Here are the final few selected images from Antonis & Mary's wedding. 

During the party seems to have been a thing for ties ... Kisses... And shots....! And of course, none of our wedding posts are complete without some of these couple images...

Antonis & Mary flew back to Cyprus from the UK and were married a few weeks ago in Limassol at the beautiful Ayias Napa's church and then their reception was held at the Four Seasons. I keep wondering how we get so lucky with the clients that commission us because some of them are so wonderful to work with and Antonis & Mary were definitely no exception. The bride & groom have so much to worry about on the wedding day and yet these guys were so cooperative, friendly & such fun to photograph. Our last few clients have made a concerted effort to make extra time in the day for their wedding photographs and this makes a huge difference in what we can achieve for them. I really love how well their photos have come out and there are a few in their selection of photos that are going to be some of my favorite photos for a long time to come! This is going to be a two parter post - there are way too many photos I wanted to post!

 

I'm absolutely gobsmacked at being voted Hasselblad Photographer of the Month!

Each month members of the Hasselblad Owners Club vote on their favorite image from each member's portfolio page and somehow I received the most votes for the month of July for one of my wedding images! It was completely unexpected and I was totally surprised when I was informed but as you can guess I'm over the moon at being chosen and that I'm now on the Hasselblad website for the month of August and will have an article in the September issue of Victor showcasing some of my work.

Nicholas & Andreana contacted me about a year ago asking about available dates for us to shoot their wedding as they were particularly interested in marrying up (no pun intended!) a good photographer with their chosen location. As we were unavailable for the back end of this year they worked around us and the World Cup (a lot of guests were traveling from South Africa) and they ended up arranging their wedding in May at the Aphrodite Hills.

Their wedding day was a beautiful warm but breezy day which ran perfectly. We had an unusual amount of time to spend with Nic & Andreana for photography as they realised just how important it was to have a chunk of time in the wedding schedule for photos rather than trying to just squeeze in a few photos here and there. I particularly loved the emotion throughout the day between the bride & groom, the family members and their close friends and to top it off we were treated to lots of breaking of glasses during their reception as well as some authentic South African whooping from some of the guests! 

 

 

PS I could listen to Nicholas and Andreana speak all day .... they both have a kickar$e South African accent! Hope you guys are having a great time in the Seychelles!

 

During our pre-wedding meeting, I suggested to Nicolas & Andreana that they meet privately before their wedding ceremony for some 'first look' images and putting aside old fashioned superstitions and traditions they agreed that it would be a great idea.

On the wedding day, just before the ceremony, Paul took Nicolas down to the golf course at the Aphrodite Hills resort, where the wedding took place, and Nicolas waited anxiously for Andreana to join him. With his back turned, she slowly walked up to him and remained just a few meters behind him. Once Nicolas turned around it was as if neither Paul or I or the video guy were even there. They were totally engrossed in their own little bubble as if they'd just fallen in love all over again. It was one of the most beautiful moments I've ever captured with a camera and it was hard to fight back a few tears at seeing the emotion from both Andreana & Nicolas.

After giving them a few minutes together, I asked Nicolas if he would have reacted in the same way seeing his bride for the first time at the church in front of all his guests ... his reply was along the lines of 'definitely not'!!

 If you're a prospective client and interested in setting up a 'first look' moment, just let us know!

I'm kicking myself bigtime for not staying longer in the UK and catching a few more Bon Jovi shows especially when I found out that Bob Geldof turned up last night and sung one of my all-time favorite non-Bon Jovi songs "I Don't Like Mondays" with Jon which he did way, way back on the One Wild Night tour and that the tickets for the last two shows are going for peanuts at £50 a ticket! Oh well ... I'll have to make do with my photos and inflict them on my blog visitors too...! :)

And a couple of my videos from the show (I don't think I'm screaming or singing on these ones thankfully for you!):

 

 

I'm going home (again) to see Bon Jovi (again)! In fact, I should have left for the airport already but my cousin is running VERY late - car trouble. Hopefully we'll get to the airport and catch the flight ok!

As usual, I won't have much internet access while I'm away so if you contact me please bear with me until I can return your email.

When I get back I'll be posting from two of our most recent weddings but in the meantime here's a sneak peak...

Andreana & Nicholas

Antonis & Mary

It's funny because I was wondering what to write as an introduction to Charis and Vicky's wedding post and it got me thinking just how long we've actually known Vicky. I guess we've known Vicky since she was just a little baby so being a part of this wedding and photographing it was extra special for us. Charis and Vicky are a really charming, fun and well suited couple and that reflects strongly in their images.... and there are a lot of images!!!

 

You'd think all brides would cry on their wedding day but they don't!

Don't even ask what I told them to do before I got this all out laughter on camera!! 

If all else fails and you have no decent location to photograph in - shoot in the lift!

One of my favorite shots of the day...

Vicky with her dad just before walking into the ceremony.

Little bridesmaids and page boys always get bored in the ceremony!! I think most adults do too!

I think Charis was showing off his new ring ... not sure about Vicky! ;)

The old public library in Limassol is such a beautiful building and makes for a stunning backdrop.

Big bro & little sis!!

Late afternoon light is simply beautiful and I'm glad we made this stop and took full advantage of this random field!

 

One of my favorite photos of 2010 so far!

It's our first month being listed on the Hasselblad website and one of Paul's images has been voted as the 3rd favorite image of the month by other photographers on the Hasselblad website. The image is of an old, gnarly tree in Hatfield (not the most scenic of towns!!) which was taken on a Fuji 6x17 film camera. The tree actually no longer exists as it was blown down by strong winds a couple of years ago. We definitely miss the UK skies for the drama that they give to photographs!

