Tales from the Riverside: an inspiration

Mon­day was a won­der­ful day: the per­fect day for an intre­pid wed­ding blog­ger to grab her lit­tle Vespa and head for the hills. Set­ting off from my south Man­ches­ter base mid-morning I scooted bravely along coun­try roads (at times yelling wheeeeeeee as I went) and went to inter­view star wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Chris Han­ley at The River­side Studio.

When I met Chris he was beam­ing with pride at his new premises — a spa­cious and styl­ish base­ment pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio in a his­toric mill com­plex in Cheshire. I had a grand tour and we chat­ted about king­fish­ers and devel­op­ing the stu­dio space, which really took my breath away. It’s great to see some­one really in their ele­ment and The River­side Stu­dios couldn’t be more per­fect for Chris and Claire Han­ley. This much admired pho­tog­ra­phy team are at the very top of their game and with the world — and the river­bank — at their feet, what bet­ter time for a Proper Interview!

This is an extract. Click to read the full inter­view here.

So we’re here at The River­side Stu­dio, which seems like a spir­i­tual home as well as a cre­ative space for Chris Han­ley Pho­tog­ra­phy. Tell me about your jour­ney from the day you shot your first wed­ding to mak­ing your new home at River­side today.

When I very first started in pho­tog­ra­phy I was trained by the die-hard old journos and taught tricks of the trade. You know how some peo­ple like fresh cut grass, petrol or the smell of new car? As an impres­sion­able 17 year old then the first thing that struck me was the smell of the darkroom.

The first wed­ding that came along was some­thing so inspi­ra­tional it was very, very hard to turn down. It was a big wed­ding at RAF Fenny Bent­ley down near Wat­ford, the sta­tion where all the offi­cers for the Bat­tle of Britain planned the onslaught and the bomb­ing of Ger­many. If you can imag­ine the RAF hier­ar­chy, this grandiose offi­cers’ build­ing of theirs was amaz­ing as some­where to get mar­ried! There was going to be another pho­tog­ra­pher shoot­ing very tra­di­tional clas­si­cal stuff so it was great because all I had to do was shoot the wed­ding as I saw it — and I was given com­pletely free cre­ative and artis­tic licence to do that! It meant I didn’t have to worry about the con­se­quences of not shoot­ing it cor­rectly for the state occa­sion. It worked beau­ti­fully because I gave it such a news­pa­pery kind of look. The offi­cial wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher was using tripods, with big cam­eras and her pic­tures were a mil­lion miles dif­fer­ent to mine.

I got the flavour for it then, and the bite! Every­one was look­ing at those pic­tures and going, “you know what, those are fan­tas­tic!” but in those days shoot­ing a wed­ding like that wasn’t seen to be the right thing to do. We spent a lot of time as pho­tog­ra­phers wor­ry­ing that peo­ple wouldn’t buy into cre­ativ­ity. That was the very first wed­ding that unleashed it all, and then grad­u­ally I began to pick up wed­dings where peo­ple liked that kind of style — and it pro­gressed from there really!

But as things have devel­oped and as my time becomes more pre­cious, as we have to get more and more stuff done, it was a case of need­ing another iden­tity, another base. That’s why we got River­side. It had to be a loca­tion, a des­ti­na­tion place — Peo­ple had to come here and feel as if they were com­ing to some­where that was ‘Wow — pho­tog­ra­pher’. And that’s what we have here: an old white­washed base­ment next to a river and it’s lovely! We can put our own brand onto things now. As much as meet­ing and greet­ing clients at the Hilton was great, they can drink our cof­fee now and eat our bis­cuits, and have our stamp on it and lis­ten to our music and — it’s our vibe. And that’s how we got here!

The way you’ve built your brand and your busi­ness is inspir­ing — for me as a wed­ding blog­ger as well as for other pho­tog­ra­phers. Your pho­tog­ra­phy is dis­tinc­tive: is this what sets Chris Han­ley Pho­tog­ra­phy apart from the crowd?

