The backstory!
The truth is, until a few years ago, neither of us knew how to use a camera properly and no one in our families, or circle of friends were filmmakers or photographers. It wasn’t something we ever considered.
I bet you haven’t heard videographers/photographers say that before!
17 years ago we met at work, we were both very young Police Officers, both very passionate about helping people and we are proud to have helped many people throughout our time in public service. Although our personalities were different, they were complimentary and there was immediate chemistry between us. Within a year of meeting we were engaged, two years later we were married and two daughters later, we had the epiphany. Although we had both built successful careers, we realised that there is more to life than working in a job that doesn’t make you happy, and prevented us from having the time together as a family we craved. We wanted to build a better life for the future.
But what was it we were going to do??
What happened next is a little crazy!……. We really liked our wedding video, but it was a bit old fashioned, and we had spent a number of years attending lots of weddings, as our friends were all getting married. Weddings were a lot of fun, and I’d always been into photography and filmmaking as a hobby – I just loved documenting life and being able to relive memorable times. My love of photography stems from capturing people and their truth, rather than an artistic pursuit.
Combining a desire to start our own business, with hobby level experience of cameras, videography and photography I set out to learn everything I could about wedding videography. It sounds crackers now I’m writing it down, but this is how it happened! After attending the university of YouTube and spending most of our savings on some camera equipment, I offered to film a friend’s sister’s wedding. It turned out alright and I really enjoyed it!
It got crazier still…….
Lyndsey joined me in learning this new craft, and she loved it so much, that within a year we had both decided to leave the Police, we enrolled on University degree courses and lived the student life we had never had – apart from, we had 2 young kids, a mortgage and were capturing people’s weddings most weekends! Neither of us had thought of ourselves as ‘creative’ or ‘artistic’ in the past, but we were very practical, hard working, adaptable and understood that people face all sorts of adversity in life and each have their own journey, and we could relate to that.
We learned filmmaking, photography and business together, and it turns out we were much more creative than we thought! We were providing the standard of service that we would want to receive ourselves or know that our family of friends would receive. We proudly offered people a unique and inclusive style of wedding filmmaking and photography. In the summer of 2020 we had both graduated with first class honours degrees in Media, Photography and Business, and in that time had been so lucky to have had the opportunity to tell many amazing and individual stories for our couples.
Along the way we had opened a creative studio space, started a commercial photo and video brand (Your Story Creative), but like so many others, our business was impacted by the events of the past two years, and we had to leave the studio, so we reassessed, considered our livelihood, repurposed our garage as our mini studio and workspace and Lyndsey even went and qualified as a Business Teacher.
We feel incredibly lucky to come out of the other end of things, and have since been able to restructure our business to focus on telling the stories of our wonderful wedding couples, supporting other professionals in the wedding industry with our online community Wedding Mavericks, and begin working with small businesses and charitable organisations to create content for their online marketing campaigns.
Lyndsey and I are both modest, down to earth, genuine people and we act with integrity. There are no egos, we feel that being able to tell people’s stories is a real privilege, and to do something we really do enjoy in this way, gives us the balance with family life that we so desperately craved.
Providing a personal, but excellent standard of customer service, with a relaxed, fun and creative approach to capturing your wedding is our priority, so if that sounds like what you are looking for, then we would love to chat with you.
Hear it from those that count
If you would like an honest, real and relevant insight into the service we provide, please take a look at what our previous couples have said about us, as they were getting married – just like you!
