Spains Hall - Open Weekend

This weekend just gone, I did my first exhibition of the year at Spains Hall Open Day.

This is the first time that Spains Hall have opened their doors for this kind of event and it went incredibly well. On the Saturday they totalled around 350 people and on the Sunday 500+. Below's a photograph of The Stables, Spains Hall where you can hold your wedding ceremony as well as the reception.


As always all of the staff at Spains Hall are wonderful and very well organised. It was a pleasure to see you all and I'm looking forward to seeing some of you at Weddings we photograph at The Stables this year.

It was also a pleasure seeing so many potential future couples so thank you for taking time out of your weekend to come and visit us. I hope that some of you go on to book and that we will work together to capture some gorgeous photographs of your day.

At this Open Day Spains Hall also announced that from next year the Great Hall actually in the main building below will also be available for ceremonies which will be fantastic.


As couples have exclusive use of the entire venue this allows all events to run brilliantly with no worries of overlapping with another wedding party.

With this event going so well I hope that Spains Hall hold future Open days/Wedding Fairs where we can exhibit. If they do set new dates I will let you know when they are so hopefully you can come and visit us.

Thank you card

This morning I received a lovely thank you card from Anna and Dick whose wedding I photographed back in July at Yaxley Hall. I am always touched after the day by couples taking the time to send me their words of appreciation.
The card read: 'Dear Hayley, We are both delighted with the album of our wedding. Thank you so much - we are very pleased we chose you - Anna and Dick'

Here's one of the pages from their photobook album:


and the last page of their photobook:


Their wedding day was a gorgeous and well thought out affair with plenty of entertainment for the guests (they had some surprise singing waiters who sang in operatic voices between the main course and pudding). As always, the service provided at Yaxley Hall was superb and the canapes Richard had made looked (and I'm told tasted as well) exquisite.

Thanks again Anna and Dick for sending me your kind words - it is always nice to hear from couples after the day and I hope that you stay in touch in the future. I wish you both a lifetime of happiness together (which I'm certain you will have).

Portrait Session - Pakefield Beach

Back in December (on what felt like the coldest day of the entire year!) I did a portrait session with a lovely family at Pakefield on the Suffolk Coast.

Despite the cold weather we marched down to the beach to begin our session and Angela and her family started by sitting huddled together on a bench.


The session itself went very well and was enjoyable. We had to move fairly fast to stop everyone from getting cold. I love all of the photos I took but especially liked some of the photographs I took of Shannon(Angela's daughter)who wasn't looking forward to the session to begin with (she said she thought she was going to just be made to sit and smile like in school photos and be bored - the chance of sitting for long or keeping still in one of my sessions is very unlikely!) Shannon turned out to be a complete natural in front of the camera and towards the end of the session wanted to just keep going with lots of her ideas.

Below I've included a few of my favourite's of Shannon.


With her piercing blue eyes and skin tones the high contrast images worked particularly well and the grass on the sand dunes looked great in this format.




Towards the end of our session we made our way over to some old beach huts which looked great with the low winter light behind them creating a lovely glow. I love this photograph of Shannon and Angela

and here's a final gorgeous one of Shannon sat on the beach hut steps

I loved this session so much that I am hoping to put some more of these images on the portrait section of the website soon. All of the photos from Angela's session are now in their album online for them to view.

I look forward to hearing from Angela and her family once they've decided on the final images they want.

A Belated Happy New Year

Well, my New Year's resolution has already gone to pot - I haven't managed to keep this as updated as I would have liked. So here's a belated Happy New Year to you all. On the positive side though things have been very busy which is always good and I feel re-energized after the Christmas break and ready for action this year photographing lots of wedding. So, what have I been up to since I last wrote ... hmmmm .... I've photographed Angela and her family back in December (I'll write more on a separate post in a minute), I've photographed Faith and Phil's wedding (more on this as well later), I've attended a photographic convention in London with my friend and fellow photographer (Sadie at Big Fish Photography)where there were lots of trade companies exhibiting so watch this space for new products to be available in 2008! Mainly though my time seems to have been filled with lots of enquiries and finishing off albums and books from last years weddings. I'll try to put a selection of those recently finished album pages online so you can have a look at them and lastly (I think) I've been exhibiting (that time of year already!!!!) at Spains Hall and their open day this Sunday just gone.

Over the next few days I will attempt to elaborate on all that I've been up to and pop some photos in although I should put in a note of warning that I become distracted quite easily and engrossed in editing photos so this may not happen as fast as I hope.