Turner Contemporary Wedding Photography // Juliane & Luke

Turner Contemporary Wedding Photography

Is This Something?

THE BREAKDOWN:
Wedding Location: Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK
In Brief: Relaxed, creative wedding in artistic surrounds.

"Incredible photographers! Thank you so much for being part of our wedding day, and capturing the moments big and small. We and our guests love the pictures so much, we've gotten so many compliments on them. One couple even said they want to get married again (to each each other - phew) just so they could hire you! We'll forever cherish those memories you managed to capture so well."

Juliane & Luke’s wedding was one of our absolute favourites of the year: amazing people, a fabulous, chic and contemporary setting and an environment that allowed us the creative space to create the kind of photographs we love. In fact some of our favourite ever photographs were taken on this day; many of them during a relaxed and stylish drinks reception, yet on the face of it the photographic scenario of that particular scene perhaps doesn’t, on the face of it, sound quite so enticing …

Space is limited, the setting is concrete, the light is flat. Guests mingle and talk happily but there are no “obvious” moments occurring, no activities or preordained entertainment to focus upon. As a photographer where do you begin?

You may have noticed that we’ve been a little quiet on the blog lately, though writing has actually been a particularly strong theme in our lives over the last few months, and in fact the last few years. In 2020 we started collating ideas of how to fully answer the question above, to try to put our photographic process into words and explain all aspects of our approach in as much detail as we can. The result was our book “Is This Something?” which we’re proud to have finally released to the world in June. Learning not just how to write a book, but how to publish, print, sell and distribute it has been quite the learning experience but we’ve been overwhelmed by the positive response from photographers in so many countries and at such different stages of their journeys as photographers.

The book covers every part of a wedding day but the question of what to do in those scenarios where not much is happening, those scenes without magical light or dynamic activity is very much at the heart of it. “Is This Something?” is a question we ask ourselves often when photographing such scenes, yet it is these parts of the day that we can truly allow our creativity to run wild and, consequently, that we love to photograph so much.

So back to Juliane & Luke and their absolute blast of a wedding day at the perfectly suited (and hugely inspiring) Turner Contemporary in Margate. For much of the day we were treated to unusual settings, great light and fascinating stories. But as the guests stepped out to that overcast drinks reception, surrounded by concrete (stylish concrete, but concrete nonetheless!) we found ourselves not with limitations but with our idea of perfection: a collection of interesting and expressive personalities and a blank canvas in which to create photographs.

So often the makings of a photograph come not through big “newsworthy” events but through the subtleties of interaction, the shape and sensibility of the scene in front of us. The moments that reveal the most don’t have to shout out to be photographed, sometimes they whisper so quietly the question comes first to our minds “Is This Something?”

And, in the case of Juliane & Luke’s wedding, they most certainly were.