The Second week in January each year sees the biggest event in the UK and European Professional Photographers’ Calendar – The Societies Annual Convention and Awards at the Novotel Hotel in London.

This is a week-long event, consisting of numerous Business and Photography masterclasses, a very busy trade show, and culminates in the Societies Annual Awards presentation. Keynote speakers at the show this year were the immensely talented Adam Alex and Nick Ghionis of XSight Studios.

My wife Morag and I attended the full week of the show, and I was very honoured to be invited to speak at the event this year on the subject of Marketing a Wedding Photography Business. With it being my first time speaking at the Convention I wasn’t sure how much of a turnout I would have, but fortunately the room was completely packed and it was standing room only – people were even sitting in the aisles to hear my presentation, so I was absolutely delighted.

As usual it was a fantastic social event and we met many friends old and new and it was great to catch up with everyone and compare notes. And Drink. The odd cocktail or three.

During the week one of the big events is the judging of the Annual Print competition – the standard of this competition is extremely high and attracts entries from all round the world. I was therefore delighted to gain three Merit awards and see my images on the exhibition stand at the end of the week. It was the first time I’d entered the print competition, so I was absolutely delighted with the result.

Here are the three images that gained Merit Awards:-

Sunday night was the big Awards presentation and I knew I was in the final selection for “Members Choice General Photographer of the Year” – the previous year I had won the “Members Choice Wedding Photographer of the Year”, so I was delighted to be in the final round again this year – however there were over 50 other photographers in the final round of judging – including my own Daughter Nicola – so competition was fierce. Nicola runs her own family portrait business called Bumps Babies Beyond specialising in photographing New Borns in the first weeks of their life.

So imagine our surprise when it was announced that the voting for the Members Choice General Photographer had resulted in a three way tie, with two of the winners being myself and my daughter Nicola! It was a very proud moment to walk up onstage alongside my Daughter to collect the award. The other recipient of the award was South African Photographer Alec Davies.

Of course, Nicola couldn’t help but try and upstage me by dropping the award to much hilarity – fortunately a moment captured forever on YouTube LOL

Nicola’s winning photograph (shown below) was of little Layla who was just over one week old and had went on quite the journey all the way from the South of England just to have Nicola photograph her after her Mum had seen a Dundee friend’s newborn images.  Nicola said “The pressure was on with this session purely for the fact that mum Hayley and little Layla had travelled so far and of course I wanted to do my very best, so for this image to be the one to receive the award makes it all the more special for me.”

My own photograph was the result of a challenge by another photographer to come up with an image that evoked the work of the great George Hurrell, who photographed the great Hollywood icons of the 1940′s.

Myself and Nicola’s Winning Images in the Members Choice General Photographer of the Year:-

Myself (that’s the handsome Dude on the right) and Nicola (the one that shares her good looks from the handsome Dude on the right) being presented with the award by Ben Jones (not the handsome Dude on the right)

So a great start to 2012 – a year which is looking to be just as busy and exciting as last year.  If we’re photographing  your Wedding this year – we can’t wait to work with you to create some fantastic wedding images.

The show runs over 8 days and is a fantastic event with fabulous training opportunities. Over 14,000 photographers visited the show this year which was held at the Novotel Hotel in Hammersmith, London.

Due to a rather busy photography schedule I was only able to attend the show from the Wednesday through to the Saturday, but I managed to squeeze a ton of learning into those 4 days.

The culmination of the week is the Annual SWPP Awards Dinner held on the Sunday evening and hosted by TV personality Phillipa Forrester – sadly due to photography commitments I couldn’t attend this year – I did have some entries in the Final, but having viewed the stiff competition I thought I had zero chance of winning.

So imagine my surprise when I received a text message on Sunday night from one of my colleagues at the dinner letting me know that I had won an award! I was gobsmacked to say the least.

The award was “Members Choice Wedding Photographer of the Year” – this is a competition that runs throughout the year on the SWPP Members discussion forum. Each Week we are asked to put forward an image against a particular wedding theme and the membership then votes for the winning image each week. The winning images are then put forward for a final vote and the winner gets the title of Members Choice Wedding Photographer of the Year.

The SWPP is the fastest growing association for professional photographers and has 1000′s of members worldwide, so it is a fabulous honour to be given an award that was voted on by my fellow members and peers.

The winning image had just got into the final on the last week of the competition when members are asked to submit their “best” image of the year – that was an honour in itself to win that week, but to win the overall competition was totally unexpected.

