Dee Kampe – Finder Seeker
Australia
After a year of being in and out of Melbourne’s notorious Covid-19 lockdowns, Liana and Jono’s wedding was my first wedding post-lockdown and this image is all the more sentimental to me for that reason.
We were setting up for portraits when a strong gust of wind unexpectedly took off with Liana’s veil. While Jono went racing after it, Liana, amused by the whole debacle laughed and embraced the situation for what it was. I instinctively began photographing and this frame was captured a few seconds into the veil’s escape.
Did they get the veil back? Yes they did. After lifting some 50 meters into the air we assumed it was long gone, but it had come to rest half-way up a telephone pole on the opposite side of the street. But that’s another story”
About Dee Kampe
It’s always the in-between moments that I’m drawn to the most on a wedding day. The unplanned, the unexpected, the pauses. That’s where the magic happens.”
It’s always the in-between moments that I’m drawn to the most on a wedding day. The unplanned, the unexpected, the pauses. That’s where the magic happens.
Based in Melbourne, Australia, I learnt to photograph on film as a 14 year old while following my dad around on various expeditions up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia.
Nowadays I draw inspiration from my surroundings and always aim to evoke a sense of time and place within my work.A background in Visual Art influences how I view the world around me. When I combine an awareness of my surroundings with what’s unfolding in front of me I am truly in my element.
Building a strong relationship with my clients, and taking a genuine interest in them and their lives in the lead up to their wedding is paramount to my practice. I’m all about connection. A wedding day is quite an intimate event and to be given a little window into someone’s life in such a trusting way is a responsibility I don’t take lightly.
RUNNER UP
Matteo Lomonte
Italy
When two souls merge into one, magic happens”
I try to tell each story in a simple, natural and elegant way, without artifacts and excessive modifications, as I perceive and live it. I simply let myself be carried away by emotions and by the day, without directing it or changing the natural course of events. I like to think that my story will be a forever memory in someone’s life.
About Matteo Lomonte
I am an obstinate dreamer, lover of freedom, love and panzerotti! The desire to finally be able to do something that would make me happy led me to encounter photography by chance. In 2014, I was offered a “permanent job”, but I gave up, handing in my resignation because I preferred to take this wonderful leap into the dark in the world of wedding photography.
Category Winners
- Black & White
- Couple Portrait
- Dance Floor
- Engagement / Non-Wedding
- Epic Location
- From Above
- I-Do Crew
- Lit!
- Single Capture
- Solo Portrait
WINNER – Matteo Lomonte
When two souls merge into one, magic happens”
I try to tell each story in a simple, natural and elegant way, without artifacts and excessive modifications, as I perceive and live it.
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WINNER – Dee Kampe
We were setting up for portraits when a strong gust of wind unexpectedly took off with Liana’s vale. While Jono went racing after it Liana, amused by the whole debacle, laughed and embraced the situation for what it was. I instinctively began photographing and this frame was captured a few seconds into the veil’s escape.”
It’s always the in-between moments that I’m drawn to the most on a wedding day. The unplanned, the unexpected, the pauses. That’s where the magic happens. Based in Melbourne, Australia, I learnt to photograph on film as a 14 year old while following my dad around on various expeditions up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia. Nowadays I draw inspiration from my surroundings and always aim to evoke a sense of time and place within my work.
A background in Visual Art influences how I view the world around me. When I combine an awareness of my surroundings with what’s unfolding in front of me I am truly in my element. Building a strong relationship with my clients, and taking a genuine interest in them and their lives in the lead up to their wedding is paramount to my practice. I’m all about connection. A wedding day is quite an intimate event and to be given a little window into someone’s life in such a trusting way is a responsibility I don’t take lightly.
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WINNER – Francesco Brunello
Gustav Jung spoke about the synchronicity of encounters, fortuitous encounters that leave a mark: sometimes it is as if one feels unconsciously attracted to some. Roberta told me that as soon as we met at her cousin’s wedding, where I was a photographer, she had an intuition “by the skin” as we say in Italy, that we would then have to work together: a few years later this photo was born, with tells exactly of Roberta and Matteo’s life story.”
