Clearwell Castle Wedding Photographer. Samuel & Kayleigh

December 3rd, 2010

I’m get­ting quite com­fort­able shoot­ing at Clear­well Cas­tle now, as you might of noticed, two inter­na­tion­al­ly award win­ning images and some of my favourite wed­dings to date held at this cas­tle which is just a per­fect lit­tle slice of Eng­lish archi­tec­ture and taste.

In case you’re inter­est­ed, the two win­ning images can be seen here.
If you were con­sid­er­ing hav­ing your wed­ding here, don’t hold back from book­ing. It’s in such a great loca­tion and it’s so con­ve­nient because there is often no dri­ving from Bridal prep-house to church to recep­tion venue. Every­thing under one roof!
Just make sure they light the fire for you. The smell is so relaxing!

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the first time I met up with Samuel & Kayleigh was on their wed­ding day. Due to some wor­ry­ing fam­i­ly health, the date had been pushed for­ward and it seemed like every­body helped out to make every­thing run smooth. And it did!

I wish I had time to of met up with them before their bit day as they’re a crack­ing couple.
Still, nev­er mind. I always try my hard­est to real­ly get to know my cou­ples before their wed­ding day so that they can feel com­fort­able around me.
It is always beneficial.

Kayleigh got her hair and make up ready in the keep­ers cot­tage before escap­ing to the Bridal suite to get into her dress with­out any­one spot­ting her. All good fun I thought!
Whilst every­body was in the cot­tage get­ting ready, I went out the back­door to have a lit­tle explore.
Long sto­ry short: door closed behind me, locked shut, spent 10 min­utes shout­ing for help. Of course, every­body found it hilar­i­ous! Good times.

On with the pic­tures then.
Just a lit­tle note about these fab­ric bou­quets; Kayleigh made them her­self and was very mod­est about them. Well done Kayleigh, we all think they’re amazing!


  1. Bridget Francis December 7th, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    Ha! Snap with the venue and looks like you had a much warmer day than we did! Love the whole set and real­ly good to see the same venue done by anoth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er — where were the ducks — I went look­ing but they must have all been shel­ter­ing from the frost and snow!

  2. Shella December 7th, 2010 at 2:25 pm

    What cute kid­dies!! And the bou­quet is fab!! Great job :)

  3. Thomas Lester December 7th, 2010 at 3:18 pm

    These are top notch. Absolute­ly amaz­ing. The shot of the bride being escort­ed down the aisle is ridicu­lous­ly great. It’s so sim­ple, but real­ly powerful.

  4. Sesja portretowa December 7th, 2010 at 4:55 pm

    Nice pho­tos, and great details shoots

  5. Tina Bass December 7th, 2010 at 6:53 pm

    These are so time­less and gorgeous!!

  6. Heather December 7th, 2010 at 7:58 pm

    I love the depth of field on that shot tak­en down the table!! Won­der­ful work here.

  7. adam houseman December 7th, 2010 at 9:24 pm

    Beau­ti­ful wed­ding and its beau­ti­ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed. Love­ly set of mem­o­ries here Joseph. Well done!

  8. Nessa K December 7th, 2010 at 10:20 pm

    You cap­tured so many amaz­ing moments. Beau­ti­ful work. =)

  9. chavvon smith December 7th, 2010 at 10:23 pm

    great, great set!! won­der­ful job on the whole wedding.

  10. Kellee December 7th, 2010 at 10:53 pm

    Stun­ning. The emo­tion in the images is just beautiful!

  11. Magan Blasig December 8th, 2010 at 12:01 am

    The last image of them walk­ing is so, so beau­ti­ful! Love the whole set, but that one needs to be made an extra large canvas. :)

  12. Becca Dilley December 8th, 2010 at 12:22 am

    Love the sec­ond to last — very fun addi­tion to the oth­er portraits!

  13. Jessie Cadenas-A Story in Time December 8th, 2010 at 3:58 am

    Awe­some!!!! The black and white of the bride get­ting dressed and the lit­tle girl wist­ful­ly think­ing is award win­ning! I loved them all!

  14. Natalie December 8th, 2010 at 4:07 am

    I love the emo­tion and pure joy that you’ve cap­tured in your images. You have such a gift and I am so inspired by your work! Love!

  15. Xanthe December 8th, 2010 at 9:58 am

    Love them all, but that veil shot is 1000% win. Love it!

  16. Rachael Muller December 8th, 2010 at 2:12 pm

    nice work, i like the layouts.

  17. Laura Thomas December 8th, 2010 at 2:35 pm

    Beau­ti­ful wed­ding and gor­geous loca­tion! Love the table with the bokeh, very creative:)

  18. Joshua Gull December 8th, 2010 at 9:48 pm

    Gor­geous shots of a gor­geous wed­ding Joseph. Great work.

  19. Robin Horton December 8th, 2010 at 11:34 pm

    I have been an admir­er of your work for the last three months, with every wed­ding you pull some­thing inter­est­ing out of the hat.
    I am not able to make a liv­ing from wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy due to bad health but do a hand­full of wit­ness wed­dings each year, I would be inter­est­ed in what your fave lens­es are.
    Keep up the good work.

  20. Tall December 9th, 2010 at 4:04 pm

    Joseph, great job! I love love love the shot of the brides­maid doing up the dress with the girls behind look­ing into the mir­ror, great sto­ry­telling composition!

  21. Your Uncle December 10th, 2010 at 5:24 am

    Ahh, where to begin.

    At first I thought you were pre­ten­tious, then I real­ized that you were Eng­lish. Then I real­ized that there real­ly was­n’t a whole lot of dif­fer­ence between the two, so I almost did­n’t men­tion it. But there it is.

