We love your work, we want you to photograph our wedding, how can we book you? Why thank you! I would suggest giving us a call or dropping us an email to check that we’re available on your wedding day.
What is your approach to photographing weddings? We are experienced photographers who generally take a reportage approach. Acting as unobtrusive observers we tell the story of your day, and will shoot your wedding quickly in an informal style; combining spontaneous shots as events occur, with a selection of creative and dynamic directed portraits to achieve stunning yet natural photos as you and your guests celebrate together. See our approach to wedding photography for more information.
Can we meet you? We think that it’s really important to meet before a booking is made as we’ll be spending the most important day of your life with you and we need to know that we’ll all get along and have a great time! We can also discuss your specific ideas and chat about the plans for your day to ensure that it’s possible for us to take the pictures that you want and equally that you feel comfortable with our style and approach.
Why are there two of you? Well, we’re married to one another, we love photography, we love weddings, we love wedding photography and we love spending time together… Seriously, it means that we can cover more of your wedding day. Ally will start with the Bride whilst AJ is with the Groom capturing the pre-wedding preparations. We then meet up at the ceremony and work together for the rest of the day, sometimes we’ll both be shooting, sometimes one of us will be holding a reflector or flash.
Where are you based? We live in Croydon, South London – just down the road from Crystal Palace and not too far from the beautiful Surrey countryside!
What areas do you cover? Would you be willing to travel? We LOVE to travel…! We’re still waiting for the Caribbean beach wedding shoot to come in but we’ve shot weddings throughout the UK from Durham to Devon. For weddings outside the M25 there is an additional charge for travel (the standard rate of 45p per mile) and if it’s more than a two hour drive from our house we ask for overnight accommodation.
Can you tell us about the Bride & Groom portraits? The Bride & Groom portraits are one of our favourite parts of a wedding day! We ask for about 30 minutes of your time to shoot some creative and artistic portraits. Many couples love this time as it gives them a few minutes to catch their breath and reflect on the day away from their guests. We encourage you to bring a glass of champagne with you and will ask one of the bridesmaids to come along to help out. We will guide you and work with you throughout to create some beautiful images.
Do you shoot formal family portraits? Yes, of course! We ask for a written list of who you want photographed before the wedding and we do recommend no more than eight groups. It can take up to five minutes per group (someone has always gone to the bar/bathroom/is putting on lipstick/can’t be found just when you want them for a photo…!) and we don’t like to keep you from your party for too long! We also usually ask for one of the ushers to help ‘gather’ those needed.
Do you take photos during the Church ceremony? For us, the ceremony is the most important part of your wedding day, the vows are what makes the marriage and we love shooting such a special moment. But, it is down to the Church and Vicar as to whether we are allowed to photograph the ceremony. We strongly advise that you talk to your vicar before your wedding day and find out what they do and don’t allow. We have shot many Church weddings and many Vicars have complimented us on our sympathetic and discreet approach.
Do you visit our venues before the wedding? As far as is reasonably possible we check out all venues before the wedding day. Whilst we cannot predict what either the weather or the light will be doing on your special day (and light is the most important component to photos!) we can get a good idea of the layout of the venue and get some ideas for the best places to take photos.
Read our blog post about a wedding we shot in Bristol to find out exactly how far we go to make sure we check out the venues in advance…
How long do you shoot for? Our wedding collections include between eight to ten hours of time. You can add more hours if you wish, or your can create your own bespoke package from our al-la-carte price list and have as many or as few hours as you want!
Do you require food? Yes please! If we are with you for your whole wedding day we can often be shooting for up to ten hours, this is a long time without food or drink. We always appreciate being given a meal at a wedding, although we don’t expect to sit with your guests (in fact we prefer not to as we usually take this time to review what we’ve shot and check what is still on the list). Please have a chat with us about this when you confirm your booking.
How long after the wedding will we receive our images? You will receive your wedding photos within four to six weeks of the wedding. They come beautifully presented on our personalised Stonelock Photography USB sticks!
How many photos will we get? It depends on which collection you choose, anything upwards of 300+ beautifully perfected images in a mixture of colour and black and white.
