This Saturday, by the river Thames, I will be shooting Jo & David’s wedding. It’s going to be special.
I met David while working for Raleigh International in Borneo in 2010. He was a project manager assigned to oversee the installation by young volunteers of gravity water feed systems into remote villages in the Pitas region of the state of Sabah. His was the first of seven projects I photographed for Raleigh and I had a great few days working with him.
Buoyed by his dashing good looks, unfaltering sense of humour and eclectic wardrobe tastes, not to mention his dogged hard work, David proved a big hit with the young volunteers and fellow project managers alike.
Not long after returning from South East Asia, David and Jo met. She too was bowled over by this man and his lederhosen, and he now carried an air of excitement and disbelief in his luck in finding her. Exactly one year later, he proposed in the grounds of the hotel in Brugge that he’d whisked her away to as a surprise. Beneath a 10 foot red plastic poodle, no less.
And pretty much another year to the day, amongst family and friends, including a smattering of ex-Raleighites, they will be tying the knot and I am excited to be their photographer. So to get them feeling relaxed in front of the camera (although I knew that David doesn’t massively struggle here), last week, they both came down to Brighton for their pre-wedding shoot, which we did in nearby Stanmer Park and in the centre of town.
It was a lot of fun. Despite them standing shoulder-high in long grass and lying down amongst daisies and buttercups, David’s hayfever didn’t dampen his spirits and Jo was at ease and a joy to photograph. We were even ambushed by a couple of dogs who wanted a piece of the action.
But it was easy for me to capture just how happy these guys are together, as it is ever-present. I barely needed to suggest poses or gestures. They just happened. I didn’t direct them. They didn’t need me to.
And it just adds to the excitement for me to know that half my work is done for me, before I even arrive at her Mum’s to photograph Jo getting ready on Saturday, for there is no doubt how sure these two are about each other.
It makes my job a lot easier. But it also makes it a pleasure.