So thanks to my fellow members and a HUGE thank you to our Wedding couple, Maria and Ewen Christie who were very patient with myself and Morag when we created this image on a very rainy and dark day in November under the Glasgow University Cloisters. Although I was the photographer, this image is all about the lighting and pose, so full credit has to go to Morag who setup the lighting and to Maria and Ewen who needed just a tiny bit of direction from us to pull this off.

From a technical standpoint the image was taken under very challenging conditions – it was indeed very very dark (it was raining at monsoon levels) and we had to expose at 1/30s f/2.8 and using ISO 6400. It is a testament to the power of the Nikon D700 cameras that I use that I was able to get this image at all. The lighting was from what little ambient daylight there was, and a single Lowell ID Video light, held expertly by Morag who was tucked in behind the left-hand pillar. The video light presents a warm tungsten colour balance and when we adjust this back on the computer we have to cool the light a bit to get correct skin tones – this then has the wonderful side-effect of cooling the ambient daylight colour and you then get that beautiful blue colour that you can see in the image. 6400 iso is a very high gain level to set your camera to, and for an image like this we would normally hope to be at just 200 iso – a higher iso level can cause a lot of digital noise in an image, however the Nikon handles it very well and what noise remains present can be further cleaned up during processing by the very powerful Lightroom 3 software that we use.

So, SWPP Members Choice Wedding Photographer of the Year 2010 – a culmination of a fantastic year! A big thank you from myself and Morag to all our 2010 couples for helping us make our job so much fun!

As we move into 2011 I thought I would take a look back at 2010 which was an exceptionally busy year for us.

We shot 44 weddings last year and we travelled as far north as Aberdeen and Eilean Donan and as far south as Kelso (we did Aberdeen and Kelso in one very tiring weekend LOL). Heading west we made it all the way down the Mull of Kintrye, and eastward we made it to the home of golf, St Andrews.  Among those weddings we had the fabulous privilege of photographing an Olympic Athlete ( Skeleton bobsleigher Iain Roberts) and a Wimbledon Doubles Champion (Tennis Player Jamie Murray).

To all our fantastic couples last year, thank you so much for allowing myself and Morag to be part of your special day.

We also worked with some superb Scottish Wedding Venues and some of the highlights for us were: Eilean Donan Castle; Glasgow University Chapel; St Salvador’s Chapel in St Andrews; the stunning Dalmunzie Castle in Glenshee; historic Balbirnie House in Fife; the five star Mar Hall on the banks of the Clyde Estuary; and the fabulous Stonefield Castle hidden away in a beautiful part of the Mull of Kintyre.

From a photographic point of view I invested in my craft and spent some quality training time in the company of Scotland’s own Trevor and Faye Yerbury and Yorkshire’s John Denton and I’m sure as a direct result I received a Licentiate Qualification from the Society of Wedding and Portrait Professionals (SWPP) and I also won 6 Gold Awards for my work and 9 Silver Awards in the SWPP’s International Competitions.  I was also recognised by my peers by twice winning a weekly competition voted on by fellow SWPP members.

We’ve had our weddings featured in “Best Scottish Weddings” magazine (thank you Jacqui and Chris) and “No 1″ magazine (thank you Jeff and Claire) and just this week I had a four page profile about my wedding photography appear in Pro Photo magazine – which is a monthly magazine targeted at fellow professional photographers – so that is a fabulous honour.

It’s not all been hard work though – in between all that Morag and I also managed to spend a total of 6 fabulous weeks at our villa in Florida and we thoroughly enjoyed a fantastic (though very windy) two weeks in Crete – the highlight of which was a day trip to the stunning island of Santorini.  Despite my youthful years I was also very proud to become a Grandfather for the third time with the birth of my Granddaughter Bronté. 2010 was a fantastic year for us and hopefully it was for you too.

A look forward to 2011

Moving into 2011 we have another busy year ahead of us. We already have 33 weddings booked and over the next few weeks, which are the busiest time of year for enquiries I anticipate that number will rise sharply.  Again we will be far-travelled from our home near Stirling, with weddings all over Scotland, into the North of England and our first International Wedding.

Again I am always looking to improve the quality of my work and I have further training planned with a trip to the Annual SWPP Convention in London next week including a full day’s training working with a model in an abandoned London Underground station with the fabulous John Denton. That day should be fun.  I am also working on Associateship qualification with the SWPP which is extremely difficult to achieve, but I’ve marked it down as one of my New Year’s resolutions.