You have to have a true pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy within you. You can teach peo­ple how to take a nice pho­to­graph but you have to be able to see the pho­to­graph first and you have to be able to con­vert the pas­sion and the feel­ing into pic­tures. The major­ity of top cam­eras these days on “Uncle Bob” mode will take a decent pic­ture. But the com­po­si­tion, fram­ing, pas­sion, response in the moment that you take that pic­ture is from within. And that’s what stands pho­tog­ra­phers apart.

It sounds like a great adven­ture! Tell me about the highs and lows of your career, Chris.

The high was meet­ing Annabel Williams and Damien Love­grove, Cather­ine Con­nor and Jane Breakell who were guid­ing influ­ences. Annabel set me on my way in terms of mar­ket­ing, and if it hadn’t been for my attend­ing Annabel’s four day mar­ket­ing course I’d never have met Damien. It was on that course — Damien was the guest speaker pho­tog­ra­pher and we just hit it off straight away. Since that day Damien has been my guid­ing influ­ence from a busi­ness point of view.

The other high of course is hav­ing Claire to work with me, which is lovely. We don’t work in a way that it feels as though we’re a man and wife team… it’s a business.

There have been some lows… the low­est point for us was the first six months when we’d left full time employ­ment. We were lucky enough to have some money that we could live on with­out either of us going and get­ting a part time job, or Claire get­ting a full time job while I went and took pic­tures. My logic was to go for wed­ding clients so we built a brand around that offer­ing a cer­tain type of expe­ri­ence with a cer­tain type of look for our pic­tures, and that’s who we were going for. We decided to tar­get top end high qual­ity clients and give them an expe­ri­ence. Even­tu­ally that’s paid off. We’ve found our niche and peo­ple love us for it!

I’ve noticed that your brides and grooms tend to come back: after you pho­to­graph their wed­dings they might have a Cher­ish the Dress or Beach Bride shoot, and if they have chil­dren they love your Bel­lies, Babies and Bam­bi­nos pho­tog­ra­phy. Has that been a con­scious deci­sion, to develop these steps in the pho­tog­ra­phy jour­ney again?

I would say that our aim is ‘clients for life’. I don’t mean that to sound flip­pant: it’s all about giv­ing some­one an expe­ri­ence, giv­ing them qual­ity at afford­able prices, fair prices — exceed­ing people’s expec­ta­tions. Once you’ve done that it’s like when you find a good local plumber, car mechanic or what­ever you’ll rec­om­mend those peo­ple or always give them the trade back. This one small busi­ness that we use that have done repairs on our house or struc­tural changes — because they’ve excelled at what they’ve done we use them every time and we rec­om­mend them. They’re not the cheap­est but they do it well — it would be a false econ­omy to go for a cheaper sup­plier and then try to fix it a cou­ple of years down the line. You’re always look­ing for a last­ing prod­uct, and that’s what we aim to do.

Do you think many pho­tog­ra­phers see that? Wed­ding photographers?

It often goes back to the low point in somebody’s life: have they been made redun­dant, per­haps they’re a keen ama­teur, and they’ve got a DSLR cam­era and feel they need to get some money in. Every­one has to start some­where and the prob­lem we have in the indus­try is that some pho­tog­ra­phers are pro­duc­ing fan­tas­tic qual­ity work but they’re sell­ing them­selves too cheaply. If I shoot 15 — 20 wed­dings a year it means 20 week­ends of the year I’m sat in my back gar­den with my fam­ily and kids, and it’s nice — and that’s what it should be all about: rais­ing the game and pro­vid­ing qual­ity so you can fit both into your lifestyle.

Tell me about your best wed­ding — for what­ever rea­son, which is the best wed­ding you’ve pho­tographed and why?

The best wed­ding I’ve ever shot? I haven’t shot it yet. The best wed­ding was the one I shot last Sun­day. And the best wed­ding prior to that one was three Sun­days before that, and the one before that was… [it’s only at this point your trusty inter­viewer catches on!]…
I would say at the moment a wed­ding at Capesthorne from last Sun­day. When you look at the images on the cards as they’re down­load­ing, some­times they just absolutely take your breath away and these pic­tures did. And I know I’m hardly going to have to edit any of this stuff because it’s just per­fect off the cam­era, more or less.

