Kim Mason

My Wedding Photography

1983 - 2009 : What's Changed?

I receive emails asking about my style of wedding photography and how I got started. In general I avoid these questions because (in all honesty) if I was any good with words I'd be a writer and not a photographer.

Recently, however, ("however" on this occasion means I am going to talk about my work) I was going through some old images and was struck by how much my work had hardly altered since I took my first wedding photographs in 1983.

Here's an example. This image was taken in 1983 :

This is from a wedding in 2006 :


and this was taken in May 2009 :


I include the wedding couple in the 2006 & 2009 images but essentially it's the same photograph.


Here's another example. The 1983 image first:


this is from a wedding in 2008 :


And now one from 2009 :


Again it's the same shot.

The only thing that's changed is I now use wider angle lenses. I still have the same approach and I still use 35mm cameras (although now it's digital). I guess you could say still the same stills (groan).

And the reason my wedding photography is more or less the same is because my attitude has not changed since 1983; I tell the story of the day, leave events to unfold naturally and (also) capture what is happening around the day's main characters.

My wedding photography style came about by pure chance. The groom in the 1983 wedding (a keen photographer himself) wanted "candid-type" images in addition to traditional wedding photographs and asked me if I would take them. It really was as simple as that.

The final image is me at work in '83. I no longer have the "tank-metal" built Pentax SLR (alas) but I do still have the suit (alas).



Thanks for looking.