FashionBride Interview with Chris Barber

You may have a one day wedding but your photos will last you forever, that’s why you must find the perfect team to take care of your lifetime worthy memories. We talked with Chris Barber from Chris Barber Media and found out more on the art of photography.

You’ll love to work with Chris and his wife Dani their work is modern and the sessions (and images) are fun and  they’ll can make you look AWESOME!

Don’t forget to check their website!

1. When did you decided to become a photographer and why did you find this domain interesting?

Wedding photography got into us. We’re both still kinda young so this is something we’ve been doing all our “working” life so far. We love weddings because we see that there’s room to push the boundaries of what people think wedding photography “should” look like and what wedding photography “could” be like. All our couples book us for our off-beat, quirky and fun style. To us, wedding photography is mainly about having fun, feeling relaxed and being yourselves, we make our couples feel as though we’re just “hanging out” whilst we snap away.

2. Talk us trough the first years of you work. Maybe you could tell us what did change in time? Are your projects different from the very beginning?

We’re 21 and 22, so we’re still relatively young and “new” to the industry. But we’ve been shooting professionally for the last 2-3 years and our mind-set has never changed. We aim to constantly push ourselves to produce new ideas, fresh work and eye catching images, not just for our couples, but (kind of greedily) for ourselves. We love and take pride in what we do so producing the same work, week in, week out would not cheating our couples out of fresh, modern photography, but it’d also be incredibly boring for us. So we like to try something fresh and a little different at every wedding.

3. Why should a bride-to-be choose your services?

Usually brides come to us with a huge sigh of relief, often with something along the lines of “we nearly had to settle for our Mum + Dads posed, rigid, same old/same old wedding photographer”. All our couples appreciate good photography, they love our quirky/off beat style and want to avoid stiff, rigid, posed photographs at all costs.

Another reason is because we’re a husband + wife team, which brings a completely different approach to that of other photographers who shoot alone or simply hire a second shooter. Our couples love the fact that they get to know who we are and what they can expect on the day rather than some random dude that just turns up and meets the couple 5 minutes before the ceremony.

Also – we make our couples look and feel freakin’ awesome!

4. Do tell us a bit more about what a bride should do or say to help you – let’s say maybe give you some more details about the lighting on the venue or about the style she will choose for her wedding attire.

There’s so many things we try and find out from our brides before the big day. Firstly, we want to get an idea of who they are: what they enjoy doing in their spare time and what their approach to planning the wedding is. A few months before, we meet the couple again to discuss timings and any formal photos they may wish to request. We deliberately only photograph the groups that the couple request so that we can keep the “formal” part of our service fast-paced, fun and energetic.

We couldn’t think of anything worse than spending an hour and a half lining up 20 different combinations of the same family whilst the rest of their guests get bored. It’s important to give the photographer whatever time they require. We request a small amount of time for each part of the day and it’s quite easy for this time to be significantly reduced. The more time you can honor your photographer with, the more chance you have of obtaining the images that you booked them for in the first place.

5. Have you got any wedding you’ve photographed and that has a very special meaning for you? Can you describe it or can show us a picture?

This is going to sound really naff, but every wedding is genuinely important to us in some way. We build a rapport with every couple and get to know “their story”, so it’s super awesome when they finally tie the knot. Needless to say, every couples story is different so some “hit us” harder than others.

We recently did a wedding for an American couple in Edinburgh that have an incredible story. I’ll save you every detail but the basic outline is that they both moved to Scotland a couple of years back because they loved the city of Edinburgh and for the brides education.

They chose to get married there, with a small intimate crowd of around 20-odd guests. The couple were totally on our wave length and loved our quirky, fun approach to wedding photography. They were super care-free and live life as it comes, we completely fell in love with and they’ve left a huge impression on us and where we see ourselves in the future.

6. From your point of view, how should a perfect wedding be like?

Every wedding should have a cake in the shape of a Freddo chocolate bar. If it aint got that – it aint a perfect wedding. Just kidding, I guess the perfect wedding is subjective in that as long as it’s perfect to the couple – that’s all that matters.

Being wedding photographers, we see some things that want to make us get married all over again and some things we’d rather avoid but at the end of the day, as long as the bride and groom are enjoying their day, that’s all that matters. Personally, a wedding for us should be relaxed, fun and a chance to party hard!

7. And tell us what would you offer a future bride and, maybe, other photo teams can’t.

That’s easy. We offer us. There our 1000’s of photographers out there, and we know that our style and personalities aren’t for everyone, but if a couple feel some kind of connection with us and our work, then we HAVE to photograph their wedding.

8. Last but not least, do you have any advice for FashionBride readers?

Don’t think too much. Oh and party hard. Love you!