Portraits at Three Birches, taken in the short window between the ceremony and the reception. Most of a wedding day belongs to everybody else, so I guard these few minutes carefully. They're usually the first time all day that the two of you get to stand still together.

A veil lifted during portraits at Three Birches, in the few quiet minutes a couple actually gets to themselves on a wedding day.

Three Birches

The last frame of the night. Nobody poses for a send-off, they just go, so this is one I stay ready for rather than plan. Arms up, tin cans dragging, everyone shouting.

The send-off, from the tailgate of a red pickup with a Just Married banner and a string of tin cans dragging behind it.

The Parker Wedding

Getting low and shooting up into clean sky strips a frame back to the two people in it. No venue, no guests, nothing else competing. Just the gesture.

Shot from below into open sky: joined hands overhead, two foreheads meeting in the middle.

The Cauley Wedding

Elopements are my favourite kind of wedding day to photograph, because there's nowhere else to be. We walked, they talked to each other instead of to me, and the pictures mostly took care of themselves.

An elopement walked along the water, with autumn colour running all the way up the ridge behind them.

The Kendricks Elopement

A proposal is the one session where my whole job is to stay hidden until it's over. I work long and far back, then step in afterwards while they're both still shaking. That's when the good ones happen.

A proposal at Renaissance Park, photographed from a long way back so neither of them had to think about a camera.

Renaissance Park

I give couples something to do rather than a pose to hold. Walk here, whisper something, get in each other's way. What comes out of that is how you actually are together, which is the whole point.

A couples session down by the water in Chattanooga. Considerably more messing about than posing.

Lake Session

The light goes quickly at the end of a session, and there's a minute or two where the sky is worth more than the faces are. Exposing for it turns a couple into a shape, which is sometimes the truer picture of them.

Exposed for the sky and let the couple fall away to silhouette, foreheads together against the last of the colour.

Ethan & Ariana

Shooting through the grass in the foreground puts a bit of haze between you and the couple, so the frame feels overheard rather than arranged.

Late summer light through a field gone to seed, with the ridge sitting soft behind them.

Wildflower Field

With small children I stop asking anybody to look at me fairly early on. Put a toddler up on his dad's shoulders and the whole family reacts to him instead, and that's the picture worth keeping.

A spring session on a tree-lined path, with the smallest one up on shoulders and running the whole show.

The Howell Family

A session with four children under ten is not a controlled environment, and trying to control it is how you end up with four stiff faces in a row. We picked a rock, let them climb all over her, and I kept shooting.

Four children, one mother and one rock by the water at golden hour. Nobody looking at the camera, which was rather the point.

The McNelley Family

Not every family portrait needs faces in it. She had just started walking, and the whole story of that autumn was in the two hands she was holding on to.

Cropped right down to the part that mattered that year: a brand new grip on both parents' hands.

The Cooke Family

Newborn sessions run at the baby's pace and not at mine. He was wide awake and perfectly content, so I photographed him being awake rather than waiting an hour for sleep that clearly wasn't coming.

A studio newborn session, with his parents meeting over the top of the basket while he watched.

The Kennedy Newborn

The picture most people book for is the baby. The one they end up living with is usually this one: both parents holding on, and neither of them looking anywhere near the lens.

A first portrait as three, backlit against the studio wall.

The Stamps Newborn

I'll take maternity in black and white when the session is really about a person rather than a colour palette. She was mid-laugh at something her husband had said from behind me.

Maternity in black and white, sat on the studio floor, laughing at something off camera.

Carlie & Chase

Senior sessions should look like the person, not like a backdrop. He picked the record shop, and an interior window turned out to be the only light we needed all evening.

Senior portraits in a record shop, sat up in the window with the light doing all the work.

Last light, no rush left in the schedule, and a session that had long since stopped feeling like one. That's normally the point at which I get the frame the family ends up printing big.

Sat down in the grass at the very end of the day, treeline going gold behind her.