My Favourites – 2020 Wedding Photography - Sophie Duckworth Photography

2020 wedding photography – the year we least expected

“I live one day at a time
I dream one dream at a time
Yesterday’s dead and tomorrow is blind
And I live one day at a time
I live one day at a time” (Willie Nelson – One Day at a Time)

Those unfamiliar with the above singer, or the knowledge that I am pretty much his biggest fan, will hopefully still find those words resonating somewhat. I will admit that I, like many others, have found myself in frequent black holes these past 10 months. It has been a challenging time to say the least. Loved ones have been taken too soon; comforting hugs from others kept from us, and those little pleasures we take for granted in life, all but ground to a halt. But still I sit here, under a blanket since our Victorian home takes 200 years to warm up past 18 degrees, and I feel incredibly lucky. I am alive.

I have never taken so little money in all my 9.5 years in this lovely job. I have never refunded any money before, so what I’ve thought was income, suddenly was not. I have lost countless weddings not to mention the numerous couples I’d been so looking forward to working with.

However, I managed, by some miracle, to shoot seven weddings in 2020. I started early on in January, an intimate wedding and a covid-free one. I must say looking back over these photos, I can tell the difference between this wedding and the ones that followed. That’s been a hard pill for me to swallow. Getting in close is what I do best. Being a smallish person I can easily flit in and out of groups, grabbing moments and not really thinking about where I am for too long. Restrictions by venues, staff, churches put a stop to all that natural behaviour. Suddenly I had to think about where my feet were, could I fix the veil, can I help with button holes? Masks were mandatory, and extremely good at steaming up viewfinders – annoying to a different level. I mustn’t touch anyone, I mustn’t get too close.

Don’t get me wrong I love my 85mm lens, but not utilising my 35mm to its full potential or even getting my 24mm out of the bag, felt like I was starting all over again, and not delivering results that have been promised. Why am I writing all this? Because I feel that not only did my couples have SUCH a huge portion of their dream snatched from them, they couldn’t even rely on their suppliers lucky enough to attend, to make it as special as it should have been. And for that I want to apologise. I know it’s not my fault, but it’s something I have really struggled to deal with when delivering photos I wanted so badly to provide light during such dark times.

Back to my weddings – they were all very short, between 1-4 hours, so it was a case of getting the key moments – sadly one wedding I wasn’t even allowed in the ceremony room (don’t get me started on self made rules by registry offices, one day I shall write a post about this!!) and of course the usual hugs and kisses were few and far between. However, the days’ atmosphere felt the same. Happiness, relief, triumphant joy, love. All of these were felt at all occasions. I hope I’ve shown that having a ‘covid wedding’ can still be beautiful. There will still be pretty light, and moments of serenity. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, the seven wonderful couples who asked me to be there on their wedding days. I hope I did you proud, but remember, if you are having round two, I promise you I will be back shooting in my usual glory, and hopefully blow you away with all you’ve dreamed of :)

Thanks for reading if you did bother to! If not…I hope you enjoy my take on 2020 and the absolutely lovely moments it contained, here are my favourites… xxx

Ps if you want to listen whilst you view, this piece of magical music is what I listened to when compiling these images, feel free to press play…