Author: harrykerr

It’s obvious that a great deal of planning goes into organising a wedding. Like many of our clients, Laura & Sean had to do much of their planning at a distance from home in England before arriving here for their big day. Most of the practical and logistical issues can, these days at least, be managed online or by way of email, but whether from home or abroad the one thing we know we can’t arrange in advance, especially here in Donegal is the weather. On the morning of the wedding, we arrived to met up with Sean and his family at the house they were leaving from. Can we just say the weather was clearly going to be, well, challenging?
From the house, set up on a hill overlooking Trawbreaga Bay, the weather changes could be seen rushing in off the Atlantic. Waves of rain, high wind and intermittent spells of dazzling sunlight. Laura was getting ready in a slightly more sheltered location, but there was still no likelihood of doing much out of doors. With a bridal party of seven bridesmaids, there was plenty of help on hand for Laura to prepare. No, we were not going to risk any hair or dress mishaps outdoors in the constantly changing conditions. As luck would have it, a break in the rain saw Laura and the girls make it to the church without any weather related mishaps. The Church of The Sacred Heart in Carndonagh sits high on a hill overlooking the surrounding area, and it’s a pretty exposed location on the finest of days. Ceremony over, Laura & Sean weren’t going to let a little ‘weather’ stop them heading to the beach on the Isle of Doagh. They’d come a long way to get married here, they weren’t giving up on their wish to have the wild Donegal landscape feature as the setting for at least some of their wedding photographs. There is something wonderful about the character of the light here, at almost the most northerly point in the country, with little between here and Newfoundland. With a few brief spells between some fairly dramatic showers, Laura and Sean got the pictures they had hoped for. That part of the day over, we all set off to Redcastle on the east, and happily more sheltered side of the Inishowen Peninsula. Still just a bit breezy even here! So, the day moves on. Indoors with no thoughts or cares about the weather any longer. Sean, sporting his new wedding ring and look completely unruffled by the elements.

Over the years that we’ve been photographing weddings, we’ve often been asked if we can suggest a “good place” for taking photographs. It’s a reasonable enough question, obviously. It’s also a trickier question than it might first appear, since it brings into play a number of factors that have little if anything to do with photography. Travel time, accessibilty, conditions underfoot, peoples comfort, the weather (obviously), all sorts of elements have to be taken into account.

The driving force behind the question is pretty clear, most people have in mind an idea of a ‘picturesque’ setting as being needed, while from our perspective we’re as concerned with the practical issues as we are with the visual ones.More than once in the past, we’ve had requests to take pictures in particularly remote or dramatic settings – well given where we are in the world, the drama of the landscape can really add to the work we produce. Sometimes though, it pays to take a step back and remember that we’re there to photograph a wedding after all, and that all the other parts of the day have a significance too.Our first sight of the Bride-to-be on the day, Alison. Yes, she just moved the tractor so we could park up beside the house. It’s pretty clear from the start that ‘The Land’ is more to Alison and Graham than a pretty backdrop for pictures. It’s an integral part of who and what they are, it’s not just scenery. For a late Autumn wedding, the weather was kinder than we might have hoped for or expected. There’s a clarity about that low, angled light that picks out detail and texture like at no other time of the year. The wedding took place in the cool, dark of the Church. Then, back into the clear wintry light. Oh, yes, that’s where this blog started . . . We were talking about locations, weren’t we?Well, we could have gone to the woods by the river in Rathmelton, The Town Park in Letterkenny or maybe we could have found a spectacular garden someplace. Or, we could just go home. This isn’t just a ‘place for pictures’ This is their place, their life, their wedding day.
It feels right, it feels like home.

Long before we even moved to Ireland and opened the studio here at The Memory Factory we’ve been behind a camera, documenting family, friends and all sorts of subjects, including a rather self-conscious three year old Roisin “The Poet” McLaughlin seen here. Fast forward 20+ years and find ourselves photographing Roisin & Barry’s wedding on a wild October day in Lagg and at The Malin Hotel.

Snap. Snapshot.
[noun]

1: An informal photograph taken quickly, typically with a small hand-held camera.
2: A shot taken quickly by a hunter.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “snapshot” was first used in 1808 (some twenty-one years before the commonly accepted date considered to mark the invention of photography) by Sir Henry Hawker. He noted in his diary that almost every bird he shot that day was takenby snapshot, meaning a hurried shot, taken without deliberate aim. Snapshot then, was originally a hunting term, and not one which implied carelessness or a lack of skill. I suppose as photographers we like to align ourselves with the latter definition, rather than the former. As we have said elsewhere, ‘formality’ has become (rightly or wrongly) synonymous with ‘boring’, and we are exhorted to ‘snap away’. Fine. We will. The trick is to marry the two definitions, and to blend them into something worth remembering. Millions of photographs are taken every day by people with no aspirations to be considered photographers or artists, but they are made with common intent. To commemorate, to celebrate, and above all, to remember. That face. That moment. That they were there. That they existed for that time. Many of them may be technically flawed, the equipment may have been poorly chosen, the circumstances less than ideal. Yet there may be value in them just the same.

As strangers, brought in from somewhere outside that group of people, we are entrusted with the responsibility of making images which will connect with our clients and help them mark and remember some of the most profound moments of their lives. Usually, we would hope to get all the technical mumbo-jumbo sorted too. Usually.