Claire and Toby were married the weekend before last at Coltsfoot Country Retreat near Datchworth in Hertfordshire. It was a fantastic wedding with a super bunch of people.  From their pre-wedding shoot I knew that Claire and Toby were going to be great to spend time with and photograph and so it proved.

We’d been looking forward to photographing at Coltsfoot ever since Claire and Toby booked us at last year’s National Wedding Show.  Coltsfoot is one of our new favourite venues.  It’s self contained, has great accommodation on site, the food is wonderful and the staff helpful and attentive.  There’s plenty of interesting locations for photography.  And because Coltsfoot is in Hertfordshire you benefit from registrars with a relaxed and common-sense approach to photography during the ceremony.

Claire and Toby’s wedding day started off cloudy but the weather got progressively better as the day went on.  Guests were able to relax outside and we could carry on photographing outside even as night fell. With our lighting kit put to good use we got some great images.

Here are a few of our favourite photographs from the day.  Look out for the full gallery online in a few weeks.

Every so often I like to take time to recharge the creative batteries and create some images just for fun.  The idea of these shoots is to do something different and challenging – stylistically or technically.  I love trying out new ideas when it doesn’t really matter whether they work or not.

It’s not unusual for clients to see the results from a creative day shoot and ask for something similar themselves.

On this shoot I had the pleasure of working again with our good friend Toni Perryman.  Toni created the stunning hair and makeup, and styles and also found us the fab urban location.  My only brief to Toni was to create something that would look completely incongruous in a grungy urban location.

Our models for the day were Georgia and Ash who were both brilliant and super tolerant as we experimented with our lights to create these images.

Lola assisted on the shoot and is responsible for the stunning post production work on these pictures.

This first set of pictures are of Georgia.  Look out for Ash’s pictures next week.

With the summer wedding season in full swing it seems an age since we photographed Lisa and Mark’s wedding.  But it was less than two weeks ago and they are still on honeymoon Lisa and Mark hold the record for the longest-booked-in-advance couple we’ve ever had.  No surprise then that Lisa also managed to organise perfect weather for the day. It was a very pleasant surprise since the day before there were flash floods on the roads in Northamptonshire so bad was the rain.  Lisa and Mark were married at the Orangery at Whittlebury Hall and their reception was at The Atrium. The good weather meant that we could enjoy the lovely grounds for photographs.

As usual the day started with Karen with the girls. This time hair and makeup was done in Hayley Young’s Rouge Salon in Stony Stratford.  Hayley and Steve were wedding clients last year so it was great to catch up with them again.

The guys got ready at Lisa and Mark’s home and were so well organised that we were at the venue in plenty of time for a beer or two.

This wedding was under Northamptonshire’s slightly relaxed 2009 rules for photography so we managed to capture some nice moments during the ceremony.

Lisa and Mark are a lovely couple and we had a great time taking their photographs.  We’re looking forward to seeing them again in a couple of weeks at the studio.

Anyway here is a sneak preview of a few of our pictures: