Love is the Only Thing I Know - 2020, A Year
most importantly love
like it's the only thing you know how
at the end of the day all this
means nothing
this page
where you're sitting
your degree
your job
the money
nothing even matters
except love and human connection
who you loved
and how deeply you loved them
how you touched the people around you
and how much you gave them(Rupi Kaur, milk & honey)
I don’t think I actually know how to write about 2020, certainly not how to write about a year that turned me inside out with the back and forth and u-turns and uncertainty - the breathtaking exercises in humanity, dreams and adventures rearranged then cancelled and then again tentatively rebuilt. A nail-biting test of my eternal optimism - I’ve always been obnoxiously positive. I don’t know how to keep this blog post professional and a safe arms-length distance from the couples and families and potential clients reading this hoping to see some pretty pictures and perhaps some insight into what kind of businessperson I am or what I’ll be like when I shoot their wedding day or their babies or their art or their empires. I’ve never been one for much restraint, always emotional, impulsive and forever making decisions that simply feel GOOD or RIGHT. My instincts are always toward joy-seeking, my photos capture the in-between and the flares of light - the geometry of architecture, the heartbreaking intimacy of an imperfectly focused close-up.
I picked up a camera because I wanted to shape the light into how I tell the stories in my head - I wanted to painstakingly paint the ephemera of a love story but I was never a great painter so I picked up a camera and have never put it down. For the past five years, since my Hadley was just 11 weeks old, I have used my cameras to tell your love stories. As my confidence grew and my diary filled, all other photographic work faded away and I was a Wedding Photographer (all caps!) and it is an identity (never a job) that is as entwined with who I am as being a mother and a wife, a sister and a daughter and a friend. Occasionally I’ve had the time to sneak in mini shoots for friends, babies born to couples who’s wedding I shot, clients that become friends that become like family. This is the joy of what I do: I wrap myself in love, I gorge on it and bottle it and keep it safe to share because it never never runs out.
In January 2020, I gathered together with my favourite crew of talented wedding suppliers and we produced an epic, regal, rock and roll medieval wedding shoot at Peckforton Castle. In February I shot my first two weddings of the year, invigorated and eager for a full season ahead. And then it was March. And then the world stopped. Stillness descended, plans were changed and it was just all very quiet.
So we stayed home…I got a message from a friend asking me to come photograph her daughter on her doorstep, bedecked in the finery of her 5th birthday celebrations that were minimised by the dreaded C-word. And then another friend asked me to swing by…and another and soon I was filling my diary with 15 minute family portraits, many of whom I knew but some new faces too. I walked all over my community, capturing a snapshot of a time and a place and the beautiful faces, all of the LOVE that exists on my doorstep, even in a time of crisis. I shot small businesses shuttered by the restrictions and raised nearly £1500 for The Pankhurst Trust with just my camera and my own two feet.
And in July, the weddings returned, albeit briefly. But even though my diary of 25 weddings reduced to just 8 PERFECT days, the love and joy that filled those spaces could have powered a thousand more. Just 8 weddings in 2020: Jo & Scott, Deborah & Nick, Lou & Joe, Maria & Tom, Jasmine & Will, Alice & Oliver, Mikele & Polina, Clare & Jack. Sixteen EXTRAORDINARY humans who decided that not even a pandemic could stop them from marrying the love of their life goddamnit and I was the luckiest of all to capture every moment, every first kiss and gaze and sheer ounce of elation.
I have always fancied myself a teller of love stories, a time machine preserving the magic of the wedding day. But what I never realised until now is that there is so much more to a love story than the wedding day. And whilst I am still, and forevermore, a Wedding Photographer, I can now see the love story in the pride of a business owner serving their community in an uncertain year - in a family’s comfort and ease on their front step - in the ferocity of a single mama creating a living rainbow paradise in celebration of her daughter - in the connection between siblings and the bravery of my own daughter staring down my lens then taking it from my hands and turning it on me and my husband on our anniversary.
2020 was a hell of a year but it was also one hell of an epic love story. Let me share it with you.
