That's right , yesterday I shot the royal wedding , I decided to shoot the event as a Street Photography / documentary project as part of my State Of Britain series . It might surprise some of you that I have worn the Royal Rota Press Pass on a number of occasions in the past , but I was not in the business of trying to create PR publicity shots on this occasion , thankfully. !
Mick Jagger told me a million times never to exaggerate and never to name drop, so I won't mention here who I've shot in the past . My plan for this event was to photograph it in "Street" style from my personal (Layman's) view , I would not even travel to Windsor although I would visit a local town and shoot whatever royal wedding imagery came my way !
The local town had laid on a big screen to enable shoppers & shop workers to watch the event and create a community atmosphere., I was looking forward to being part of the crowd and recording this occasion . As Windsor hosted the worlds press with thousands of photographers present, I would record / interpret how ordinary people in a normal city responded to this memorable day.
I prepared for this shoot with a level of seriousness that I thought was behind me , two bodies with 20mm lenses fitted, Eight camera batteries , spare cards in case of malfunctions , flash to control contrast if needed etc . I arrived early in town to case the location and see how the local folk were responding to this historic event , at first I was worried ,as the town was quiet , very quiet?
I managed portraits of the grooms grandmother, Harry and Megan very early on in the day before capturing a cafe worker preparing for the day ahead.
To be honest I was thrilled with the 3 portraits I captured in the window of the charity shop , the quirkiness of this photographic opportunity was revealing itself to me , I felt like the cat with the cream as this crazy shoot was working out.
Twelve O'clock soon came around and the television wedding coverage began on the big screen with the local folk gathered around , I knew this was going to be the most challenging part of this unusual wedding photography coverage , I had photographed this large screen before at Cheltenham races and knew that the banding problems that old TV sets presented to photographers were not an issue here , long exposures were not necessary, which was just as well, as it was a very bright day and the contrast was high !
I shot about 200 pics on the day, obviously most of these have already hit the edit room floor and will never see the light of day ,its early days in the edit but I might have managed 7 or 8 keepers from the day, which is fine . I have to admit that this was a tough day compared to my normal considered laid back Street Photography approach. .
I have loved shooting this international event from my local and personal perspective, the images might be challenging for some viewers as they seek to offer alternative representations and interpretations to the predictable high profile press imagery that does not really represent the reality of how most of the UK public participated & engaged with this twenty first century marriage.
I believe this alternative Royal Wedding photographic coverage is an important contribution to my State Of Britain series .
Keep it real !