 

No, we don't have a D3X! We were loaned one earlier this year and used it for a shoot at Akrotiri, Cyprus. It's a great piece of kit with huge dynamic range and, with 24 mega pixels, just as huge files!!

 

Mario and Alexia got married on Boxing Day 2009 and were the lucky winners of the Trash the Dress competition we ran in last year's issue of Wedding by Must magazine. 

 

For those that have asked about our outdoor lighting set-up, we use Profoto equipment. Our generator is a portable Pro-B2 and it's used along with a variety of light modifiers such as a 3x4 softbox, a beauty dish or a ringflash. Using Profoto lighting makes a remarkable difference to the look of our location images especially when working in the harsh sunlight in Cyprus. 

Earlier this year, we were asked by Profoto UK to express our thoughts on our lighting kit which were used in an ad in some UK magazines along with one of our images.

This time of year means only one thing for wedding photographers ... busy! Which is why it's past midnight here on Monday morning and I'm blog posting because I know when I wake up tomorrow I'll be too busy working on someone's wedding album to even remember to blog post!!

I'm playing catch up from last year and this was a shoot for the personal trainer at the local gym I do my best to make time to get to when I'm not as busy as I am at the moment! Andreas went on a super-strict diet pre-shoot and I can't even begin to tell you how much he ate post-shoot! All I can say is he was definitely ripped for the photos!

 

I finally had some time to run through the rest of the photos from our trip away so here's a short post with a few photos and then it's back down to some real blog posts with some real photos!! 

My old point and shoot camera was on it's dying legs at the Bon Jovi concert in Vegas and the new one we'd ordered hadn't arrived yet so these are pretty feeble but hey, Jon's in them somewhere if you look closely!

Las Vegas: Taken with the new point and shoot camera!

 

The M Resort: Las Vegas (the best buffet in town and a rather cool lobby area!)

As mentioned in the last blog post we took a drive down to San Diego to see Kim & David from Ohana Photographers and here's Paul trying to stab David with a rocket blower thingy! Yes, you can roll your eyes at this point! Watching the surfing at La Jolla

Surfing at La Jolla

The rest of the pics were shot with what I call a 'real' camera! I'm a stickler for quality so I much prefer anything taken with a DSLR in comparison to a pocket camera. First up, two of Paul's photos which he stitched together into a panoramic format using 5 or 6 photos. I may have pressed the shutter on this image but I didn't pose the model so I can't take credit for the photo. The guys from Photo Wedding Stories in Greece arranged for a small group of photographers to shoot a model around the MGM for the afternoon and I honestly have no idea whether it was David Beckstead, Nick Ghionis or Rocco Ancora that posed this shot - whoever did, it was beautiful! And finally, one of the few tourist photos we took! Ignore the miserable face - I was still jet-lagged!

Well, I just spent well over half an hour typing out an epic blog post about our busy month of March and our trip away, linking to all our photographer friends that we got the opportunity to see in Vegas and somehow when I added the photos to the end of the post I managed to delete the text without having saved it anywhere! Needless to say, I can't remember what I wrote because my memory is atrocious and sitting at the computer for yet another half an hour+ on a Sunday afternoon isn't at all what I had planned!! Had this blog not been so public there would be a few expletives floating around in this paragraph!!

Very briefly, Vegas was AWESOME! <<< Just a little word I picked up from the Yanks! It was great to see our old friends (Jason, Tana, Chris & Jen, David & Kim, TimCo, Adam & the Greek crew from Greece), meet new ones (Steve & Karen) and even meet old friends (Shannon & Frank) face to face for the first time - yes, it sounds odd, I know! Shannon, you're as mad as a hatter :) & Frank you have the best New York mafia sounding accent ever and I could listen to you for hours!

I think we spent a little too long in Vegas and almost felt like locals by the end of it. One of the highlights was seeing Ka by Cirque du Soleil but the trip was made all the more enjoyable by a pair of real locals - thanks to Helmi & Jens for all the insider info on what to do in Vegas! 

The road-trip didn't quite turn out as planned and for those of you that know me I like to plan these things! We had a rather bum-numbing week driving for well over 25 hours through Utah, Nevada, Arizona & California and quite unexpectedly decided to go to San Diego to visit a fantastic pair of photographers and friends, David & Kim and their daughter Rain. We got to spend a couple of days around San Diego with them which was great fun especially watching the surfers at La Jolla as the sun went down! 

Coming back to Cyprus, things didn't really die down. We've had a busy few days with two 2 hour seminars on Photoshop last weekend - in GREEK! Picture me speaking village Greek with an English accent .... plllllllllllllllllease, never again!

For those of you that I promised to be in touch with - I apologize profusely. I haven't done a lot of that "being in touch" thing since my return or before the trip even - I shall try hard to rectify that soon!

We also had a couple of unexpected shoots on our return as we were fortunate enough to be loaned a H4D!! For those not in the know, that's a brand new Hasselblad ... that calls for a little 'oooooooo' on your part if you're reading this far down! Sakis from Photometron was visiting Cyprus last weekend for a tradeshow (a little smaller than WPPI!) and he was very kind to loan us his H4D for a couple of shoots. OMG! What a camera! The quality of the images are outstanding - I'm a stickler for sharp images and this thing (I really shouldn't call it a thing because it deserves far more respect than that!!) can take some sharp and detailed images! I shall post some of the photos in the next couple of weeks to give you an idea of the kind of quality you get from a 40 mega pixel camera!

In the meantime, for those of you that aren't my friends on Facebook (tut, tut, you should be!) and haven't seen any photos from our trip here are just a few that I've had the opportunity to edit:

The view from our room at the MGM:the Vegas Strip (obviously!)

Utah: Arches National Park

Leaving Utah earlier than planned because of the snow storm heading our way: