The Batblog by Photobat | Portrait and Wedding

There was one thing that Renee said to me when she was talking about photographing her wedding that set in my mind how this wedding was going to play out.

“We are getting married at St Davids and having the Imperial March from Star Wars as the Recessional Music”

My initial thoughts were that this is going to be fun with a touch of geek/nerd. You can go over the top when you are planning those little details in your wedding, too much and it’s overkill, too little and no one notices. Renee and Dave had it just at the right balance with the guests first inkling being the laughs and smiles as they realised that music coming from that sacred organ in that big old church was pure late 70’s Sci Fi.

There were the other touches too, the tardis on the garter, the tardis on the gifts table and the tardis with Tom Baker-esk scarf and caketoppers. Add in the button hole and cufflinks being role playing dice and you knew exactly who these guys were.

And who says geeks can’t look good? These guys looked fantastic and every other bit of the wedding was spectacular. The huge 4 million course guys breakfast, the red kombi for the girls, that great dress, those friendly butterflies, the brief zombie walk and a little boat trip out to the reception at MONA.

I think the best part was exactly what I knew it would be. The fun. Oh so much fun.

Dave and Renee are awesome, geeky and awesome. Congratulations on getting hitched and for doing it your way.

here was one thing that Renee said to me when she was talking about her wedding that set in my mind how this wedding was going to play out.

“We are getting married at St Davids and having the Imperial March from Star Wars as the Recessional Music”

My initial thoughts were that this is going to be fun with a touch of geek/nerd. You can go over the top when you are planning those little details in your wedding, too much and it’s overkill, too little and no one notices. Renee and Dave had it just at the right balance with the guests first inkling being the laughs and smiles as they realised that music coming from that sacred organ in that big old church was pure late 70’s Sci Fi.

There were the other touches too, the tardis on the garter, the tardis on the gifts table and the tardis with Tom Baker-esk scarf and caketoppers. Add in the button hole and cufflinks being role playing dice and you knew exactly who these guys were.

And who says geeks can’t look good? These guys looked fantastic and every other bit of the wedding was spectacular. The huge 4 million course guys breakfast, the red kombi for the girls, that great dress, the brief zombie walk and a little boat trip out to the reception at MONA.

I think the best part was exactly what I knew it would be. The fun. Oh so much fun.

Dave and Renee are awesome, geeky and awesome. Congratulations on getting hitched and for doing it your way.

It’s the age old story…

Girl need an accountant.

Boy is an accountant.

Girl’s friend recommended Boy.

Girl’s friend realises that Boy and Girl would be a good match in more than a professional way.

Blind date.

Some romancing.

A hidden ring in a sock draw for months.

A proposal.

An acceptance.

Wedding.

Age old story

Well, the rains did not come and the flood waters did not rise and Chris and Anita managed to not need any boats or helicopters to get into Longford for their wedding. There was a bit of an unexpected Transformers theme from the wedding with the cuff links and unexpected garter florish.  You might notice are that the bridesmaids were a touch on the crazy side just the way we like them. Thanks again Chris and Anita for a great day and fun night. Have fun up in Sydney.

Special hello to the Rae and Partner Girls, sorry about the delay in getting this up for you

I often get asked if I travel for weddings, generally the people asking are from Hobart or the north west. My typical answer is “The furthest we have travelled for a wedding is Scotland”.
Janie and Derrek are from Launceston, well Derrek came via Canada but he’s a local now and it was 5 years ago last week that we, along with a few hundred tourists stormed Edinburgh Castle for the wedding.

Back in the day, I photoshopped out all the people in the background of this image. Now I like them as they add to the whole feal of the day. There were people everywhere and we had a specially assigned castle guy to look after us and make sure we didn’t do anything bad. Examples of bad things that we did manage to do include block entry way, stay on the same spot for 5 minutes and my favourite was take photos on the stairs. I didn’t really want anyone else on the stairs so I suggested that the bridesmaids drop their flowers at the top of the stairs and make a fuss picking them up. That blocked the stairs for just a couple of minutes needed to get a couple of shots.

Happy Anniversary Janie and Derrek and thanks again for the adventure.

The latest issue of Capture Magazine is their annual Wedding Special. I was special enough to get interviewed for it and get a couple of photos featured. The article I’m in is about pricing weddings, so  more of interest for the photographers out there than the nice everyday non camera wielding folk. I hope that people out there get something good and insightful out of what I had to share, pricing is a tricky business. As always, it is a great issue and has some great info and some even better photographers including some of the new crop of great photographers.

The cover image was shot by the pretty fantastic Jonas Peterson.

It’s always great to get a wedding album back from our awesome album makers and I realised it’s been a while since i’ve posted photos of an actual album.

