Leicester wdding photography

Wedding Photography By Bill Haddon

I have been a full time professional Leicester wedding photographer for over 25 years with more than 1,000 weddings photographed.

Leicester wedding photographer

Established as one of the most experienced wedding photographers for Leicestershire wedding venues

I am the expert for Leicestershire wedding venues and have photographed up to 99 weddings at some of them. This is because I mainly keep to the Leicestershire area and so I get to work at the wedding venues many times. The chances are that I will of worked at your venue at the same time of year as your wedding and can show you samples of how it would look.

Read my blog about the benefit of keeping it local

A Little About Me

Ok so this is the bit I tell you that I like coffee and cake. Now that is done let me tell you about my life behind the camera. But here is a little about me personally first.

I don’t like to take myself too seriously. I like to experiment with facial hair and sometimes might bleach my hair too !

Bill Haddon self portrait
Self Portrait 2019

And when I am not shooting or editing weddings I relax like this.

Bill drumming

PHOTOGRAPHY

My early memories are of playing with an old camera without any film in it.

Bill Haddon 4 years old
Bill Haddon 4 years old

I would spend my time around the garden for hours looking through the viewfinder and composing and then pressing the button “taking pictures” without any film loaded. Since then I have always felt that I knew what I wanted to do. And I’ve been doing it ever since !.

Leicester Wedding Photography.

I photographed my first wedding in Leicester when I was 20. It was film at that time and you had to get the wedding photography right the first time with no mistakes, no delete button or photoshop then. The camera I used only took 12 photos per roll of film before you had to change rolls which meant it was vital to think ahead and work fast which are still the key skills needed for wedding photography today.

A Pioneer of The Relaxed Wedding Photography Style.

Rothley Court wedding photo

Proud to be able to describe myself as a pioneer of the popular shooting style you see today, documentary, informal, relaxed wedding photography. Known at the time as reportage wedding photography. Alongside the slower 12 roll camera I also used a smaller faster 35mm camera for quick-fire informal shots that no one else was doing at the time.

From the very start I invested in the very best camera you could buy at the time which was called a Hasselblad. These were the cameras that Nasa used on all the moon missions and took the most famous photographs in the world. www.nasa.gov.  The last one I brought before moving to digital was this fantastic red leatherette one here.

Here I am with it, leaning out of a Leicester wedding venue window.

As a trusted professional I am proud to of been asked to be the official photographer twice for events held in Leicester attended by HRH The Princess Royal.

My first job at 16 was working as a photo printer in one of the pro labs in Leicester and very soon I was promoted to manage the black and white printing department. My spare time would be spent travelling and shooting landscapes with a 5×4 inch plate camera that took one shot shot at a time. Here I am with it in Dovedale age 19.

Leicester wedding photography
Bill Haddon

At the pro lab I started with black and white and then trained as a colour photo printer and at the age of 19 I started working in the in-house photography department which would see me on many outdoor photographic assignments. A few years later I started photography by Bill Haddon in 1995.

Photo taken at the age of 20 and by then with 4 years darkroom experience and already manager of a lab’s black and white department and working in the photographic studio.

 Bill Haddon 1988

Today I still use all those printing skills learnt in a real (wet) darkroom, especially my time spent in the pro colour lab because to able “see” colour correctly takes years of experience. Today the darkroom is photoshop and a computer. See here for a few samples

Paris late 80s with a 5×4 inch plate camera

Paris
Paris
Bill Haddon Paris
Bill Haddon Paris
Leicester wedding photography

Another one- this time in the 1990s with an antique whole plate camera that takes sheets of almost A4 sized film one shot at a time.

Self Portrait 2013
Bill Haddon
Leicester wedding photographer Self Portrait Bill Haddon taken 2020