When I shot my son’s wed­ding it was absolutely fan­tas­tic. The thing is, when you have nice peo­ple in front of your cam­era, peo­ple that know your cre­ativ­ity and like your prod­uct, and they want to help you along it makes your job so much eas­ier. If the venue’s right, the food’s right… but equally you can pho­to­graph a wed­ding where peo­ple have booked you for your cre­ativ­ity and most of their bud­get has gone on the pho­tog­ra­phy. So the venue may not be Hamp­ton Court Palace — it may be your lovely local golf club. Or a local hotel — that’s where they’re pay­ing us to be cre­ative and to cre­ate pic­tures that no one else will have of that venue.

Is that eas­ier or harder — is it more challenging?

Oh, I love it! It’s a chal­lenge for me too. One of the processes I do is if some­one tells me they’re get­ting mar­ried at, let’s say the Dean­wa­ter Hotel, and I’m think­ing I know the venue, I’ll have a look at the web­site, I’ll look at the links page because there’ll be pho­tog­ra­phers there who’ll have shot it, I look at flickr and I try to get a feel for what everybody’s shoot­ing.
And then I’ll not do that.
What we’re try­ing to do is to give peo­ple beau­ti­ful, flat­ter­ing pic­tures which no one else has. It’s a case of look­ing at some­thing and not shoot­ing the obvi­ous unless there are weather or time con­straints. So I’m try­ing to give peo­ple, even at the most pop­u­lar wed­ding venues, dif­fer­ent pic­tures if I can.

What’s the secret of your suc­cess, Chris Hanley?

Haha! Hard graft.
Don’t take your­self seri­ously.
Have pas­sion in every­thing that you do.
Think about what you’re giv­ing some­body from their point of view. Aim to exceed people’s expec­ta­tions. Think of your­self as the client: what would you like? Analyse it. If this was me buy­ing this, would I be happy? If there’s an ele­ment of doubt, sort it out!
Cather­ine Con­nor once said this to me: if you’re going to put pho­tog­ra­phy in a car­rier bag, then you want your car­rier bag to be hand woven, organic linen with jute han­dles, or a Har­vey Nicks car­rier bag — rather than maybe some­thing like a Lidl or a Netto car­rier bag. There’s noth­ing wrong with those… but if we put our pho­tog­ra­phy in a car­rier bag it’d be Har­vey Nicks or a bespoke hand­made one.

Who would be your ideal bride and groom to photograph?

I think my per­fect bride was my son’s wife Sophie. It’s all about atti­tude: peo­ple who love being pho­tographed. I know it’s our catch­phrase, love being pho­tographed, love the pho­tographs you are in — but that means so much. If we’re talk­ing famous peo­ple, I’d choose Kee­ley Hawes and her hus­band. They’d be a great cou­ple to pho­to­graph! I would absolutely love the oppor­tu­nity to shoot them some­where in Italy… Siena is an absolutely gor­geous place: the light there is like noth­ing I’ve ever seen before in my life. It’s utterly deli­cious. I can see her there, definitely.

Who would be your ideal client for Cher­ish the Dress?

[Instantly] My wife Claire. She can still get in her wed­ding dress, and it’s a project we have on the back burner. We’ll get round to it some­time!
The other per­son I’d really, really like to shoot is Lily Allen. She’d be great.

What’s next for Chris Han­ley Photography?

Now we have River­side and our new home here, we need to raise the bar slightly in terms of what we’re going to offer our clients.
We’re going to strive to make our pic­ture style even more excit­ing, we’re going to try and get involved more with projects like Shut­ter Rock and the pho­to­graphic indus­try. If we can do some­thing that raises the pro­file of British social pho­tog­ra­phy and gets the stan­dards raised and every­one on a level plat­form, that would be great. To put some­thing back into the indus­try would be great. But I think for the next two or three years we’ll strive harder with the wed­dings we shoot and maybe look at doing more work­shop train­ing in our new home!