It's our birthday! We can hardly believe it but 10 years ago today we shot our first wedding. Happy anniversary Sam & Louise! Since then there's been 200+ weddings, heaps of families and organisations all around the UK. It's a weird season to be celebrating our business, but absence makes the heart fonder doesn't it!
We wanted to say a huge thank you to all of you! Thanks for keeping this going for a decade.
Over on our Instagram we'll be sharing stories from the last 10 years over the next 10 days. And sharing some of our clients favourite moments too.
2010
When we shot our first wedding we had no idea this would become our full-time job. Sam & Louise asked if we'd bring our cameras to their wedding, saying yes was as much daunting as it was delightful!
Of course it rained on their wedding day, so we've chalked up 10 years of experience handling whatever a wedding throws at us.
We shot 5 weddings in our first 12 months and a lot of the core values of Mustard Yellow were there right from the start: all day wedding photography, by two wedding photographers and with no limit on the number of pictures you get to keep. These things are still really important to us.
And so is being as keen as mustard! Malc ran the length of Aberystwyth seafront at that first wedding to get pictures of Sam & Louise cycling from the church to their reception!
2011
In 2011 we started to include the photo booth in our wedding package and it has been so much fun with wedding guests of all ages.
We shot weddings in England, Northern Ireland and Wales and had our first clients who we weren’t already friends with…. we sure count them as friends now though.
We also worked with the Prince’s Trust and our business mentor to develop our business knowledge. Looking back we’re so grateful for those foundations.
2012
We celebrated the new year in Australia and were guests at a friend’s wedding out there. We made our first wedding stop motion video that day, and covered their photography before and after the official photographer was around.
The weddings side of our work really took off (we shot 18 weddings that year and made a few more stop motions too). We also started to do family photo shoots and discovered we loved them. We love making a connection with people and earning their trust before taking their photo. Working with kids is some sort of adrenaline kick.
2013
In 2013 Nom started working for Mustard Yellow Photography full time! And we moved into our online home - mustardyellowphotography.com.
We also started to work with businesses and organisations in a structured way. We took photos for charities, churches and independent craft-makers. The pictures above are from one of our favourite shoots, with Rosy’s Folded Page book company.
2014
We officially added engagement photo shoots to our wedding package and loved the opportunity to get to know our couples better before their wedding day. Turns out engagement shoots help us take better pictures at weddings, we’re all more relaxed. And we love the variety of places locations our couples suggest.
We also had a two week adventure in Uganda taking photos for Kids Club Kampala telling the story of their charity across the different projects they run.
2015
Two of our most talked-about weddings were in 2015. James and Catherine’s gorgeous wedding in Italy. And the ridiculously fun double wedding (of twin sisters) we got to shoot in the Autumn.
We also started making wedding albums and teaching one-to-one photography lessons in Birmingham.
How’s this for a fun fact: we photographed 8 grooms called John / Jonathan this year. The previous year we shot a wedding where there were 5 best men all called Matt. Over the years we’ve had 5 brides called Naomi but only one groom called Malcolm.
2016
What a wild year! This was our busiest year for weddings but we still got to spend a month in Australia and photograph Kyle & Bethany’s wedding while we were there. We love how relaxed weddings are out there.
2017
We got to photograph lots of lovely families this year (and plenty of weddings too). We took an online photography course to help us dive deep into creating natural photos of families at home. We love the challenge of showing parents the magic in their everyday life.
2018
Building on our family shoots we had lots of fun sessions with extended families. It’s so lovely to watch different generations hanging out and catching up. We took photos with this family with three little cousins and two sets of grandparents as they got together for Christmas.
For the camera geeks out there we switched to mirrorless cameras in 2018… and saved our achy backs! It’s so much nicer to be caring something light when you’re shooting a full wedding day.
2019
2019 was a year of working on the business…. little did we know there’d be heaps of time for that in 2020! We developed our website and social media presence with help from our lovely digital marketing coach Alice Benham.
Malc got to do lots of freelance photography working in schools to take candid pictures for their websites. He’s the perfect guy for the job: reassuring with the teachers and really fun with the kids.
2020
It ‘s pretty obvious this has been the weirdest year for our business, we're all in the same boat on that one. But this year has also given us time to pause and take stock. Are we still in love with weddings? Totally. Does documenting families ‘just as they are’ still excite us? Absolutely. Do we want to work with more organisations to show what they do? 100% yes.
We've been putting some improvements in place too. Upgrading our behind the scenes systems. Starting to work with a new album supplier in the UK (we love their eco-credentials). Building a network of other photographers who can shoot your wedding if we can’t make it. Polishing up our camera skills with hours of online learning and practising at home. And we’re expanding the work we do with organisations.
We’re excited to see where this adventure takes us next- come along with us! - Nom & Malc x