Clare and Mark’s was my third wedding of this week and took place within the beautiful parish church of St. Mary’s in the village of Standon in Hertfordshire. Although the weather the previous night was like a monsoon, as is my fantastic luck so far this year, the clouds magically parted right on cue as I arrived at Claire’s house for the getting ready shots and the sun blazed away all day from that point on! Mark is Canadian so there were many family members who had made the long journey from Vancouver, including his two (yes, two) best men who made a more than moving speech about their friend and his new bride - not at all like the usual British best man’s speech, ie: rude!

Clare looked stunning I think you’ll agree. Here’s a small selection of their wedding images.

(In case you’re wondering, my second wedding of this week took place in Fanhams Hall Hotel and its fantastic grounds in Ware, Hertfordshire between Lynsey and Mike - but Lynsey is very shy about her images apperaring on here)!

Sarah and Jason’s wedding took place at the very elegant Hanbury Manor near Thundridge in Hertfordshire last Saturday on a beautiful May day. The venue has plenty of scope for beautiful bride and groom portraits as you can see here and as the grounds are so vast, the wedding co-ordinator laid on a golf buggy to get us around!

Later in the day as is usual, I requested that there be food and drink made available to me during the wedding breakfast, but  instead of the expected plate of sandwiches, I was treated to the same 3 course meal that the guests had, featuring Gressingham duck and for dessert a creme brulee with white chocolate and fresh raspberries - all I can say is Hanbury Manor has a wonderful chef!

This weekend I have two weddings booked and a further wedding on Tuesday to shoot. Two of the venues are fairly gloomy inside - both featuring oak panelling. With this in mind, I have taken the step of hiring  a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera. I already own and love my 5D and 40D cameras, but I felt that to make the most of the very high ISO and low noise on images that the new model offers would be the sensible thing to do - the new model has a larger sensor size and double the count of pixels than the MK I.

My clients and their wedding images are what matters to me and doing whatever it takes to get the images they want and deserve is just part of the 1st class service I offer all my couples. Also secretly, I’m rather excited by the prospect of using this beast, and I can’t wait to share some of the resulting images with you next week!

I have today launched a brand new dynamic slideshow feature on my website, which you can access from the main home page via the ’slideshow’ link. It actually carries proofing images from pre-wedding shoots or weddings but displays them as a slideshow with music.

The added features of this are in the bottom right hand corner of the slideshow window as shown here - you can choose to view the whole show or pick your own starting place by clicking the thumbnail icon (four squares). The next button allows you to pause the show and perhaps go and make yourself a nice cup of tea and then play the show again.  The arrow icon allows you to start the show afresh - finally, the email button - this allows you to send the link of the slideshow directly to whoever you like so they can watch and enjoy the images too! Added to this, if the music gets a bit tiresome, you have the option to click the graphic equaliser icon bottom left which will let you once more enjoy the silence! 

I will be regularly adding more slideshows as my pre-wedding shoots and weddings are completed, so make sure you check back if you are a couple whose wedding I am shooting!

And well done for finding my new blog which allows me to showcase my most recent work in a much bigger format than the previous one. The old Blogger blog will continue to appear for a further couple of weeks and then this new blog will replace it entirely.

To start with and to continue where I left off, here are some images from Sally and Dean’s wedding last Saturday, held in the beautiful surroundings of The Priory in Ware, Herts. And yes (Sarah), the weather was great yet again once the only minor shower of the day had passed!