Meet Your Wedding Photographer
I'm Benji
Home is Westerham, a small town on the Kent and Surrey border.
Work takes me all over the UK and sometimes further, but this is where I come back to, and coming back is my favourite part of leaving.
I live with my girlfriend, our daughter, four dogs, and a fox. A real one. It's a long story and a good one, so ask me about it when we talk.
I'm the kind of person who pauses films just to look at the lighting, which my family finds less charming than I do. In our house, two-hour films take three.
There's usually music on somewhere in the house and a graphic novel open on my desk. Quiet is rare here, and I've stopped missing it.
Before photography, I blended tea for a living as a tea sommelier, which is a real job, and one that means I will be judging your wedding-day brew. (Ginger and lemon on a Japanese sencha base, if you're asking.)
Music filled the years around it: I sang in a band you might have heard of, though I'll never tell you which, and most summers you'll still find me in a field at Download or Rock im Park, insisting Incubus are the best band alive.
When I'm not working, I'm usually in the motorhome somewhere in Europe, though after a few years of living in Nova Scotia and having covered most of Europe, nowhere has ever beaten the Outer Hebrides.
I still play football too, veterans league these days, which makes me sound older than I am.
I write sci-fi short stories, and although I've never seen Lord of the Rings, my Gollum impression is somehow excellent.
"Benji, these photos are sick! You're sick!
Thank you for being such an amazing photographer/friend"
Amalie & Phil
THE INSPIRATION BEHIND HOW I WORK.
I studied art for years. I could always see the image I wanted, I just couldn't paint it. My hands never kept up with my eyes or my brain. Then I picked up a camera, and suddenly they did.
That background still shapes everything. I learned about light from old paintings and from cinema, not from photography tutorials. When I'm planning portraits, I don't look at other wedding photography for ideas; I look at film stills, street photography, fashion shoots, and graphic novels. Simon Stålenhag's The Labyrinth sits on my desk and finds its way into my work more than I'd like to admit.
If your photographs only borrow from other weddings, they end up looking like every other wedding.
