Photographically, there is a documentary moment at most weddings when a father’s eyes will meet those of his daughter’s for the first time as she stands before him in her wedding gown. The intensity differs from father to father of course and even those dads with the most obdurate courage find this to be one moment more than any other during the day, where a myriad of emotions flatten any wall of masculine parental steely resolve they thought they possessed. It’s fabulous. Professional platitudes abound on the web, so I’ll cautiously express a somewhat overused term; privilege. As a documentary maker, albeit in stills, that’s what makes this job so important, he says, hearing the opening bars of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ fading up behind this blog entry. Listen, I can swill beer, crack beer nuts and talk sport with the best of ‘em at any bar in this land where spit and sawdust define the landlord’s choice of decor. But I’ll also experience and hopefully always will, a lump in the throat when I witness the sincere pride liberated by a father with momentary tunnel vision, who can see no further than his ‘little girl’ on the morning of her wedding. Phew, that’s said. Okay, big hearty Haka lads and let’s get back to talking rugby.

It’s there, our annual cyber design visit gives birth to the brand new BREATHE Pictures website. At first sight you may not think a lot has changed. The splash remains fairly similar, if not identical. It’s when you venture in through the main website link that BANG, things have changed somewhat. I like to think it’s cleaner. My SEO champion will find she has more to play with under the bonnet. Twitter and Facebook links now appear – hell, I may even get to grow the ‘followers’ count. But, and MOST importantly, there are some excellent new image features. Photograph supported testimonials do exactly what they say on the tin, and, well for me, are worth a million spurious tog awards (here speaketh the man who doesn’t really enter comps! – although I do have my bronze lifesavers badge.) The wedding galleries feature a host of my fav shots from the middle to latter part of the last decade, but in that I shot 70 weddings in ‘09 alone, there’s a healthy new collection of shots not featured before as you would expect. There’s also the start of gallery dedicated to album design. It’s a growing section and I’ll be uploading more in the next few months. The ‘our story’ link features some stuff on Nat, self styled Trusty Sidekick to the business over in the west wing (retouching dept). Image wise, it’s our heaviest site yet – and your feedback will be much appreciated. It’s not designed for non broadband users, sorry. Including the album designs, over 500 images have been catalogued and uploaded. It took a little time, bearing in mind last year we presented nearly 40,000 images to our wedding and portrait clients. All in all, more images will make their way on to the site over the next quarter. A big hearty thanks to every bride, groom, guest and chef appearing in our new little BIG site. ‘09 was a superb year – here’s to an IMAGE-TASTIC 2010. (You can’t take the jock out of an old broadcaster it seems.)

These ‘props’ are used at the farm (Breathe’s home studio location) to keep grain in place. Thanks (Farmer Nigel) for leaving them in the yard. Don’t suppose you could leave them for a couple months more?

I did fear the rain would be coming at us sideways, just as those nice folk at Metcheck forecast. The morning looked fairly ominous, although Englemere’s white facade photographs beautifully against angry storm clouds. Breathe hasn’t photographed at Englemere for a little while, so it was good to return.

Literally seconds after the ceremony, the rain stopped, the thunder subsided, and sunshine took over!