We’ve been musing a lot recently about one particular aspect of our work at Memory Factory Photography. It’s become a large part of our business although it’s not something we ever imagined ourselves getting involved in. The main thing that put us off was probably everyone’s preconceived notion of wedding photography, even the fact that there is such a term, as if it’s something separate from any other kind of photography.
Really what we’ve always been driven by was a fascination with photography, and, while the particular event being photographed matters, in the end the important thing is to see each event as simply an opportunity to make beautiful, moving, insightful pictures (with a bit of luck). So we would say we’re still not really interested in “wedding photography” – what we are interested in is making photographs at weddings.
The way in which couples have chosen to have their wedding day recorded for posterity has changed so much since photography firstbecame popular. My granny and grandad, married in 1925, spent their honeymoon in Moville and caught the steamer to Derry where their wedding photograph was taken in a local studio – just one beautiful picture of the bride and groom leaning on wooden table, a vase of flowers for a bit of decoration.
In 1950 my mother and father were married at St Aloysius Chapel, Garnethill in Glasgow and walked round the corner to a studio in Sauchiehall street to have two pictures taken, one of the bride and groom and one of the bridal party. The one of the bride and groom was carefully hand tinted and presented in a mirrored glass frame.
In 2013, almost a century later, Lindsay, my Grandmothers Great Grand-daughter was married in Cambridge. We took a few pictures . . quite a few pictures, actually.
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