Magical Wedding Photography Sprinkled with Realism
All images by Lisa & Neil. Used with permission.
Who better to photograph your wedding than a couple that’s been there, done that and worn the t-shirt? Lisa and Neil are husband and wife, they’re also extremely skilled wedding photographers. In this interview, we’re diving into their 11-year journey of documenting those special days.
I understand weddings are about love and all. But, after attending a few myself, I also know they’re a cracking party. That’s what I like about Lisa and Neil’s wedding photography, it feels like you're at the party and having the best time with people you care about.
To balance out all that high energy are a range of photographic love notes. The type of images that remind you what weddings are at their core — they give all those soft feelings you enjoy feeling.
It’s best to see for yourself, and at the same time, learn about all the behind the scene efforts that go into running a successful wedding photography business.
About Lisa & Neil
Lisa & Neil.
Lisa and Neil are a wedding photography duo based in Norfolk, UK. They’ve shot over 350 weddings through 11 years. Amongst many awards and recognitions, the wedding photography duo was listed amongst the top 100 wedding photographers in 2024 by ISPWP.
Them Frames: Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Talk about the first time you ever met and at what point you both decided to go into the world of professional wedding photography together?
Neil: I’d bought myself a basic Canon DSLR as a present to myself on my 40th birthday. I’d never really owned a camera before but very quickly found that photography took me to all sorts of interesting places and to meet interesting people.
Lisa was a model/photographer who I thought was really good and would be awesome to shoot with - we arranged a TF (time for print) shoot. Lisa was effortless to shoot with and had the same unconventional approach to making photos.
I was always happiest just wandering about and taking photos of whatever was interesting rather than having a really grand plan. It was also awesome to see how Lisa used the camera and over time we invited folks we knew to come shoot with us both. Skip forward a while and we realised working full time in photography might be possible and set to work making the business.
Lisa: I was studying photography at college and I actually finished my two-year course eight months early (I’m a massive geek). I still needed to be enrolled at college despite finishing, so I decided to do some modelling.
I thought it would be a great way to see how other photographers worked and what the industry was like. I ended up doing some cool things! I modelled for the British Hair Awards, Wella trend vision but the absolute highlight was meeting Neil.
I don’t think he realizes even now (despite our reviews) but his approach is so refreshing. At the time when I took photos, I was so focused on the results I had no idea how I was making people feel (hello Autism 👋).
Other photographers were the same so I assumed it was normal. There’d be general chit-chat, politeness, niceties. But when the camera went up it was like most photographers just lost all sense of being sociable.
Neil just made me feel so comfortable and he made me laugh. He’s just charming and warm. When you shoot with him, it doesn’t feel like you’re just there for the end result. He makes the whole thing enjoyable. I love the fact that when we shoot weddings I’m constantly reminded of how we met and watching him make others feel how he made me feel during that first meeting.
Them Frames: None of your work feels forced. Why did you go for the documentary style wedding photography?
Neil: Here’s the thing, as far as I believe, weddings need a combination of approaches. And, whilst ‘documentary’ is a cool umbrella term that people understand and feel comfy with - actually we shoot portraits and group shots and all the important bits of a wedding day.
But, we do it with a relaxed style so it feels effortless and fun for our clients. I totally admire the concept of pure documentary, but it’d be dishonest to suggest that’s what we shoot all the time. Maybe 80% though.
Lisa: If I'm honest, I don’t think we have the foggiest idea how to describe our work, but we had to choose a label, and “documentary” was the closest fit. I love that you’ve noticed our work doesn’t feel forced because that’s the essence of what we do.
People are not performing monkeys there to fulfill our art ambitions; they’re people. I feel like that’s lost on a lot of photographers (nods back to my earlier point about photographers just focusing on the end result).
Doing what we do successfully is about ‘reading the room’ and acting accordingly. A thing I learned early on is if you want to be a true documentary photographer, you need to leave your empathy at home which is just something neither of us is capable of.
Them Frames: Talk to us about your animated GIFs. They’re cool! Why do you think they’re popular with your clients?
Neil: Thank you! We do love them too. So do our couples. I’d wanted for ages to have portraits with just a hint of motion - like the stairs portraits in Harry Potter for want of a better description.
We also don’t shoot video and feel a little motion in a photo gives it a boost emotionally sometimes. We’ve really stepped up our GIF output this year for those couples who want them and it’s something you have to time and think through carefully to ensure the GIF is significant rather than just a tiny video. It’s almost like learning photography again with a different bias, Lisa is brilliant at it.
Lisa: GIFs give me life, seriously. In some ways, they're wholly impractical. I mean, what can you really do with a GIF, right? We even tell couples they might want to invest in digital frames to display them (which, admittedly, is pretty cool).
They take ages to put together and we end up filling SD cards like nobody’s business. Despite the impracticalities, they feel like the photo equivalent of Disneyland. If someone asked me how I put them together and I said “magic,” I honestly think they’d believe me.
