The eight we are always asked, including the awkward ones.
Before the questions: the one thing worth knowing
The eight questions we are always asked
Tap any question to open it. You can have several open at once.
Yes, and we think the question is worth asking every photographer you speak to. A full day comes back at roughly six hundred edited frames and you get all six hundred — we do not hold a "best of" back behind a print package, and there is no version of the gallery that costs more. What you will not get is the near-duplicates and the frames where somebody blinked, because that is editing rather than withholding. Everything comes as a full-resolution download with a print release, so you can order from whoever you like, including us.
A sneak peek of about thirty frames goes up within four days, usually while you are still away. The full wedding gallery lands within five weeks in season and rather quicker between November and March. Family and newborn sessions come back inside twenty-one days. Those are the dates we put in the contract rather than the dates we hope for, and in nine years we have missed one — a burst pipe at the studio in 2022, and we told the couple before they had to ask.
It will rain, or at least it will threaten to, and some of the best frames we have ever taken were made under an umbrella at Hardcastle Crags. We carry two golf umbrellas, dry cloths and covers for both bodies, and we will always ask before suggesting anybody stands out in it. What we do not do is disappear indoors at the first spot and then apologise for the photographs afterwards — twenty minutes of soft grey light after a shower is genuinely the easiest light of the whole day to work in.
We do, and we would rather do them properly than pretend a documentary approach means skipping them. Eight groupings, twenty-five minutes, list agreed in advance and one person from each family briefed to round people up — that is the formula and it works. Beyond about ten groupings the whole thing starts eating the part of the day you actually booked us for, and we will say so when you send the list rather than on the day.
Because one photographer cannot be in two getting-ready rooms, cannot shoot the aisle from the front and the back at once, and cannot be ill. Esme leads every wedding and Joss shoots alongside her; the second camera is included in the full-day price rather than sold as an upgrade. It also means the day is covered from two heights and two temperaments, which is why the galleries have both the wide, quiet frames and the close, noisy ones.
The other one still turns up, which is the honest answer and the reason we work in a pair. If something happened to both of us we have a written arrangement with two other Calderdale studios whose work we would be happy to have at our own wedding, and we would ring you the moment we knew rather than the night before. We carry professional indemnity and £2 million public liability, and we are registered with the ICO for the data we hold on you.
Constantly. Anywhere within an hour of Hebden Bridge is included — that covers Halifax, Todmorden, Haworth, Skipton, Ilkley, Saltaire, Leeds and most of Manchester. Beyond that we charge mileage at cost and a room if the start time makes an early drive daft, and we will tell you the number before you commit rather than after. We have shot in the Dales, the Lakes, Northumberland and, twice, on Skye.
Joss shoots one roll of 120 medium-format alongside the digital on the film collection — twelve frames, no more, developed by hand at the studio and scanned here rather than posted away. There is no back of the camera to check, which is exactly the point: it slows the whole hour down and the twelve frames that come back are almost always the ones that end up on a wall. It is an add-on rather than a substitute; nobody has ever had a wedding covered on film alone by us and we would talk you out of it if you asked.