We take a documentary approach to shooting our weddings with a fine art feel to our images and portraiture. What this basically means is we aren’t really into super posed pictures and don’t like to “stage manage” your wedding. We shoot your day as it unfolds. We like to capture the natural moments as they unfold organically. The limit to our “direction” would be say positioning you in front of a window that has beautiful natural light coming in while you get ready to get better pictures, or guiding you a bit when you don’t know where to put your bouquet, which can be awkward to carry around if you aren’t used to walking around everywhere holding flowers. This means if you want a picture through a picture frame, a groom kneeling next to the bride or a couple with a suitcase walking along a railway line, or stiff old fashioned table photos, we probably aren’t the right fit for what you are after.
Trust us, we totally know how awkward being in front of a camera can be! We got a taste of our own medicine at our wedding and we know first hand how funny it can feel posing. What we prefer to do is position a couple in a cool location, tell you a story to help you relax or get you guys to chat about the awesomeness that has just happened with you getting married! We usually find this helps to loosen people up as we way prefer that when you look back at your pictures, you remember the moments and not how lame it felt when you were told to “gaze lovingly into each others eyes while leaning back” or something like that. Having said this, we will offer some direction should you wish us to do a more “formal” arty portrait of you as individuals or as a couple.
You get two actual photographers for your wedding, so not one photographer plus a second shooter/assistant, you get both of us :) This makes covering all of your wedding much easier and also guarantees you getting shots that one photographer simply cannot cover. We usually split up and each shoot half of the couple getting ready for the wedding so there is no forced groom getting fake-ready earlier in the morning than he would so that the photographer can go shoot the bride afterwards. This also means 2 angles at the ceremony and 2 creative minds shooting your couple pics.
We come as a package like peanut butter and jam or a veggie burger and chips :) We produce our best work when we work together.
We both shoot with full frame Canon 5D mkiii cameras and shoot with a variety of Canon prime and zoom lenses. If you are a photography nerd (like us) and want to chat gear, feel free to message us or chat to us about it at our client meet up.
We have back up camera bodies, lenses, SD and CF memory cards, extra camera batteries, extra flashes and extra flash batteries. All our gear is insured for both domestic and international travel.
One of the (many) perks of the Canon 5D mkiii is that you can shoot on to dual memory cards (an SD and CF card). This means that as we shoot your wedding, we automatically are shooting onto two memory cards which makes a real time backup. As soon as we leave your wedding and get back to wherever we may be staying, we do a third backup just to make sure we have your pics safe and sound as it would be our worst nightmare having to tell a couple we have lost their pics from a corrupt memory card or something. This all means that unless we are struck by lightening as we leave your venue or some other really horrible things happens, we ALWAYS have a backup of your images! We also save a copy of your high res edited Jpegs on Google Drive for up to 2 years. We do however strongly recommend you make your own back up of your images when you receive them.
We tend not to book weddings more than a year in advance as we often only plan our world adventuring on short notice, but having said that, we do book up for high season super fast. This doesn’t mean that if your wedding is soon we can’t shoot it as we have shot weddings on less than 2 weeks notice, its just the likelihood of us being free on your date decreases the closer it gets.
While weddings are currently our primary focus, we do other types of shoots such as portraits, personal shoots in addition to some commercial and travel work. If something comes up that speaks to our hearts, we shoot it! Ask us and see.
Family photos are a tricky one. We think they are super important as weddings will often bring together people who don’t often get a chance to be together and who may not get a chance to be together again so we definitely take care to get these. BUT they can eat a lot into your couple shoot time and can cause stress if not handled properly. What we advise is that we shoot family pics straight after the hugs and kisses after the ceremony before anyone has wandered off to the toilet, or to get a drink or have a sneaky cigarette. To eliminate the stress for YOU on the day, and to make sure you get a shot with the people who matter most to you, we advise making a list of “must have” photos – we usually suggest about 8 to 10 (but can do more or less depending what you want). We then recommend delegating this list to a bossy friend or family member who knows all the people on the list to help us wrangle them. Adults can be notoriously hard to organise so we like to make this process as smooth and quick as possible.
We unfortunately do not do the posed table shots of yesteryear but are more than happy to shoot yourself and your guests informally during the reception. Its as simple as coming up and saying “hey can I get a pic with my old high school friends?” and we will more than happily oblige.
We like to scout for couple shoot locations before the wedding day starts. The reason for this is we don’t like to keep couples away from their guests for too long so we like to have some degree of plan for locations. We aim for 3 locations but this can vary depending on the length of time you allow for the shoot and what cool scenery there is around. Shooting a lot in KwaZulu Natal means we have shot MANY wet weddings, we try our best to work around the elements, but we do recommend if your wedding is in the rainy season to maybe get some umbrellas in your wedding colours, or we will try our best to keep you as dry as possible.
