United Kingdom

www.townandcountryphoto.co.uk/wedding.html

My interest in photography started at an early age, as my father was, and still is a keen photographer. As a child I would spend many hours in makeshift darkrooms experimenting with different developers, pushing and pulling films to try different effects...

All photos © Ivan Finch

It was while at secondary school that I saved up my paper round money to buy my first camera, a Pentax K1000. On leaving school with hardly any qualifications, but many photographs, I went on to study photography at Kingsway Princeton College in the City of London.

After a few years working for a local wedding photographer, I decided to go freelance, travel and photograph some of the world. I have since been fortunate enough to have seen some of the world’s most exotic places, meet some fantastic people and make friends in many corners of the world.

Apart from photography the other great passion I have is meeting and working with people. Once I returned from my travels, I decided to start my own wedding photography business, because it would enable me to do the things I like to do, namely taking photographs and working in an environment with lots of happy people.

I like my photography to portray emotions and to capture the spirit of the couple’s special day. Whilst I am photographing a wedding I always fit into the couples plans and do not like spending too long with formal photographs. I like to work quickly with lots of fun during the day. I find most of my clients like a mixture of formal and less formal photographs of their day, to give a nice round coverage. This is why I like Queensberry Albums, they allow so much freedom in design and finish, we can create an album perfect for each client.

Recently, I have switched to a fully digital “work flow”. I love the ease, versatility and quality which digital photography brings to a creative art, I have also found it helps me creatively, mostly because computer imaging is only limited by your own imagination. On saying that, I do miss the sound and feel of my old Hasselblad. I also miss the ambience, chemicals and excitement of being “at one” with my photography in a darkroom. Somehow playing with pixels on a computer screen, in a clinical office does not have the same sensation as a well-used Darkroom, which stinks of photochemistry! I feel fortunate to have experienced photography with film and feel people coming into photography now may well miss out in what was a truly magical experience of watching photographs appear in a developer tray.