From Tour Buses to Wedding Days
I started off playing in my own band, Lucky 13. We weren't a great success, but we went on tour, and somewhere in the middle of it I fell in love with the stage, with performing, and with just being around live music.
That was a few years of my life. But during that same period, I also started going out on the road with other bands, looking after their equipment. The first band I worked for was Instruction, a New York act signed to Geffen Records: a few support tours, a few headline club runs. One of the bands we supported was Hell Is For Heroes, who needed new crew, and I ended up working for them for a few years, alongside a stint with Hundred Reasons too.
As with most things in this industry, it's the relationships you make along the way that carry you forward. I got to know a tour manager well, and when he moved on to The Ordinary Boys, I went with him. That led to more contacts, and more work: The Magic Numbers, then Travis. Those artists kept me working for years, alongside stints with Shane Filan, Westlife, Gary Barlow, Amy Macdonald, The Kooks and Royal Blood, among others.
In late 2014, I got the chance to interview for a job with Muse. I'd been a bass player my whole life, and the idea of working with one of the country's leading bassists was genuinely exciting. The interview went well, and I started with the band in early 2015. We began on a club tour, playing tiny venues by their standards. By the end of it, contracts were signed. Now, nearly twelve years later, I'm still there. I've watched them play everywhere from 500-capacity clubs to 100,000-capacity festivals (Glastonbury, Reading, Madison Square Garden, London Stadium) and toured the world doing it.
Not long after joining the band, my love of photography came back to life. I'd studied it at school, and later studied film at university alongside playing in my band. I started taking a camera everywhere: hundreds and hundreds of photos of the crew, the band, wherever we happened to be. Eventually that turned into filming bits of promo, short social clips here and there. I used the contacts I'd built to get more of that work, and after I'd previously worked for Amy Macdonald, she was kind enough to encourage me. I ended up filming a documentary with her, before COVID paused touring altogether, and other promotional pieces since, including work for Mastercard and other events she was playing.
COVID, and the slow return to work afterwards, made me realise how vulnerable we all are to the things that happen in the world. I've been lucky to work at this level for as long as I have. But as you get older, you start to understand that a career like this isn't forever, and I've got a wonderful eight-year-old boy and a wife at home who need me more and more as the years go on.
Alongside the touring, I've filmed other things too (sport, football, gymnastics for England) and I've shot weddings, for friends and for others.
All of that has shaped how I approach a wedding day. I know these moments can't be redone. I also know that on the day, my clients want to get on with living it, not managing it. At the end of the day, it's not about the video. It's about the wedding, about capturing the moment as it happens, once, and only once. I carry that with me into every wedding I shoot. I work almost in a behind-the-scenes style. Yes, the ceremony, the party, the first dance are all there, of course, but I'm also always working the edges, catching the moments most people miss: friends meeting for the first time, in-laws enjoying the day. While the two of you are busy being pulled in a dozen directions, greeting people, keeping things on schedule, being the centre of your own day, I'm the one quietly filling in everything else, so nothing gets missed just because you couldn't be in two places at once.
Years of touring with festival headliners and stadium acts taught me that things need to be done to the highest possible standard, with the least disruption, and in the quickest possible time. If the work isn't good enough, you don't get asked back. If it isn't fast enough, you don't get asked back either. That's not something I picked up from a course. It's something I learned the hard way, on the road.
The best live show films aren't just a record of what happened. They're built to make you feel it. If you were there, you watch it back and it puts you right in the room again. If you weren't there, it makes you feel like you nearly were. That comes down to framing, light, pacing, the things I spent years learning how to use properly.
That's what I bring to a wedding. I shoot it with the same gear, and the same attitude, I'd use to film a stadium show in front of 100,000 people. Your day gets the same tools, the same care, I'd bring to a festival headline slot.