I am an inveterate thinker, I need to think and weigh and evaluate. I am meticulous, stubborn and I was born under the sign of Libra. I’m a wedding photographer, I didn’t study to become one but the more I do this job the more I want to learn: it was exactly the job I was looking for, I’m constantly looking for beauty. Through photography I rediscover myself more every day, when I photograph, I see the life I’ve lived. And if it is true that ‘narrare necesse est’, I always have an absolute need to tell, and it is not necessary to do it always and only in words.
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WINNER – Andrea Cittadini
I adore this shot because it fully represents what I love to photograph and how I love to do it.”
I’m a passionate photographer and I am honored to have the opportunity to capture the love and emotions of couples from all over the world.
Living in a small Umbrian town on the border of Tuscany, I often find myself taking photos surrounded by the beauty of Florence and the breathtaking Chianti region.
I enjoy photographing couples in love from all over the world, no matter if it is for their engagement, their wedding or simply for the desire to create unique memories. I let emotions and light guide my eye to create engaging photographs suspended in time.
I’m a WPJA Photographer of the Year and an expert in antique photography and alternative printing techniques dating back to the late 1800s. For this I bring a unique and artistic approach to every shoot.
Every couple’s unique and beautiful love story deserves to be depicted in an evocative and emotive way, and it is my great pleasure and privilege to be the one to tell it through my lens.
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WINNER – Emily Peters
Taken at sunrise in the Isle of Skye on a cold October morning. I noticed the beautiful light rising and suggested to the couple we head to the bottom of the road to catch the last bit of the sunrise. I wanted the image to be as soft as possible so the light had a dreamy look and shot wide open.”
Based in a small town in the UK and travelling all over Scotland and Europe to capture elopements.
There’s just something so therapeutic about being surrounded by beautiful scenery and nature and capturing couples feeling relaxed in it.
I like to focus on the raw and natural moments that unfold with each couple and take a cinematic storytelling approach to my style and editing.
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WINNER – Avismita Bhattacharyya
This photograph was taken post haldi celebration when both bride and groom were enjoying with their near and dear ones and so to get an offbeat angle I climbed up the stairs when when to the tip floor which helped me in getting this bird’s eye view and made this frame. This is one of my most favourite haldi celebration frames till date.”
Avismita Bhattacharyya was born and brought up in Malda, from West Bengal where she completed her schooling, post that she received her under graduation degree in Geography from Calcutta in the year 2010. In the following years she took up the full-time job of a teacher in one of the leading schools in the town. She then left school and decided to join banking sector in the year 2015, but within a year she enrolled herself in the diploma of photography (with specialization in studio light) which became a life changing decision for her.
Since she had a huge inclination towards photography, she decided to re write her journey and started working as a lifestyle photographer in one the leading Bengali magazines where she got her first tryst with the people and fashion photography. And this gave birth to her brainchild CHARCOAL & VERMILLION in the year 2017 partnering with her best friend now her beloved husband. Since then, she has been a full wedding photographer travelling across India to capture those timeless moments in varied cross culture wedding.
Being in the wedding photography industry for more than 6 years, she is trying to innovate her style of photography and incorporate concepts of the street and photojournalistic approach with the nuance of emotions and drama. Today when she travels back in time, and she always thinks about her decision of leaving behind the lavish teaching/ banking job. God has a different and unique plan for those who dreams beyond their routine lifestyle.
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WINNER – Jeff and Cat – The Apartment
A true amalgamation of the elements of the moment. Moody sky, backlit balcony, birds flying on and off the ledge from above and a group of groomsman standing around with nothing to do… we saw the possibilities and just asked if they wanted to try something out with us. This is what we got!”