    The Eng­lish Way of Spelling is a lit­tle annoy­ing, but under­stand­able. With the over­pow­er­ing might of the USA reach­ing around the world (where once the Eng­lish Empire reached, “The sun nev­er sets on the Eng­lish Empire”, etc.) it’s under­stand­able that you (the col­lec­tive you, the pre­ten­tious, the Eng­lish) feel you need to hang onto quaint cus­toms such as spelling.

    A lit­tle wordy and ram­bling in the open­ing, you used up 1000 words where one pic­ture would have suf­ficed. Well, that’s what I thought before I start­ed see­ing the pictures.

    A lit­tle heavy on the praise — both on your­self (award-win­ning, indeed!) and on the bridal par­ty. By the way, you mis­spelled “achieve­ments” on your Award Win­ning Pho­tog­ra­ph­er page, and “infact” should in fact be two words. Just say­ing. That, by the way, is an Amer­i­can­ism, a col­lo­qui­al expres­sion in Amer­i­can Eng­lish. Feel free to bor­row it.

    I digress.

    The pho­to of the bou­quet is quite love­ly. The dirty win­dow next to it looks like it is an exhib­it from CSI (that’s Crime Scene Inves­ti­ga­tion, a pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion (tel­ly for you) show here in the US (and yes, I know these are nest­ed paren­the­sis, you can keep up, can’t you?)). One won­ders what man­ner of germs and pesti­lence resides in the oily streaks of grub­by fin­gers of yesteryear.

    The ladies on the bed seem to be shar­ing a secret. Next to the gar­den sign, I am remind­ed of “The Secret Gar­den”, and the con­no­ta­tion is not pos­i­tive. Not your fault, just point­ing it out.

    Two pic­tures of trees, one with two small peo­ple down below. I think they’re peo­ple. Are they ticks, lice, or some oth­er un-named par­a­site? Are you friends with Ben God­kin? He has a habit of putting insect-like peo­ple in odd places.

    The girl laugh­ing is adorable, but a few words of com­men­tary on exact­ly what was so fun­ny would have been appre­ci­at­ed. Or per­haps she’s laugh­ing at you, which would be understandable.

    I wor­ry about the duck poop­ing on the shoes. That would be regret­table. And smelly. But per­haps the duck would then become a part of the meal. Mmmm, roast­ed duck.

    I fail to under­stand wom­en’s fas­ci­na­tion with pho­tos of get­ting their hair done. I do not take pho­tos of myself groom­ing my hair. Since I am near­ly bald, the only hair that is long enough to groom is in a pri­vate place, which is beside the point, but I would not take a pho­to of me buff­ing my head, either.

    The small blonde child looks up in sur­prise, as if you’d shout­ed, “Hey, bug­ger off!” (See, I know some Eng­lish Eng­lish.) I eager­ly antic­i­pate the next frame where the moth­er slaps you, but that seems to be missing.

    The woman seems sur­prised by the pre­sen­ta­tion of the bou­quet. Per­haps she for­got she was sup­posed to have one?

    The two girls walk­ing into the door­way are adorable. I wor­ry, how­ev­er, that a medi­um-sized print would result in them appear­ing tick-sized. That would be unfor­tu­nate. Per­haps you and Ben God­kin could col­lab­o­rate on a cof­fee-table book titled “Tick-sized Peo­ple From Weddings”.

    Oh, look — a pho­to of some­one tak­ing a pho­to. That’s almost recur­sive. Oh, and anoth­er, and anoth­er. I do believe you have solved the prob­lem of wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy being so chal­leng­ing. You no longer have to take pho­tos of any­thing, just take pho­tos of oth­er peo­ple tak­ing pho­tos of things. That way if the pho­to is no good, you can blame the oth­er person.

    Small waif-like chil­dren look­ing at the cam­era appre­hen­sive­ly dis­turb me.

    This is a very long blog post. I grow weary, but persevere.

    Is that a tat­too? “BM”? What’s that, a reminder to vis­it the loo before any­thing impor­tant hap­pens? (Heh, more Eng­lish English.)

    The shot of the flow­ers seems to have a small green crick­et peek­ing over the front blos­som. Is that Jiminy? Will he burst into song with Pinocchio?

    Like the hair, shoes puz­zle me. Men have three pairs of shoes — sneak­ers, brown, and black. Women have shoes for every imag­in­able pur­pose, and rarely wear the same pair twice. 

    They enter the church — why are there so many emp­ty seats? Are those peo­ple cam­era-shy, they saw you com­ing and ran to be behind you? Are they behind you tak­ing a pho­to of the bride walk­ing? Or are they tak­ing a pho­to of you tak­ing a pho­to? The mind boggles.

    Beau­ti­ful shots of the ceremony.

    The small child asleep reminds me that I missed my nap today.

    The recep­tion appeared to be a hap­py evening. The pho­to of the bride and her maids look­ing at a pho­to in a cam­era is anoth­er recur­sive affair. Do mul­ti­ple recur­sions mul­ti­ply or are they expo­nen­tial? Inquir­ing minds need to know.

    The bride and groom out­side is a nice pho­to, but cropped rather loose­ly. I wor­ry about it print­ed large. See com­ments above regard­ing ticks and lice.

    Whew. Final­ly done.

    I hope that my com­ments have helped you become a bet­ter photographer.

    I would be inter­est­ed in hav­ing a copy of my favorite image.
    Thanks and best wish­es from
    Your Favorite (wait, wait … make that “Favourite!”) Uncle

    (JUST KIDDING, SERIOUSLY, DO NOT PUBLISH THIS COMMENT.)

  22. Nicola December 20th, 2010 at 1:10 am

    Absolute­ly fan­tas­tic day and the pic­tures just show how much of a good day it was! Thanks Joseph for the amaz­ing pho­tos. So natural

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