I’ve been a wedding photographer for nearly 16 years now (I know, look at me, doesn’t seem possible right?) and I’m going to let you into a secret. It’s really hard! There is a lot of work involved in planning, shooting, polishing and delivering a beautiful collection of wedding photographs; not to mention the pressure of knowing that someone’s most precious memories are in your hands; the lack of control you have over weather, natural light and well… people; the loss of precious summer weekends; the long days… You get the idea. Yet after 14 years I still love what I do. So I asked myself:

Just what is wrong with you?
or
Why do you still seem to love this?!?

Let’s not dive too deeply into the first question but as for the second, here’s what I realised:

I help people to tell the most important story of their lives.

And that’s a pretty cool job.

I love getting to know each and every one of you. I love understanding just what makes you tick together; what interests you share; what your sense of style is and how much you make each other laugh.
I love it when I can capture something of this in a photograph, creating an image that in years to come you look at and think “that’s us and we’re awesome”.
I love finding and bending beautiful light so that your photographs surprise you, showing you more than you could see with just the eyes. I love making girls cry (and sometimes boys too) because they see how beautiful they really are and relive all their biggest emotions.

I love meeting all you cool, funny, creative and clever couples and I love the fun we have.
I even  love the pressure to create something that can actually surprise and impress a cool, funny, creative and clever couple!

I love the freedom to simply tell stories on a wedding day.
Being there as families reunite and new families are formed (and sometimes even when new romantic relationships are formed) and creating a story book of all these moments.

So that’s why I do what I do!
And why I spend way too long editing every single wedding image myself (for which I am continually told I am mad). Because every single photograph matters to me. And every single photograph is an important story that needs to be told.

I may also be an anally retentive control freak… but I’m choosing not to delve too deeply into this either.

I post to instagram and facebook “regularly”. So to see more of my favourite stories head over to samhookphoto on instagram or to samantha hook photography on facebook