Wedding photos

Pretty much the only non-rugby photography I’ve done recently was at a friend’s wedding in February. I wasn’t the official photographer or anything like that – I just did my normal thing and took loads of photos.
I think it’s only the second wedding I’ve taken any serious photos at – the first was an odd one. I was involved in a sort of informal photography club at a previous job, and one lady in it asked me to go to her wedding and wander around taking photos. It was a slightly surreal experience – you had people asking “do you know the bride or groom”, and I had to honestly answer “neither”! The photos came out really nicely and Nicky was happy, so that’s the main thing.
I don’t normally take many pictures of people, so the candid part of it is probably what appeals to me.
Caroline & Dom’s wedding was at Tortworth Court in Gloucestershire – next door to Leyhill Open Prison. Fortunately it was a lovely day, and really quite picturesque with a bit of snow on the ground – not that you can see it in this photo!
I spent some time trying to get a shot of the detailing on the back of Caroline’s dress – which of course led to accusations from SWMBO that I was just trying to photograph her bum…

I was trying some slightly different views, to give take something that they might not get from the main photographer. I also had a play around with the images on the computer afterwards, and really quite like the black and white conversion with a bit of softness – if gives it a bit of a “glow”. It’s probably very cliched, but I like it…
By the way, Dominic the groom baked his own wedding cake – really nice!
And this is him on the receiving end of the Best Man’s speech (“The Brother, The Man, The Legend”).
Obligatory confetti shot…
And there was dancing in the rather impressive Orangery. Oh God, the dancing. Enough alcohol was consumed for me to end up on the dancefloor, and that really doesn’t happen very often.

And this is my manager Graeme strutting his funky stuff on the dancefloor. I suspect he would have preferred it if there was some Motorhead playing.

All in all, I reckon it was the best wedding I’ve been to. OK, I’ve not been to very many, but that’s not to say that it wasn’t a good day.

Bletchley Park

We spent Monday at Bletchley Park, home of the wartime code breakers. The following day, it was announced that they were receiving £500,000 of Lottery money – and quite right too. Thoroughly deserving, as an important part of our national history, that is in disgracefully poor condition in parts. Without the geniuses that worked there, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Whether that’s a good thing just at the moment is a matter for debate…

First up, this just made me smile – somehow I always imagined that Bomber Command would be far more impressive…


This is a real, actual, proper German Enigma machine. It’s in a glass case so that no nutter can nick it again. Anyway, why did they give it back to Jeremy Paxman? Stephen Fry must have been gutted.

This is part of a superb slate statue of Alan Turing, father of modern computing. Without him, it is quite possible I would be doing something completely different for a living. Some people might say this would be a good thing.

These last two are of the re-created Colossus computer. If you run the simulation program on a modern 2GHz computer, it takes the same time to crack the codes as Colossus did during WWII. Personally, I think it could do with a few flashing lights before it looks like a *proper* computer.

Oxford

We spent last Friday wandering round Oxford, having deposited my mother at John Radcliffe hospital for a minor eye operation (all fine, thanks for asking). I think I’ve only been once before, and that was about 30 years ago when we had a French exchange boy over (well, when I say “exchange”, he came over [as did his brother a couple of years later] but we never went to stay with them). There may even be photos of this somewhere in my dad’s collection, but it’ll take a while to get there as it must have been 1978 or ’79 and and I’m only up to 1958…

Anyway, the best shot of the day came from the top of the University Church of St Mary The Virgin, showing the Radcliffe Camera, with All Souls College on the right and Brasenose College on the left. No, that’s not a bird above the dome, it’s a speck of sodding dust on the sodding sensor, which I haven’t had time to clean up yet – it’s on loads of the damn pictures…

Nikon D200, Sigma 10-20mm lens, 1/400 @ f11, ISO 320