06/3/10

A Shift?

I don’t do colour wedding photography. Not much anyway. That’s what I tell everyone. Pigs’ll fly before I shoot lots of colour.

Thing is, is that really true?

Looking at some of my latest work, I have to ask whether I’m experiencing a shift.

Take these photographs from a recent wedding, for instance. It was only after I’d uploaded them on to the blog (originally with the intention of running them without text) that I realized half of them were colour pictures.

Is it a blip? Or the start of a bigger development in my shooting style? Should I even care?

Maybe not. But in light of what I’ve said about colour photography in the past, all I can say is that if you are a pig farmer you’d better go and check your livestock are still on the ground.

Wedding guest at the bride's house, Co. Cork, Ireland

Wedding photography of a bride getting ready on her wedding day, Co. Cork, Ireland

: (c) Roger Overall 2010

Flowers at a church in Co. Cork on a wedding day.

Father of the groom on his son's wedding day, Co. Cork, Ireland

Bride arrives at Coomhola church, Co. Cork, Ireland on her wedding day

Bride and groom lighting a candle on their wedding day, Co. Cork, Ireland

Priest forgets the bride's name during her wedding ceremony, Co. Cork, Ireland

Bride being kissed by a guest on the receiving line on her wedding day, Co. Cork, Ireland

Little girl watches champagne being poured at a wedding reception, Co. Cork, Ireland

Little boy at a wedding reception, Co. Cork, Ireland

Guests laughing at a wedding reception in Bantry, Co. Cork, Ireland

A bride inspects her wedding cake on her wedding day, Co. Cork, Ireland

Bride and groom enter the dining hall on their wedding day, Co. Cork, Ireland

06/2/10

PictureBoo – 2nd June 2010

Sometimes a single photograph just doesn’t tell the whole story.

Click on the link or press the play button on the player below to find out what happened (as if you couldn’t guess):

Bride and groom watch a white dove take flight, Co. Cork, Ireland

The escape. (c) Roger Overall 2009

Wedding photograph of a groom's jacket being cleaned, Cork, Ireland

The revenge. (c) Roger Overall 2009

WeddingBoo #5 – The Poo Boo

05/24/10

Did You Ever See A Happier Bride?

Here are some selects from a recent wedding in Glandore, west Co. Cork. Did you ever see a happier bride?

Documentary wedding photography of a bride and her father on the morning of her wedding in county Cork, Ireland

Documentary wedding photography of candles in the window of the Church of Ireland church in Glandore, county Cork, on the day of a wedding

Groom being congratulated on his wedding day

Documentary wedding photograph of a bride arriving at the church

Afternoon tea outside in Glandore, west county Cork, Ireland

Documentary photograph of wedding guest laughing

Documentary wedding photograph of a bride and groom sharing a joke

Documentary photograph of a couple entering the dining room

05/5/10

PictureBoo – 5th May 2010

Today’s PictureBoo discusses a pet hate of mine: wedding photographers who engineer false memories. I think this is unforgivable.

"I knew she'd be late." (c) Roger Overall 2007

04/14/10

First Day Of Term

The first wedding of a new season is always special.

By the time it comes round, my batteries are recharged and I’m keen to get going again. At the same time, there’s always a little anxiety. Will I be able to produce the goods? The classical guys have it easier. They get to call the shots. They are in control. Documentary wedding photographers have to roll with the dice others are throwing. It can be a bit of a roller-coaster ride. You’re never sure what’s going to happen, how the light will be and (most nerve-racking of all) whether you’ll see a photograph before it happens, or react in time to something unexpected.

Therese and Craig’s wedding was a fantastic way to start the 2010 season a few weeks ago. Wonderful couple, warm guests, lots going on. I loved every moment.

04/2/10

No More Children

Children are great at weddings. They really are. They get so bored. That means you never know what they’re likely to do at any given moment. That makes for great photographs.

There’s a problem, though.

It’s too easy.

If you watch a child long enough at a wedding they’ll so something remarkable.

Cute and remarkable is a powerful mix. Tons of documentary wedding photographs rely on this. Lots of mine do.

Worse still, these pictures end up being entered for awards, where they do very well. I should know. Photographs of children (mis)behaving at weddings have been at the heart of much of my award success in the past 12 months. My two winning panels at the 2010 National Photographic Awards featured children almost exclusively.

