Wedding Cherub

Green protector

Derbyshire, 2004ish?

I was on a wedding photography course, but, as ever, I was finding that I disagreed with a lot of what the instructor was telling us to do- I didn't want to spend the entire wedding posing and directing people! I didn't need to use flash in the church! Why are we making the bride and groom do silly things way out of their comfort zone? (The couple were models hired for the day, but the principle was there.... ). To me, it was all such stale thinking for an occasion that was supposed to be a beautiful, life affirming event.

We moved from inside the tiny village church to the outside, where the early Autumn light was beginning to fade in the ancient churchyard with its once splendid tombs and gravestones scattered around and partially hidden by the encroaching greenery. The instructor was telling us about posing the couple against a tree, but my mind wandered to how I would have used the setting differently- and that's when I saw the railings around a Victorian tomb... each corner topped by a small Cherub, eaten away by rust and covered by lichen and algae. I slid away from the rest and took a few photos of the little figures, before returning to the fold.

The next day we edited our shots. All of the other photographer attendees had more or less the same images, shot over the instructors shoulders. Mine were, Different.... different angles, subjects, lighting.... in fact, nothing like how we were being shown. It was noticed and frowned upon, but I was there to learn, and the Photoshop skills being taught were worth the cost of the course on their own.

It was this weekend of confusion and frustration that made me realise that mainstream wedding -and portraiture- wasn't what I wanted to do. I saw much more than the fixed standards of the genre and wanted to explore different ways of capturing the essence of the day, but with a light touch, hardly affecting the flow apart from a few posed or directed images of groups.

In trying to fit into the standard mould, I realised my true path that day- and this little cherub was my guiding angel.