Brides today face an oversaturated wedding photography market, full of a complete range of talents and specialisations. So as a bride, how do you choose your photographer? Do you base it on cost, talent, vision, word of mouth or perhaps by the medium they use? In New South Wales, Australia there is a photographer who photographs just about every wedding using film and her clients are always praising her work.
Kerrie Anne Mathews has been photographing weddings in the Newcastle region for thirty years. Her career started with four years of training with one of the most prominent female photographers in Newcastle, Sheila Ortega. Kerrie says that when she was a little girl she used to make a circle with her index finger and thumb, hold her hand up to her eyes and look through the circle.
“I’d focus on the flower in front and the flower behind, I’d use the lens of my eye to capture a picture: an image in my mind”
Kerrie says smiling.
Eventually she was given a Brownie camera and her passion for photography continued to grow. Today she is one of the most passionate photographers I have had the pleasure to meet.
Her Passion
Kerrie tells me that before she got the position with Sheila Ortega, she was studying to be a lawyer but after a couple of years she hated it. “If you have a passion for something and if that’s what you’re meant to be then you should do it,” she tells me with a grin. The portfolio she submitted was made up of photos she’d been able to take using the most basic of cameras. With a smile and a faraway look, Kerrie recalls how Sheila Ortega told her she liked how she saw the world and that was why she chose her. Even today Kerrie sounds surprised and humbled that she was the one out of many who applied that was chosen to learn the trade and carry on the art of wedding photography.
During the first couple of weddings she did with Sheila Ortega, Kerrie says that “I just found I smiled all day. I was smiling watching them getting dressed.” With a moist gleam in her eye she tells me, “I nearly always get a tear in my eye, even after thirty years when they’re saying their vows, and these are virtual strangers to me.” After thirty years in the business, Kerrie still shoots film maintaining that “three hundred perfect shots instead of a thousand mediocre shots are a hundred percent better.”
Kerrie tells me about the quality difference between film and digital. How you can end up with two different images despite taking two completely identical photographs using the same brand of camera and lenses. “One looks alive: exactly as we see it with our eyes. The other looks like an image of what we see: not exactly what we see.” For her, the quality difference between film and digital is so great that she firmly believes that film is the best choice. She convinces her brides to let her shoot with film, and then scans the film to put onto a disk. That way if anything ever happens to the disk she will still have the hard copy for the client.
The Printed Work
Kerrie gets her clients printing done at the local printing shop, Kodak Express Photo One in Toronto. I had the chance before the new owner took over to speak with Nada Babic about Kerrie’s work. Nada and Kerrie have known each other for around 15 years; they met back when Nada was an active photographer along with running the Kodak shop. For eleven of those years Kerrie has been a faithful client; using their printing services, along with recommending their services to her own clients.
Nada relaxes and smiles as she tells me about their business relationship.
“Kerrie makes life easy for us by getting her exposures perfect. Unlike other photographers she’s not a fad photographer, so her work and style is always consistent and practical. Her work maintains a consistency and her clients come in and praise her work.”
Nada explains to me that Kerrie’s clients end up with a very nice album, plus the disk of the scanned negatives. Kerrie puts the albums together herself from images printed at the shop. She firmly believes that by doing this not only is Kerrie getting more exposure, but she’s making sure the images are in a format guaranteed to be looked at.
Standing Out
Kerrie shoots mainly with film, so the time she spends working on a job is around a third of the time a digital photographer would spend. When I asked Nada why she recommends who she does to her clients her reply confirmed what I had learned from talking with Kerrie. “We recommend a lot of different photographers to clients, but we will always recommend Kerrie. She’s great value for money and has a better variety to offer. She’s so personable as well: warm and friendly. She takes the time to get to know her clients and make them feel comfortable with her; I feel that has a lot to do with why she’s so successful today.”
Kerrie used to have to fight other photographers for locations, “so many weddings go on here in Newcastle that you’ve always got a bride in the background.” Her solution to this problem was found in her five acres of bushland in Blackalls Park. Here Kerrie created an oasis of a wedding centre, complete with a dam and a flying fox for the couple to glide over the water. El Keziah is a very unique place, Kerrie smiles as she tells me that “People can have the wedding of their dreams… everywhere you look down there, there’s a beautiful background.” She designed it so that if the couple is on the wharf on the lake, she can be directly across and get the most perfect reflection on the water. Every aspect of the centre has been carefully designed for the best photographs.
Willows and Down-time
The willows around the lake are just now losing their leaves. For this reason, Kerrie says the centre doesn’t host weddings from May through August. She tells me that usually during the winter time she travels overseas for six weeks every year, but that this year she won’t be able to because she’s too booked out this season. Next year though she plans to go to South America to explore like she did in Africa and Egypt, her two favourite places so far. As she shows me a picture of the camel she rode around on in Egypt and a portrait of a young man from Africa with the most piercing gaze, she tells me about her normal downtime activities; white water rafting, endurance racing on her horse and playing squash. “And Latin dancing,” she says with a giggle, “so yea, I do a lot of stuff.”
As I head out, Kerrie encourages me to take photos of the centre. While I am driving through the property on my way home I can’t help but stop and stare at the beautiful simplicity of the area; reflecting upon how passionate Kerrie is about her trade.
