If truth be said it's not, strictly speaking, their back garden but if you did go to the bottom of their garden and knocked the fence down then tumbled down a bit of a bank you'd come across this sight, though I dare say in a considerably dishevelled state.

I do wear smarter shoes for the wedding day, I promise.

After Ruth & Nick's pre-wedding test shoot (aka engagement shoot) at Hengistbury Head, nine posts back from this one should you care to take a look, and the 'episode' with the Ammophila Arenaria (pardon my Latin; Marram Grass) I'm starting to make myself look like an utter paparazzi style stalker with shots like these. Still, they're good practice for capturing images of brides and their grooms through throngs of guests, whether those guests are deciduous or evergreen.

Being an aficionado of the reportage school of wedding photography I like to apply the lightest of touches in setting up a photograph, where indeed I ever do so. As such I am disinclined to direct my subjects to "go there", "do this", "sit on that fallen tree", etc. (though I might just possibly do so whilst prefixing the instruction with a polite request). So here we have Sarah & Nigel, sat on their favourite fallen tree that they retire to every evening after a hard day at the office. I just happened to be passing by (or sneaking through the trees, depending on which way you look at it) when I encountered this scene of domestic bliss.

Look at her. Look at him. Look at me. It gets confusing after a while. Who's meant to be looking where, when?

It's not that I'd wish for Nigel to feel pushed out of the frame, but this was one of those 'blinker' moments that I'd normally consign to the cutting room floor, but I think it works nicely with the crop (and Nigel's perfectly posed chin). I'll often shoot several frames of any one composition to mitigate against blinking because everyone blinks and a blink rarely looks endearing in a photograph. An interesting phenomena in Sarah & Nigel's case was that nine times out of ten they'd blink in perfect unison! A sign of common minds perchance. I'm not going to show the photographic evidence of this but it's particularly helpful to me as I'll often work through a series of images and find that in one frame subject A is looking perfect but subject B is blinking, in the next frame, A is blinking and B is looking perfect, then both are mid-way through the blink cycle, then repeat the loop again and hopefully one pops out with both looking perfect. Considering blinking is more often than not driven by thought processes it's possibly best I don't explain such things lest my subjects stand or sit there and keep wondering if they're blinking, thus provoking blinks in response.

Bournemouth beach's answer to the red telephone boxes I'm compelled by so much. Colours that make no apologies for themselves.

"What I'd like you to do now is hop about as though a wave has rolled in over your feet".

"Take a photo of us!" he called out. So I did. I can't turn down a friendly request. "It'll be on the Web tomorrow", I told them. It was remiss of me to not specify where on the Web though. Maybe they're searching for it now, so here's a little keyword help: bournemouth beach random photographer took our photograph do we owe anything