Lauren and Dain’s album is a vertical 10×14 inch album with a black leather colour. I had a hard time letting this one go out of the studio but it had to go to it’s new home. Many hours go into putting together the design, my style of albums are quite clean and simple but that probably takes the most time to design. So after many hours of designing, working the image and finalising the layout it’s always a little hard to let go. I’m sure I’ll meet this album again one day in the future or maybe I’ll go and get myself a copy.

So why get a wedding album? Lets just say that in 100 years your family will still be able to view the album as it’s all archival. You may be able to view your digital files as long as you can still access them, think back to the days of floppy disk, most people can’t get access to the data on them anymore. As time moves on so does technology, who knows in 100 years if jpeg will be viewable? It’s also the best way to display your wedding story, cleanly and easily showing all the highlights of the day and also how good you look.

I personally am kind of sad that my parents don’t really have a wedding album that shows their day, sure there are a couple of photos about of my dad is his brown pinstripe suit in all it’s 70′s goodness. Plus all my grandparents looking all dressed up well. But I would have loved to see all the other bits of the day, the little handmade details at the reception, the cars and most importantly the emotions of the day. I’m sure Saffron, my baby girl,  would also have loved to see all this. I’m glad that the clients that have albums will be able to share them with their kids and grandkids letting them in on all the stories that the images prompt.

After an epic 3 days last week the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) held the Australian Professional Photography Awards (APPA) in Sydney. I was both an entrant and a judge. Entering takes ages, thinking about what to enter, re thinking about it, then over thinking it and trying to clear my thought to focus on what will be an award image. Even though i’m a judge it is still very hard to get up 4 great images to enter. Knowing all the effort that goes into entering, it can be hard to give a not so nice score to a print when it comes up to be judged. I know what it is like to just miss the mark, it happened to my twice with 2 of my prints comming within 1 and 2 points of getting an award. It proves to the people out there that judges are human and know what it is like to just miss out. I can see what the issues are with those images now, over thinking about it blinded me when I was finalising them. So next year, less thinking, more gutt instinct!

Congratulations to every one that picked up some awards. It was a pleasure to be able to talk up some prints into the gold catergory, a place reserved for really stand out work. When a link to all the award images is avaliable i’ll post it up.

In saying that, i did pick up a Silver in the wedding catergory (above), Silver in the portrait catergory (this image contains artistic nudity, if you are old enough please click here to view, you will need to enter the password “ok” to view) as well as a silver and silver distinction in the wedding album catergory. I really like getting awards for wedding albums, it isn’t just one stand out image from one wedding being judged. It’s the whole story being judged, in my case over 100 images in each of the albums. So i’m pretty happy about that.

So now I have to start thinking about next year now, but not too hard.

I had some jealousy issues with Ivan and Alicias place. Cookbooks and coffee machine. Let leave it and that so we can focus on how amazing they made their wedding day was.

The best weddings are the ones with a real hugh lump of who the couple are. This wedding was totally about Ivan and Alicia. When Ivan first told me that they were looking to get married in June, in the Hartz Mountains and hopefully there will be snow, I was excited. This is a couple who actively wanted some average weather to play a part in their day. And it cetrainly did play a part, but that was ok, the rain was solved with an umbrella and the mud was solved by bumblebee gum boots (as if there was any other option). So Ivan has some scottish blood in him, so instead of the usual “i’m wearing a kilt” it was decided to go in search of some friendly and slightly frisky Highland Cows.

So you can tell they love the outdoors but they also love the indoors, especially their kitchen where they made their wedding cake. It’s not often that you get to the reception and the first thing the couple do is asselble the cake. So many more things I can say but I think the photos can say more.

Congratulations again Ivan and Alicia, may you have a long life and possible have some baby cows named after you!

Bart and Kelly are fun. I mean like really fun. They are from a large country on the other side of the planet called the United States of America, they met and fell in love over there and then moved to a little Australian town called Sydney. They decided on a nice simple wedding in one of their favourite places, which is so small that i’d never heard of it. I’m glad I now where Loongana is now, it’s spectacular and I want to go back. This was Bart and Kelly’s third trip to Tasmania and the third time they have headed to Mountain Valley Wilderness Holidays.

Anyway back to the happy couple, they were joined by parents, the owners of Mountain Valley Wilderness Holidays, Celebrant Terese Tanner and a few native hens. Such a small group for such a big occasion. To be honest, more people would have been too many. It was perfect (apart from the freezing cold). A unique part of the day was everyone having a vote as to which dress Kelly was going to wear. I’m impressed by Kelly’s hiking in heals and braving the cold to get some of these shots and also Bart’s unexpected scarf. 

Congratulations again Bart and Kelly on finding each other and also thanks for letting me tag along on  your special day and also for introducing me to one of the best locations i’ve ever been to.

A quick preview from Wednesday’s wedding. I can’t wait to show you these shots, this shot is on the way to a fantastic location… as if this location isn’t fantastic enough.