Do you offer albums and what can you tell us about them? Yes! We partner with one of the top British album manufactures to produce our albums. They are stunning professionally printed and bound albums with a minimum of 30 pages and a beautiful faux leather or linen cover. We personally design all of our albums. We don’t use templates, every one is unique. AJ, as well as being a photographer, is a successful Graphic Designer and he’ll personally design your album for you, responding to your own choice of images and favourite moments.
You can see our albums here.
Can we get prints? Yes. We partner with several amazing printers who always produce top-quality prints with stunning colours and tonal ranges. Alternatively you can take your USB stick to any high-street photographic printers and make your own prints.
Can friends and family view our photos? Yes. Your photos will be uploaded to a password protected gallery on our website within four to six weeks of the wedding. We will share the password with you when we deliver your USB stick and you can then forward it onto family and friends.
We also do a sneaky peep Facebook post of a a few of our favourite photos a couple of days after the wedding so if your Mum is desperate to see some photos tell her to hop over and like our Facebook page to get the first viewing!
What cameras do you shoot with? We use professional Canon cameras with a mixture of different lenses depending on the shoot conditions and the effect we want to achieve. We do occasionally use a little bit of flash if it is needed but primarily tend to work with natural light.
And what if it breaks on my wedding day? Do you have a spare camera? Great question, and this is how you can often differentiate the pro’s from the amateurs!
We have a spare camera. And a spare camera for the spare camera. And spare lenses. And a spare flash gun… With two photographers at your wedding, between us we will usually have a minimum of four cameras, six lens and four flash guns. As well as a bag full of batteries.
Are you insured? Yes. We’re insured in case we drop our camera and also in case Great Aunt Mavis trips over our tripod!
What happens if you are ill on my wedding day? We are proud members of the SWPP (Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers) and through this have a whole national network of photographers we can call on.
But, as Stonelock Photography is Ally and AJ, there are two of us. It would have to be very bad luck for both of us to be ill at the same time and so you would still have one of us as the primary photographer, we would then bring in one of our trusted colleagues as a second shooter.
And what if it rains? It rained ALL day at our own wedding, and you know what, it didn’t matter one bit, we still had the best day ever! If colourful umbrellas and welly boots splashing in puddles or dancing in the rain is not your thing we have a full, traveling photographic studio and so can still shoot all your portraits and group shots inside. This is one of the reasons we like to visit a venue before a wedding, to check out options should the sun not be shining!
What are your prices? Our wedding collections start from £1,200. We are happy to create a bespoke collection especially for your wedding. Please have a look at our wedding investments page or contact us for further information or to discuss your own wedding.
What booking fee do we need to pay? We ask for a 25% booking fee to secure our the date. We only ever shoot one wedding per day.
How do we pay? We send you an invoice. We prefer to be paid by BACS but will accept a cheque if this is not possible.
Do you offer off-season and weekday discounts? Sometimes we have discounted prices depending on our schedules and availability.
Talk to me about copyright? Where do we start… The standard practice across the photographic industry is that the copyright belongs to the photographer, the person who created the photo. In the same way that a songwriter owns the copyright to a song he wrote and an author holds the copyright to her book. Our wedding collections come with digital images on a USB with full printing rights so that you can print them as you wish. We do ask that you don’t sell your wedding photos and that if you use them online (for example on Facebook) that you use the watermarked social media photos that we give you. This is to prevent third parties ‘borrowing’ and using your photos, which I’m sure you don’t want anymore than we do! If you want to know more about copyright then please do give us a call, it’s far too complicated to explain here!
So what’s an engagement shoot and do we get one? An engagement or pre-wedding shoot is a fantastic opportunity for us to get to know you a little better, for you to get to know us and for you to practice being in front of the camera! Many people are nervous about being photographed and we find that a short session before the wedding, during which we will talk to you about how to stand, where to look and what to do with your hands. It means that on wedding day you are relaxed and happy in front of our cameras and that results in relaxed and happy photos!
Some of our Collections includes a pre-wedding shoot. Our other collections can have one added in at a small additional cost. Check out our blog post on why you should have an engagement shoot!
Wow, that was a lot of questions… We hope we’ve covered everything but if there is anything we’ve missed that you would like to know – or if you just want to talk weddings -please do get in touch!