The minute we walked through the door of Tracy and Simon’s  house where the girls were getting ready, we were greeted with such warmth and tenderness, that I knew the day would be wonderful and very easy to make the vital connections that make for real photographs with depth and emotion. 

How can I pick my favourite pictures or to highlight the best moments of the day?  An impossible task!  Tracy requests a quick photo with her daughter Jade, before leaving to get married and start their new life, and they gave me this….

Just to set the scene here’s a pic of the hotel on 30 December – a mild mid-Winter’s day – our last wedding of the year –  30 December 2007.

The crowd of close family –  Mum, daughter and Aunties etc  –  line up outside the main entrance to Monk Fryston Hotel to await the late afternoon arrival of the bride to be:

The wedding ceremony is sealed with a kiss

  such a tender kiss… 

So after  the welcome drinks and few pics by the Christmas tree

there is a short car ride to celebrate the start of a new journey together.  On return to Monk Fryston,  the couple gets out and joyously walks hand in hand under the well-lit wintery trees…

Such a shame we have to come inside, but the party goes on and its not fun if overdone, so we just sneak a few shots outside in the dark before heading back inside for the wedding reception.

 Tracy’s Dad, Iain proudly poses with his daughter, by the grandfather  clock.

If there are any special family trees, with at least one grandparent at the top, then its a great opportunity to gather them all around for a special generation shot.  Mum Janet rolls her eyes and smart Grandma Anna, just laughs and smiles.

Simon’s Granddad with his extended family of children, grandchildren and great grand children

Tracy is such a natural as she glides across the bed, all smiles, while bridegroom Simon looks on and laughs, backlit from the en-suite bathroom light.

Brilliant wedding reception, but trust me to knock my wine over: what a waste!

The wedding speeches and presentations go down a treat!

Beautiful moments…  This little girl certainly loves her Grandma!

All partied out!

                               Romantic Kiss outside at night 

Simon gives Tracy a Piggy Back outside Monk Fryston Hotel in the dark!  Plenty of fun…

Then whispers sweet nothings in her ear….

Goodnight!

Its just a few minutes before midnight when we down tools and start packing up

 –  tired, but very happy that we’ve all had a good day…

I I feel highly privileged to have been allowed to share a child’s view of Christmas as Levana escaped to her room to be alone with some of her new toys.  The boxes of clothes I bought her weren’t even given a cursory glance: it was the toy horse – as big as a rocking horse – her Mum bought at last minute in a sale on Christmas Eve that captured her imagination, along with a Pink-Princess Fairytale with pages of illustrations bathed in lilac and pink that Aunty Trudy bought her.

And there she stayed till called down for Christmas dinner, as Aunty Saskia & Uncle Nev had finally arrived…

 And we all lived happily ever after!

Well the last album has been collected so we’re almost all ready for Christmas!  More to do though, as I still need to add my creative touch to a few last photos before they can go online (sorry Mel & Jay and Emily & Matt and Richard & Kelly) and then we have one more  wedding to cover this year (for  Tracy and Simon on 30 December at Monk Fryston near York) so its all go.  I have promised my eldest daughter that I will take the whole of Christmas day off,  so I can play with my 6 year old granddaughter when she opens her toys from Father Christmas in the morning, though hopefully she doesn’t expect me there at 6am!  I get told off if I turn my computer on, as time slips by and the day usually darkens again before I surface and set off for their house!!

I hope all of you brides (and bridegrooms)-to-be enjoy your research, and if we suit your dreams that we still have your date available.  Julie, Lanceworth and I will all be away at the SWPP (Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers) Annual Convention) next month in London, so are sure to come back with loads of new ideas and enthusiasm to start the New Year.  We will be leaving Jorge to take the helm while we are away though…

Happy Christmas! xx Elaine

   We don’t often get asked to video 50th birthday parties, but this one was worth travelling all the way from West Yorkshire to Central London as birthday boy Trevor’s  beautiful wife – who commissioned the video –  is also a talented textile designer and very artistic.  Loved her flamboyant headdress with matching glasses and big wide smile!

