Maddy & Patrick

I've come to the conclusion that Maddy is actually Margot Robbie. If you don't know who Margot Robbie is, then firstly, where have you been?! And secondly Google her. See - Maddy is actually Margot Robbie. This shoot from Chris Barber is infectiously joyful. He has captured Maddy and Patrick at their most relaxed and happy. Looking at these images is like peaking through the windows into their home. They are intimate, fun and totally genuine, which is just the most wonderful thing to have captured on film. Enjoy lovely ones and I hope this serves to help you think outside the box when it comes to the photography for your own big day...

Our Story

We’re Maddy and Patrick. We’ve been a couple for 3 years and met at our local church when we were children. We kind of spent a lot of time together and pretty much grew up together as friends but that slowly but surely became a relationship. It wasn’t anything sudden - it just began to happen and I feel like growing up together has made us closer. People always change and develop so to be able to still have room to grow within a relationship has always been important to both of us.

The Shoot

We’re both pretty busy with trying to juggle starting our careers and finishing our studies whilst also doing grown up things like buying a house so I wanted to find something that give us some much needed ‘time out’ from all the ‘noise’ and distractions of everyday life to focus on what’s important. Also, Patrick and I have ZERO photos together. We have a few blurry selfies but nothing that really shows ‘us’. We’re both total camera phobes and not great at having our photos taken so I knew we wanted to find a photographer could make us feel at ease, allowing us to be ourselves so that our photos showed some energy and character, rather than anything overly posed or staged. We heard of Chris Barber’s work through a friend of mine and loved his fun approach to couples photography.

At Home

I spoke to Chris about setting up a shoot and he seemed really excited to meet Patrick and I. We went through a few ideas for the shoot and discussed potential locations. Chris suggested locations that meant something to us but we weren’t keen on having our photos taken anywhere that was busy (again with the camera-phobia!) so we decided to have some photos taken at home. Not only was this a place that had some relevance to us as a couple but it also meant we were in our own comfort zone and felt much more at ease. The result was images of us messing about, being silly, playing games and generally being ourselves. We actually began to feel completely at ease with having some photos taken at home so we went on to take some photos outside, which added more variety to our photos. Chris did an amazing job of helping us to feel at ease and focus on each other rather than the task at hand.

The Photos

The strangest part of this was that we actually loved the process of having our photos taken as much as we loved the final set of photographs. We have the photos printed at home and they always take me ‘back’ to that day where we set aside a few hours just to focus on being together and connecting. I love that they’re an honest reflection of who we are at this specific stage in our lives. They’re not posed to ‘look like’ they’re fun, they’re just photos of us genuinely cracking up or cuddling up.