One person. The whole day.

Halden photographs weddings in the Adelaide Hills, and anywhere else the drive is worth it. No team. No second shooter. No assistant holding a light stand at the back of the room. Just her, from the quiet part of the morning through to the last song.

The day starts here

By the time your first guest arrives, she has been there for hours.

A wedding photographed by one person is a different document. There is no handover at four o’clock, no second camera cutting to an angle nobody remembers, nobody asking the groomsmen to move half a step left. One person, one eye, one continuous account of the day as it actually went.

It also means she is in the room long before it matters. The good frames are rarely the ones anybody planned, and you cannot arrive in time for those.

A day, in six frames.

A lace wedding dress hanging on a bedroom door beside a curtained window. — Twenty past six. The dress on the back of a door.

An older woman at a window in morning light, half turned away. — Nine. Her mother, not crying yet.

Seated guests turning to look back down an aisle toward open doors. — Half eleven. The walk in, from the back.

Wedding guests standing on dry grass in hard afternoon sun, talking. — Two. Nobody looking at the camera.

A couple in a dry paddock with the setting sun on the horizon between them. — Golden. The only ten minutes that cannot be moved.

A dance floor late at night lit by one warm lamp, legs blurred with motion. — Late. The floor, from the edge of it.

See the work

What she does not do.

She does not work from a shot list read off a clipboard. She will photograph what you tell her matters and everything around it, which is usually where the day is.
She does not spend forty minutes on group photographs. Twenty minutes, a written list of who, and then everybody goes back to the party.
She does not put a flash in a dark room unless the room asks for it. Available light, almost always, including after dark.

What they said after.

She was in the kitchen with my aunties for an hour and I did not see her take a single photograph. There are ninety of them.
Ida, Basket Range

We have one picture of the ceremony from the back of the room that I have looked at more than our wedding album.
Josef, Uraidla

Read the rest

Tell her about the day.

She takes about twenty weddings a year and books eleven months out. If your date is close, ask anyway, because dates come back.

Tell her about the day