When I was spending a few weeks in Florida I worked on developing my photographic processing to make it much more “film-like”. Whilst digital photography offers fantastic benefits, I miss the look and feel of the film photography that I grew up on. Film had a certain look and digital tends to have a very clinical feel to it.  I’m delighted to have completed that process and now have a style of processing that emulates the look of the fabulous colour film Kodak Porta NC and the Black and White look of Kodak Plus-X, two fantastic film stocks that are perfect for portrait and wedding work.

So have a truly wonderful 2011, especially if you are getting married this year – here are our 2010 weddings presented in a short video and I’ve also uploaded a couple of photos showing my new film-like processing. (N.B. These images were taken on a training workship with John Denton a few months back and feature the stunning model Fredau Hoekstra)

Colour “Film-like” processing example emulating Kodak Porta NC filmstock

Black and White “film-like” processing example emulating Kodak Plus-X filmstock

You can view our full wedding photography portfolio here.  If you would like to discuss the possibility of us photographing your own wedding, please contact us using the “Contact” menu above or give us a call on 01259 210299 or 07887 835431 – we’d love to hear from you.

Lastly, please don’t be shy and leave us a comment below – we love to hear your feedback. If you are on Facebook we’d be delighted if you could click the “Like” button at the bottom of this article and we’d love you to “Like” our Facebook page for our photography which can be found at http://www.facebook.com/alanhutchisonphotography – Many thanks!

As a Scottish Wedding Photographer who takes great pride in my work, I got a nice Christmas present myself, in the form of Four Gold Awards from the Society of Wedding and Portrait Professionals (SWPP).

The International competition is held monthly and attracts thousands of entries worldwide, so it is a great achievement to get a Gold award – The awards are also carried forward to the Final of the Annual Award which is held next month at the Societies Annual Convention in London.

We received two Gold awards for a couple of Wedding images from Maria and Ewen Christie’s Wedding which was held at Glasgow University Chapel and then on to Mar Hall in Erskine.  Both the winning images were shot in the University Cloisters, which makes a stunning backdrop for Wedding Photographs.   These two photographs illustrate the “wow” factor lighting that we try to incorporate into our Bridal portraits sessions.

We also received a Gold award for a documentary image from Jeff and Claire Rickman’s wedding held at the Roman Camp Hotel earlier in the year. Again this is another example of what we strive for with our documentary style images (which we shoot most of the wedding day) – we look for an image that has strong composition, good lighting and tells a story in itself.  This one had all three.

Another documentary image won us a further award – this was voted by the SWPP members themselves, rather than a set of judges and we won joint first place in the Weekly General competition for this image of one of the guests at Mery and Alberto’s Summer wedding at Eilean Donan Castle.   This is one of my personal favourite images, which I call “Cool Hand Luke”, so I was particularly pleased to see it receive some recognition, especially amongst my peers.

Lastly we tend to travel a lot and I still do a fair bit of Landscape photography. This last image of an Italian beach scene, won us a Gold award in the monthly Travel Category.

So a very nice way to close off the year.

We have one more wedding to photograph tomorrow and then we can close off the 2010 wedding season.   I still have lots of Weddings to blog though, so if you haven’t seen your own wedding or a wedding you attended, don’t worry, it’s coming.

Lastly, we are now approaching the very busy “enquiry” season for weddings, and my availability for wedding dates can change on a daily basis, so please don’t wait too long in arranging a meeting if you are thinking of booking me for your wedding.

The same of course applies if you are considering any other wedding photographers in Scotland – just like the best wedding venues, the best photographers also get booked up quickly, so whoever you are considering, please get in touch soon.

You can contact us using the Contact menu above of give me a call on 01259 210299.  If you want to see some more of my work, you can view my Wedding Portfolio here ( the portfolio always works on iPhone’s, Blackberry’s and iPads ).

Just last week we had the “Posh and Beck’s” of the Scottish Photographic industry (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) – Trevor and Faye Yerbury.  Trevor and Faye are a very charismatic couple and their work is simply stunning.  Being the fourth generation curators of the Yerbury Studios brand, both Trevor and Faye have a wealth of knowledge, history, hilarious anecdotes and of course simply awesome raw talent.  Do yourself a favour and go take a look at their work.

This week however, it was back to regular club business and our Annual Print Competition.  This is a very highly contested affair amongst our club members and whilst we have interim competitions during the year, everyone holds something special back for the annual competition.

I previously won this award a couple of years ago for one of my travel images (which also scooped a Gold award at the SWPP a few months back),  but I could only muster a “Commended” award last year, so I was determined to try and win the Annual Print trophy back.