From our perspective, we love shooting couple pics in the “magic light” time of day which is usually a bit before the sun sets. This means your ceremony (length dependant) should be about an hour before this. For a Summer wedding, where the sun sets later, a 3pm ceremony start for an hour long ceremony still allows time for family and bridal party pics before “magic light” time arrives. And in winter the same length ceremony should start at about 2pm. We are happy to advise what time of day is best for your ceremony depending on the time of year you are getting married and the length of your ceremony. That being said, we are happy to make a plan with whatever timeline you choose on your big day! Brunch wedding? No problem! We will make a plan and do our best so that you have the wedding you want and still get great shots.
We know that most couples don’t want to be away from their friends and family for too long for pictures, but at the same time still want great shots. Hell, this was so important to us that at our wedding we did our couple shoot the day before the wedding so we totally get it. We advise about half an hour minimum for couple shoot, assuming we don’t need to drive around. We have shot a five minute couple shoot and a two hour one. This is your wedding and we will shoot what you want and for how long. With this being said, the pictures you would get in five minutes would not be the same as in two hours, but it comes down to your priority as a couple and we are super keen to give you what you want.
First look pictures are shots done before the ceremony where you guys see each other for the first time and share that magical seeing each other for the first time moment before the actual wedding. We LOVE doing first looks and did one ourselves at our own wedding. We particularly recommend the first look for couples whose ceremonies are at a time that wont leave much time/light for their couple pictures, like an evening ceremony or a ceremony that would leave harsh midday sun for their pictures. It’s also a nice way to get your photos out the way so you can go straight to your reception and party with your guests after your ceremony.
We do need seating, at a table is a bonus and we do need food please. If possible, we like to eat at the same time as the main table (if you have one of those) so that we can be ready to shoot as soon as the action starts. We also request drinks and a vegetarian/vegan meal for both of us.
Depending on the package you choose, we sure do! Decor is often something people put a great deal of time into and we like to record it in its perfect state as you envisioned it. This means we like to shoot decor as it has been set up and not at the reception when the light is not always optimal and when your guests have moved stuff around. We ask that if you want decor shots, that it be set up by about 10am on the day of your wedding (IF your wedding is following a typical timeline. If not, we are happy to advise and suggest the best time to have it set up if you are having a brunch or lunch wedding).
Destination weddings are traditionally weddings that take place at some exotic location like Bali or Mauritius or anywhere overseas really. We love seeing the world and our own country, so for us, a destination wedding would really be anywhere that we would need more than a day to get to driving (We love taking our Land Rover on African adventures!) or somewhere we would have to fly to.
We love to travel and shoot all over the world (duh! who wouldn’t right?!). We love to travel and discover the world SO much that all of our full day packages are fully inclusive of travel fees, meaning you don’t pay a cent extra to get us to your location.
If your wedding is more than 150km away from our home in Hillcrest, KwaZulu Natal we will need accommodation nearby to the venue for one night. Nothing fancy, just a bed and somewhere safe to leave our gear. If we are travelling further for your wedding we may need 2 nights accommodation so that we are fresh to shoot your big day, but we can discuss this and make a plan that works for both of us.
We will send you through a couple of preview pictures within a week of your wedding to keep you sated. Low season weddings are ready in 4-8 weeks and high season weddings in 8-12 at the most. But we like to get your pics to you as soon as we can. Once your pictures are ready, we will courier them to you or drop them off if you are nearby.
Click here then fill out our form and, assuming we are available for you date, we can start the process. We require a non refundable 50% booking fee to secure the date both for you and for ourselves and we send you our contract to sign that covers both our sets of arses if anything goes funny. The balance will be due the week of your wedding. We can be open to payment plan options depending what your situation is., just chat to us.
We do not watermark our pictures, nor do we only give you watermarked, low res images. We know back in the day photographers would make their money off prints ordered by the couple (and some still do!), but in the new digital world we really don’t think this has a place. You have paid good money for your pictures and should have access to the high res images and have free access to print as many of them as you want at no extra cost to yourself. We are more than happy to recommend some fantastic high quality fine art printers, but it won’t cost you anything extra. We give you all your images in both high and low res on a USB so you can stick the low res ones on Facebook or email without having to resize them, and the high res to print enlargements, canvases or whatever else you want to.
Our RAW files are our digital negatives and are the one thing we never hand over. We totally understand some people like to play around in Photoshop and Lightroom but we unfortunately will not provide our RAW files. This is to protect our brand and image of our photos that we painstakingly, and with love, edit in a specific way.
This will be package dependant, but between 200 and 800 is the norm depending of course on how long we were there for.
We have a very distinct photographic style which means we naturally work better with videographers who have a similar ethos and approach to shooting. We have a list of videographers we love working with so if you are interested, just yell and we can send them through to you!
We have had the pleasure of working with some AMAZING service providers so if you are looking for anything in particular, just ask and we will happily give you a list of our favourites!