We’re Jeff and Cat, storytellers and visual artists from Vancouver, Canada. We consider ourselves pretty damn lucky to call this city home and even luckier to have built a life around collaborating and being creative together. We’ve been married since 2015 but have been working on “us” for more than 17 years. It seems like just yesterday that we were figuring out this whole wedding photography thing – patience and time have really revealed something unique that we’re proud to call our own.
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WINNER – Rossi Mechanezidis
An epic night shot I did with a couple on a cool wedding using the trees illumination and using an old plastic disc with a hole in the middle to generate some bluriness…”
Freelance photographer since 2006, based in Hessen, Germany. I mainly shoot weddings, but also business, families, portraits, dogs. My speciality absolutely is the addiction to creative flash photography, which runs like a common thread through all sujets I´m shooting. Before 2017 I didn´t have any clue of how to use flash at all, but this changed, after I had read Roberto Valenzuelas Books and had seen his Videotorials. The sudden understanding of flash as a creative tool absolutely blew my mind and it became in notime my “handwriting”, which I didn´t really have at all before.
My strength is my ability to visualize a picture almost “readymade” in my head. For me it´s like “painting by numbers”: The ideas come out of nowhere, the setups are being formed quite detailed and clear before shooting shots like this, sometimes hours before I do the shot, when arriving at the venue, sometimes minutes before the shot.
In short words: I love to get creative and play “wild” with my endless number of crazy gadgets. Some are self made, some are just underrated items from everyday life.
My clients are giving me the total freedom to express myself artistically, so I can go bonkers in my very own creative world of imagination.
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WINNER – Jim Caryl – The Caryls Photography
This image is a little usual for us, in that it’s quite different to our usual photographic style. But we wanted to share it here, as we loved this joyful, spontaneous moment; the energy, the laughter, the chaos… And bride, Tiffany, in the midst of it all…”
Hey! We’re Katy & Jim, Scotland wedding and elopement photographers specializing in intimate weddings and elopements in Scotland and worldwide.
Our own love story began twelve years ago; Katy was working as a television Producer/ Director, making Arts documentaries, while Jim was research biochemist. An article about Jim in New Scientist Magazine landed on Katy’s desk, and she instantly felt that he could be a good subject for a documentary, so she decided to reach-out. Let’s just say Jim’s TV career never quite took-off. But we quickly found a personal and creative connection that’s taken us on many adventures over the past decade. Our approach to documenting weddings and elopements combines our own love of nature, exploration and the great outdoors, with the skills that we inherited from our ‘past lives’. Katy’s experience in documentary story-telling and creating a space in which people can feel relaxed and free to be themselves on camera, with Jim’s research-orientated approach and mountain guiding skills. As a natural research nerd, Jim is a master of finding hidden gem locations and working-out when the light will fall just-so on the hills.
Our over-riding aim when we’re documenting a wedding day is to create powerful images that capture not just what the day looked like, but what it felt like too; to capture everything that’s unique and special about each individual couple’s story and the special connection that they share.
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WINNER – Federica Ariemma
This photo was taken during an October wedding in Puglia. It was very cold and very windy. The bride ask me about a photos with the truly typical Apulian structures and while she was fixing the veil, the wind became very strong and rolled it around her face.”
Ciao I’m Federica I was born in Naples in 1987, but I live in Puglia.
I am strongly linked to my land and to my origins, even though I feel I belong to the whole world.
I love Asia, Asian people and Buddhism.
I love to travel, as soon as I can I prepare my backpack and go away.
I am a greedy perpetually on a diet, I love white chocolate and pizza, strictly Neapolitan.
I love simple things,I like habits and routine, but I am one with head shots.
I studied 9 years at university and obtained several degrees which gave me the title of Nutritionist Biologist.
I soon realized it wasn’t the right job for me.
I quickly realized it wasn’t the right job for me. I felt trapped in something that I did not feel comfortable with, that did not allow me to express myself and have my say from my point of view.
So when I met photography by chance in 2011, I decided to change course.
That lifeline had come unexpectedly and I couldn’t let it escape.
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