Nice, but in a wedding category, shouldn’t the focus be on the bride and groom?

Yes, it should.

Don’t think I’ll be handing any awards back, mind. I haven’t won nearly enough to start being dismissive of them.

Instead, I’ve set myself a rule for this year’s entries into the heats for the 2011 National Photographic Awards.

Absolutely, definitely, positively, NO children in any of the photographs whatsoever at all.

Except this one:

03/27/10

Airport Exhibition

Last Monday I went to the launch of the National Photographic Exhibition. Last year 500,000 people saw the photographs. A similar number is expected again in 2010. That’s great. Five of my photographs are included in the exhibit.

One of the reasons the exhibition gets such phenomenal viewing figures is the choice of venues throughout Ireland – all of which are public spaces.

The photographs will be on show at Cork airport in the arrivals and departure hall for several weeks before moving on to Limerick.

Already, we’ve had an enquiry from somebody who saw my work while traveling.

I was back at the airport on Tuesday, this time as a passenger, and I took this grab shot of the exhibition.

National Photographic Exhibition 2010 at Cork Airport

The 2010 National Photographic Exhibition on display in Cork airport's arrival and departure halls. (c) Roger Overall 2010

I also took this one. It makes me smile how children and adults have such different ways of passing the time while waiting for their flights.

Waiting in the departures lounge at Cork airport

Waiting. (c) Roger Overall 2010

03/22/10

Played For And Got

A lot of people think that documentary photography is about luck. Sure, sometimes luck plays a part, though as the saying goes: it often favours the prepared.

Anyway, here’s a photograph that looks lucky. In fact it wasn’t. It was anticipated.

I took it at a wedding last weekend, while waiting for the bride to arrive.

The flower girl and pageboy were running in and out of the church – you’ve gotta do something to stave off boredom, right? I reckoned that if I could get somebody, preferably the bride with her dad, on the right of the frame and either of the children on the left we’d have an interesting photograph.

In Ireland, guests have a relaxed approach to turning up at the wedding ceremony. I’ve seen people, crowds of them, arrive half an hour late. Usually, things work out OK. Brides are, as is their prerogative, sometimes even later, which balances things out. So while I was anticipating the bride, four guests appeared instead.

Now all I needed was one of the children and I was in business.

Easy enough you’d think, but I was shooting with a Canon 5D II, which has the response of tortoise – a very lazy tortoise on Valium at that. I practically had to press the shutter release while the child was still in the building. I was a little late, as the girl’s bouquet is just nudging out of the frame. Nevertheless, her stance is good and I like the interaction between the outermost guests on the right.

Lucky? Hah!

03/17/10

St Patrick’s Day In Cork

Well, as you can see from the photograph below, things got totally out of hand at the St Patrick’s Day parade here in Cork earlier.

Crocodile Eats Press Photographer In Cork, Ireland

Moments later, he was gone. (c) Roger Overall 2010

A massive crocodile escaped from the secret zoology labs at UCC and went on the rampage, encouraged by one of Cork’s traffic wardens – that’s her with the sword. Police fired tear gas, but to no avail.

This press photographer tried to get a close up photograph using a wide-angle lens and a flash gun.

He was eaten.

I’ll spare you the photograph of that.

…

OK, OK … It didn’t happen.

If truth be told, the secret giant UCC reptiles almost never escape.

There is, though, a serious point to this. In fact, there are two.

1) A documentary photographer is constantly editing reality. This can be done to show the subject in a benign light, or in a negative one. The photograph above shows by far the most original float in the parade. It was fabulous. But it never set off in pursuit of the photographer. He simply turned away at the right moment to give me this shot. The smoke is from the float itself – a special effect. There’s a lesson here. You have to be careful how you photograph things – people just might believe what they think they’re seeing.

2) The second point is this: photographs are not worth a thousand words. Often, photographs are incomprehensible without a caption. You need to understand the context to fully appreciate many documentary pictures. Not always, sure, but you often have to supply words to give the viewer the complete picture – if you’ll forgive the pun. Imagine if you’d only seen the photograph above without any explanation. You’d have no idea what was happening.

And you’d never know about UCC’s covert reptile programme.