About

This is my daughter and I enjoying a beautiful wedding as guests recently – made a change from being behind the camera, fantastic to experience so much love both sides of the lens!

I enjoy early mornings but I find it hard to get out of bed. I love grating dark chocolate over my mother’s tiramisu recipe and my herbal tea collection takes up far too my cupboard space. I love sunshine but adore winter clothes and could live in boots. I grew up in Europe (a gypsy combo of Finish/English & Italian). When I travel I feel at home scouring the world’s markets, the smell of spices, old books and the watching the sun set on a red sandstone building. Beauty for me can be a dramatic mountain top view or a dewdrop glistening on a leaf at dawn. In the same way a wedding offers large and small slices of life.

And that is partly why I love shooting weddings so much. Weddings have rules and in some ways it’s a very orchestrated event, you know what’s going to happen, you know when people are going to do what. And yet you know nothing. Every wedding is completely different. Every couple adds something new to the mix. I love being there to capture their day and I hate being in the way. I try and walk in with a sense of naivety. I try and capture the events as they happen, the story, all the beauty and drama, all the characters and the details. I believe that your wedding photos ought to be an honest retelling of the story of your wedding day.

My style is mostly documentary coverage, which means letting your day happen naturally with as little prompting from the photographer as possible. Too many photographers control the day and everything revolves around what the photographer wants and when they want it, whereas I am the opposite of that!

Of course, a small number of traditional and non-traditional portraits are good to capture and I might set up shots in one corner rather than another because the light or backdrop is better… but I feel it is the gathering of your friends and family plus the unscripted moments and emotions that happen on your wedding day which are the most important and which I strive to capture.

“I have always been an observer. I have always sought beauty in the ordinary and noticed the unnoticed. I delight at that moment when someone lets their guard down, when we truly connect with another.

A wedding, an engagement or an elopement is the ultimate moment of connection. And there is no better situation to see all these magical moments play out. To me, this doesn’t feel like work. I am humbled to share raw moments of love, laughter and tears.”

Katja also specialises in Commercial Photography. Visit Katjaanton.com to learn more.