The venue was the Trafalgar Square Hotel – right up on the rooftop – so the views across the square at Christmas time were brilliant!  Lots of visually interesting people were there, so I observed their best expressions and clicked away.

Jorge and “Kylie” gave a great performance in Salsa Dancing!

 To have Reel Life Photos video or photograph your birthday party or event, see our main site http://www.reellifephotos.co.uk

    Its Donna & Robert’s first wedding anniversary today 17 November, so had really wanted to have their wedding album complete with photos as a nice surprise (they only ordered them recently as have both had immense sadnesses in their lives since the wedding), but missed my self-imposed deadline by a few hours.  Anyway,  have just finished working on their wed pics, the jpgs are burnt to the DVD for printing and on their way to the lab in Bradford tonight, courtesy of my husband, Jorge.

Its amazing what you can do even in the pitch dark!  We switched on the video light to add and extra dimension to these traditional family wedding photos out doors after the sun had set on a cold November’s evening. The bride and bridesmaid must have been perished but they were up for anything to get good pictures for their wedding album.

A handheld low-light indoor photo on the spiral staircase inside Chevin Lodge Hotel in Otley, a labour of love in  Photoshop, and some extra processing with another piece of editing software, and this duplex monochrome image emerges shining from the dark.

  I was once asked where  all our best wedding photos were!  Well, they are all there in our online  galleries –  all the little gems –  but buried between the vast expanse of variety that makes for human life.  Having documented so many facets of this, I thought it was time to revisit a few faces, and to give myself a short breathing space, away from the constant converting of images and preparation of  chosen photos for printing,  for other (albeit very important) people.  Its been over 3 years since  I designed the visual aspect of our existing website,  so have been busy the past two evenings, putting together a selection of some of my favourite recent images, which will soon be making their appearance on the home page –  thanks to Mark  and his web-techies in Huddersfield at www.e-connected.com .  Hope you all like the new-look, when it goes  live.  In the meantime here are a few from a beautiful Hindu wedding from last year, that are no longer on the site .  They also had an church of England wedding ceremony, which was hard work to fit all in one day.  Bhavi was an incredibly good organiser, though!

   We have another Hindu wedding to video & photograph Spring 2008, in Leicester – as soon as I get back from a wedding in Jacob’s Creek in Australia – and we have a wedding in Ullswater in Cumbria in January, so it looks like being an exciting start to the year.

  Have just finished working on a few of the pics I shot the day after Mel & Jay’s wedding at Dartmoor.   They are an amazing couple!  I felt sad leaving them at the end but have thoroughly enjoyed giving these pics extra-special attention to enhance the magic of their relationship.  It was well worth the trip from West Yorkshire all the way to Princetown for all this!

We went to Tenerife 3 weeks ago for one of our client’s wedding blessing (Kelly & Ross) – filled my eyes with beautiful sights and soaked up the tropical light: even took a few pics for myself, as we drove right round the island one day.  Also managed to scrape the hire-car as we rounded a hairy bend on the mountain-side at night, dazzled by an on-coming car:  it skimmed the crash-barrier, so acquired a long scratch all down the middle of the right-hand side!

On that trip, we escaped the never-ending, sun-seeking tourist vistas, and even came across a cafe full of local domino champions – something I thought only happened in neighbourhood cafes in Havana (and Cuba as a whole) so it must be a Spanish thing.  In Greece they play TAVLI (Backgammon) instead, and elsewhere in the world you might find card-players…

xx Elaine

  Have started to upload images from the wedding in Tenerife on 13 October.  The light was so clear and bright that all the colours shone.  The wedding had already taken place at Berties in Huddersfield as the laws in Tenerife require the couple to have lived in the Canaries for at least a year I believe,  but they were lucky to find an English vicar at the beautiful white painted church at Los Gigantes, so their wedding-blessing went really well.  The church was full of guests who had travelled from the UK to Tenerife to support Kelly & Ross – even to the extent of sharing their honeymoon!

Visit our site for more info if you are planning your wedding abroad! xx Elaine and Jorge