, where you just catch people as they are. This is a great picture of Sarah, who had arrived in her Mini.


This was a great notice-board in James and Sarah's kitchen - the black and white picture of the bride riding pillion on the bike is fab.

Off to London for the weekend

If you ever wondered, on one of those rare moments, about what it is like to be a wedding photographer well here is a small insight. I'm off to catch a train in a moment, to London to stay overnight. I will be photographing Hayley and Gavin's wedding tomorrow (congratulations to them) just by St James' Park, central London. They are getting married at the Horse Guards Chapel and the reception is on the other side of the park. The finish is a bit late, so I have arranged to stay over on the Saturday night.

I am meeting a couple on Sunday morning in central London who are getting married next year and are interested in booking us. Their wedding is in Surrey, so it made sense to meet up whilst I was in London. I've also said that I would do some 'try before you buy' pictures for them, as I will of course have my camera equipment with me anyway, and it will be something different for them.

Oh, it is my wedding anniversary today and I even managed to go out for lunch with my wife, which made a nice change.

Samantha is shooting a different wedding tomorrow, Ellie and George (congratulations to them also), although this is a bit more local. This weekend is one of the busiest for weddings, as it is the first weekend of the school holidays.

Well, I hope you all enjoy the nice weather.

Stapleford Park Make-Over Shoot

Well today I was out at Stapleford Park to do a make-over shoot with Lincolnshire Pride magazine. Fran had been entered by her mum for a competition and was selected as the winner. She had a full make-over - hair, make-up and a fresh set of clothes provided by Jane Young of Newark to model.

Stapleford Park is a fantastic venue and made a great location for the photographs. You can see more at our recent gallery and there are a few pictures below. Also look out for the pictures in the September issue of Lincolnshire Pride (we also did the photography for the June, July and August editions too).

Recent Wedding Pictures

Hi and good morning,

I'm starting to recover from last Sunday (see post below)! We met a couple yesterday evening for an enquiry meeting at our studio in Hexgreave Country Hall and I was briefly speaking to them about how we set up this website, so that we have control of the content on the site. This means we can add fresh content as our photography develops and to reflect our most recent work. It is not uncommon for most websites to be rather static, by this I mean most of the content stays the same and inevitably it gets out of date. We wanted this site to reflect the contemporary style of our wedding and portrait photography and so we have the ability to upload fresh content as we like.

This is all to say that I have just added around 20 or so images to the wedding gallery, which are all images taken within the last 6 months. They are from a slightly larger group of my favourite images from the last 6 months (see post below). It may take a short while to load, but please feel free to have a look. Here is a link: Click here for our Wedding Gallery

It was a long day..

We left Newark just before 7am on Sunday morning to travel to Birmingham. Karima and Raj were getting married at the Forest of Arden Marriott Hotel / Golf Club later that day. We photographed the wedding for Karima's sister, Salima and her now husband Arif, last September and so this was always going to be a really nice event to cover. Asian weddings are so friendly and welcoming - at least that is the case with Karima and Raj and their families, we feel like part of the family!

I dropped Samantha off at Karima's parents' house at 8:30am and then I went to the hotel and met Raj for around 9am. The wedding was not till 12 noon, but we had a lot to cover before then. I won't go through all of the details for the day - but the main reception was for around 300 guests and included - as is always the case at asian weddings - lots of dancing. The wedding ended at around 9:30pm, when the families said goodbye to Karima and Raj in what is known as the crying ceremony, for the obvious reason. By the time we packed up and said our own goodbyes it was just after 10pm.

Sam dropped me off at home at around 11:40pm - which made it a rather long day.

It was lovely to meet all the families again - we feel we know so many of them. Look out for the photographs, which will be on-line towards the end of August.

Off to sleep for me!

Some Recent Favourite Wedding Images

Today was very unusual, in that we had no wedding to photograph - a nice change. My wife decided to go down to London with two of my daughters and I have been on dog-sitting duty.

So, I have put together a collection of some of my recent favourite wedding images. These have all been taken this year and they are simply my favourites - no other choice or criteria involved. Every photographer has a slightly different style and these images reflect my style and the type of photographs taken by PureLight. You can view them by clicking the show below. It might take a short while to load, so please be patient.

You can also see the same show in a new and larger window by clicking here.

Lifestyle Portraits

Lifestyle portraits are about capturing life. The essence is to create pictures with a natural feel. We shoot these pictures on location, either in the grounds of Hexgreave Hall, where we have a studio, or on location elsewhere. Here are some recent pictures of Mia and Dom. I met Mia at LA Fitness Newark, as she volunteered to do some marketing images for a promotion we were running - you can see these pictures in the current issue of Nottinghamshire Living. She was unsure about the process to start with, but so liked the approach and images that she booked a shoot with her boyfriend, Dom.

The pictures were taken around the grounds of Hexgreave Hall Estate. I like the mixture of styles across the images. They both really enjoyed the shoot and they will soon have some great images for their walls!

Best wishes to both Mia and Dom, it was lovely to take your pictures.

Recent Weddings

Well it is the main season for weddings and we have been busy. We have also started to upload portrait images here too, including lifestyle and engagement shoots. If you look on our recent wedding gallery and our client gallery you will see quite a few recent examples of our work.

These include:

Hayley and Gavin engagement shoot. I met Hayley and Gavin in central London on the 22nd June to finalise the details for their wedding photography, as they are getting married in late July, and I also took some engagement pictures.

Lucy and Peter were married in Shropshire in May. This was very much a village style wedding, as Lucy walked to church and then Lucy and Peter and their guests walked home with the reception in a marquee.

Dan and Rita were married in Nottinghamshire in May. Rita is Chinese so this wedding has a very different feel and made for some great and very unusual images.

Claire and Gareth were married at Colwick Hall in May. They have some lovely pictures from Gareth brushing his shoes in the morning to fireworks at night.

The wedding of Ash and Geeta was our first Asian wedding of the year. They were also married in May, with the wedding on a Saturday in Harrow and the reception held on the following Sunday at the Sheraton in Heathrow.

Katie and Will came across a few weeks ago for some engagement pictures. They are getting married later in the year in early September.

And, finally, I have just uploaded the pictures for Claire and Jamie, who were married in late May at Belton Woods Hotel, near Grantham, and also the pictures for Alexa and Andy, who were married in early June in Shropshire.

So you can see it has been a busy few weeks and please do take the time to have a look at our recent weddings page.

I am off to do another engagement shoot in central London... I hope you all have a good day.
Glen