As a wedding photographer I absolutely love what I do and feel very honoured to be asked to play such a major role in what is arguably, one of the best day of someone’s life. Memories are often brought back to life with good photography and that is what I try to capture. I want my photographs to each tell a story and this particular wedding made a great story!
One of the questions I am often asked is how far would I be willing to travel to photograph a wedding. Well earlier this year, Sarah and Vincent asked me if I would be a destination wedding photographer for their wedding at the Sydney Opera House in Australia. That’s around 10557 miles from London, so my answer to the question now would be that anywhere in-between London and Australia is fine by me!
Being a Sydney Opera House Wedding Photographer
So my chance to be a wedding photographer at the Sydney Opera House came about when Sarah and Vincent first got in touch with me last year. They wanted some pre-wedding photographs taken of themselves in various London locations and so it was that we met up on a cold Sunday morning for a project that would ultimately end in Australia!
Sarah and Vincent got back in touch with me over the summer and together we were choosing some stunning photographs from the London shoot with which to illustrate the Guest Book, when the subject of the actual wedding cropped up. Sarah is a huge fan of my dramatic sky photographs and both she and Vincent were very keen for me to be their official wedding photographer. I must admit to being quite nervous about the whole thing as I’d never been a destination wedding photographer before and the logistics behind it all seemed rather overwhelming but the lure of it proved too exciting to turn down.
Heading for an Australian Wedding
So the flights and hotel were all booked and everything was set for Sarah and Vincent’s Sydney wedding in October. I made sure that I had everything I needed, including my trusted companion and fellow photographer John Erskine. John is himself a professional wedding photographer and so I was delighted that he would be sharing this unique experience with me.
John and I arrived in Sydney a couple of days before the wedding which was vital to allow us both time to recover from the 10 hours time difference (not forgetting the daylight saving which came into effect the day before the wedding) and to capture the mood and essence of this great Australian city with a few experimental shots beforehand.
The Pre-Wedding Shoot
We had planned to do a pre-wedding shoot with Sarah and Vincent the day we arrived, but we soon hit upon a potential problem. The weekend of the wedding had coincided with the Royal Australian Navy International Fleet Review which meant that Sydney was busier than usual. The Review was commemorating the first entry of the Royal Australian Navy’s fleet into Sydney Harbour in 1913 and the event had attracted an extra one million visitors to the city. As we surveyed the huge crowds milling around the Opera House we did wonder how on earth we were going to manage to pull together all the photography we had to do during the next few days. It was quite a challenge but if there is one mantra that wedding photographers stick to, it’s to always expect the unexpected and we had come well prepared.
With a lot of patience, good luck and determination we managed to get some striking pre-wedding shots, including the image below of Sydney Harbour. It’s actually a composite of six images stitched together which has worked out beautifully, especially in capturing so much detail. You really get a sense of how busy the harbour is which reflects the fast pace of the city itself.
Here are a few more of those pre-wedding shots taken around Sydney. I think the photographs manage to capture the emotions and personalities of both Sarah and Vincent. They were a joy to photograph as they were naturally very at ease with one another and so the shots taken have a beautiful simplicity about them. We were very much in luck with that stunning sunset!