Well, it was close, very close.  In fact the judge had me as the winner, but for just one very small detail. A label. Sometimes it is the smallest of things that can turn a good photograph into a great photograph and in my case I had overlooked a little bit of clothing which the judge (David Symonds, FRPS) quite rightly decreed as detracting from an “otherwise excellent portrait”.

So it was a Second Place award for me this year.  Ah well, maybe next year.  ;-)

All is not lost though as I did win the Tom Dickson Trophy for a digital image a few months earlier – the annual prize giving is next week at our AGM.  It’s a huge trophy, so I’ll need to invest in some Silver polish to keep it clean. (When my wife Morag reads this she’ll be rolling her eyes LOL).

Congratulations of course must go to fellow member, Bill McKenzie who’s glorious “Harbour Colour” image won first prize.

Anyone interested in joining the local club should put a diary entry in for the early September when we are due to kick off our season again after our “Summer” recess. We meet Wednesday evenings at 7:30pm – more details on the club website.

Here is the image the got me the Second Place – it’s one I took of Kathryn Miller for her modelling portfolio when we were out at our villa in Florida at the start of the year.  If you look at the bottom left hand corner of the image, you will notice the offending little white piece of label material.

Details, Details Details….

Not a wedding image this time – it was for a personal piece of work that had been entered into the January competition and was for an entry in their “Architecture – Interior” category.

The shot is of the Westfield Shopping Mall in Downtown San Francisco.   When I’m out with my camera I’m always looking for interesting patterns and shapes and when I entered this Mall and looked up I could see the possibilities for a good monochrome shot.  (Of course it also gave my wife Morag a great excuse to wander into the stores whilst I studied the building. In hindsight this was possibly quite an expensive print.)

Processing the photograph in Black and White as I have here, makes the patterns much more prevalent and almost abstract in nature.  Although it is a square image you’ll also note that the “eye” of the pattern has been composed to be off-centre, adding interest to the picture and creates a much more pleasing composition.

The SWPP monthly competition receives thousands of entries from around the World every month.  Gold Award winners are automatically put forward to the final judging for the Annual SWPP’s Photographer of the Year awards – this one will be put forward for the 2010 competition which will be judged in January of next year.

It is one of my personal favourites so it was nice to see it get a Gold award.

This week I was delighted and very honoured to win the club’s Annual Tom Dickson Trophy for another one of my wedding photography images.

This image is entitled “One Two Three Blow” and is from Dean and Nina’s recent wedding. This is their delighful and very photogenic wee boy Cameron, who was a great sport on the day.

For the photography enthusiasts this was taken on a Nikon D700 body with a Nikon 50mm f1.4 AF-S lens – 1/250s, f1.4, ISO 3200.

The SWPP (Society of Wedding and Portrait Professionals) runs a national competion each month over a range of different categories.  The Gold Award winning images will go forward to the SWPP’s Annual competition to be held at their Convention in London during January.

I was particularly delighted to note that one of the Gold’s was in the category for Wedding Photojournalism which is my chosen discipline of wedding photography.

According to the SWPP’s judging criteria, images awarded Gold are deemed to be “images of the highest standard”.  The images are also showcased in the Society’s monthly magazine, Professional Imagemaker.

The Wedding Photojournalism image was from Dean and Nina’s recent wedding and is entitled “Three Layers of Love”.

The other winning Gold image was for some personal work of mine and this was in the Travel Category.

Both images are particular favourites of mine so it was great to see that the judges agreed.

I also won a further two silver awards in the portrait categories and another silver for my landscape work.

So all in all a nice way to start the weekend!

I learned last week that I had been accepted as a member of the highly prestigious Wedding Photojournalist Association.

Membership is extremely tightly controlled and less than 5% of all applicants are actually accepted.

As you can imagine I am extremely honoured that the quality and style of my wedding photography has been recognised in this manner and I now join the elite group of only 6 Scottish Members who have been invited to join this internationally renowned organisation.

From the Wedding Photojournalist Association’s website:-

The Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA) is a professional organization composed of photojournalists and wedding photographers from around the world. What sets our members apart in the industry is their candid, documentary approach – a distinctly artistic vision toward wedding photography.

Leading the way in Wedding Photojournalism, WPJA represents the most discriminating talent around the world technically, creatively and visually. Qualified members hold industry-leading standards, skills and business integrity.

The WPJA puts the world’s best wedding photography at your fingertips. We offer a new perspective on wedding photography – quietly capturing the real moments as they happen for the bride and groom.

It is our goal to use photography to tell the story of your wedding day, not dictate it for you.