My brief is to photograph the drinks reception beforehand, the VIPs on the Editor’s table and during the announcements the reaction from the winner’s table. I then photograph the award winner on their return from the podium ideally with the stage in the background. I finish with party photos afterwards.  It is a hectic evening and I edit and deliver the photos to the editor that night so it is a late finish. There are more photos from the layout below.

Reproduced with permission of the publishers William Reed Business Media.

© Jon Day Photo

Reception Venue – does it have enough covered space for all the guests you intend to invite? Some venues work well for a summer wedding when the guests can remain outside for the afternoon but can they all be accomodated comfortably inside if it is raining? Upwaltham Barns has flexible space to host a wedding all year round.

Shoes or Wellies – as the bride (or guest) – do think about footwear and the ground you will walking on, country roads are muddy after rain and a spare pair of shoes or wellies are useful to have ready for walking to and from the church and reception venue. There are some stylish wellies available these days!

White umbrellas – if you think it might rain in the month you plan to get married make sure you have at least a couple of white umbreallas ready. An umbrella with a bank or company logo on the side does not look quite so pretty. You can purchase them online for about £15 each.

Wedding photos – we can take the formal photos in a side room or close by using photographic lights. This formal photograph was lit against a plain white wall.

So, don’t despair. There are ways to keep you dry and to enjoy your wedding day even if the weather seems to be against you. You never know, it might just brighten up enough to get outside for a while. We dodged the showers to take portraits on Woolacombe Beach on the rainiest day last September.

The wonderful thing about digital cameras is the instant feedback. You can make an adjustment to a flash light and see immediately how it changes the image on the lcd screen. Then adjust the flash units and retake the shot. Using small camera flashes to light a person and or environment is a great skill to practice and use on an assignment and can really make a photo jump from the screen or page.

RSS Newsfeed icon

You like to read and follow about 50 different blogs and websites right? But it is slow going to log onto each one to see if they have written anything interesting.  You may have seen the orange icon and “Subscribe to RSS feed” and wondered what that means?

RSS Feed is a wonderful thing – here’s why. You can use a piece of software to check all your favourite blogs and websites for you and it provides a summary of updates and content in a quick and easy format to glance through so you can select the interesting to read. Here is how you can do it and hopefully include my blog in there too!

If you are on a pc I suggest FeedDemon on Mac try NewsFire or NewsNetWire (all are free) download and install the software. Then find your favourite blog and subscribe to it by clicking on the orange icon with the white bars to add it to your RSS reader. Follow the instructions on how to add it to the RSS reader. You can subdivide your feeds into categories ie. work, home, kids. Now when you start  your RSS Reader it automatically checks each blog to see if there is anything new and you can then browse through quickly and conveniently. I installed FeedDemon about 2 months ago and it has made a huge difference to how I read and browse the internet. I’ve installed a RSS Feed capability to this blog so download a reader and subscribe to my blog. Go on, give it a go.