Them Frames: As exciting as weddings are, I imagine they’re also quite tense. How do you navigate the nerves and stress of families in order to get the best looking shots possible?
Neil: We aren’t badly affected too often really. Some of that is about booking couples you really like. That’s a luxury of having a business that attracts folks we'll like anyway!
Sometimes of course, shit hits the fan in terms of plans changing, weather, personalities, suppliers, venues… you know, stuff. In those circumstances we have a really significant chunk of experience and confidence. We know that we’ll be able to significantly and positively impact on the circumstances to ensure our couples have as trouble free and happy day as possible.
We’re both very committed to being on our couples team and to look after their interests beyond anything else that happens on the day. Broadly speaking, if you’re honest and competent and your heart is in the right place, most stuff works itself out pretty well on a wedding day.
Lisa: This one goes back to reading the room, being empathetic, and understanding people. Bridal getting ready is the worst for this because emotions are heightened and the people in the room can’t generally leave or go anywhere due to traditions.
Sometimes it’s best to give people jobs. I make jobs up in the morning all of the time. A Bride’s mum was flapping and stressing out the bride and constantly asking for stuff to do. I casually asked her to hold some flowers for me. She stood there for ages and suddenly realised she didn’t know why she was doing that. It gave the Bride five minutes of peace.
When I arrive if someone asks me if I want a drink I always say yes, even if I don’t want one. People just like to feel useful. Telling a stressed person to relax just doesn’t work and in the morning everyone is stressed.
Calming everyone can be as simple as putting the radio on. I also often give a bridesmaid the nod to keep the bride hydrated and to moderate the alcohol. It’s surprising how often I arrive to find the bride sitting in the makeup chair without a drink nearby. Having calm, happy people is how you get the best photos (or it’s at least a good start).
Them Frames: What’s your editing process like? Do you work together or tag each other in and divide the editing workflow?
Neil: Our process is to back up cards when we get home. We run two cameras each with two cards (standard wedding tog stuff really). These are backed up to Lisa’s PC when we get home and the filled cards are put to one side and untouched until we have another backup on my PC.
Lisa is like a machine at culling and we think culling is best done by a human not AI. The heart of what we do is about interpretation of scenes and seeing stuff in an interesting way. AI will be a while (if ever) developing ‘heart’.
Once the cull is done, that set is sent to me for edits in Lightroom. Most often, and with otherwise standard wedding season conditions - there’s not a huge amount to do if we’ve shot well.
That said, there will always be unpleasant lighting conditions to account for and of course, we also shoot UK weddings in Winter where there’s precious little good light and all sorts of weird colour temperatures going on.
We tend to take a light touch in post-processing, preferring a natural look that won’t date like an old Instagram filter. It’s important to us that couples can be proud of their photos for years to come, and not think they’re cringing after two years!
We might Photoshop a few portraits or a first kiss etc if we think it needs the help. When we’re at our most busy, Lisa will cover editing too of course.
Lisa: I think Neil has already answered this quite comprehensively. However, to add to that, we know many duos who edit their work separately, but I believe that being a duo requires trusting the other person for the couple’s sake.
No one wants to receive photos that look like they came from two different photographers, lacking cohesion. We take immense pride in the fact that you really can’t tell who took which photo in our portfolio.
This cohesion is achieved through consistent lens choices and by having one of us take full responsibility for editing each wedding. We decide who will edit which wedding, and that person then takes ownership.
If Neil is editing a wedding, I fully accept that it’s his project. I trust that the couple will love what he produces. Letting go was the hardest thing at the beginning, but as a photographer, when you focus on what’s right for the couple, that’s when you start making good decisions.
Them Frames: As a duo, how do you manage creative disagreements? What helps keep your shooting and editing workflow as smooth as possible?
Neil: Practice probably! Over the years, naturally, two creative types knocking around together are going to disagree a bit. Luckily, over time you hammer out the big stuff to come to an agreeable outcome.
Then you really mostly encounter little bits and bobs that are less difficult to sort out anyway. We both know each other really well so we pick and choose our arguments accordingly!
A good example would be if I’m editing and Lisa says the color needs a particular tweak, I'll listen since she has an almost superhuman affinity with color and how it works.
Lisa: It’s about knowing what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are and respecting that. For example, I’m better with colors and Neil’s better with crops. I’ll often struggle with a crop and call Neil over to help and vice versa.
Because of this, we don’t have any creative disagreements anymore, everything is a collaboration. Without Neil’s input, my photos wouldn’t be as good, and likewise with him. That’s a wonderful thing which should be celebrated.
At the end of the day, I’m working with someone who brings over 10 years of experience in wedding photography, and he deserves immense respect (which is mutual between us).
I’m sure there are hundreds of photographers who would love to have daily access to a photographer with this level of expertise, and that’s our everyday reality. Because of this, we always listen to each other’s ideas, and if we don’t agree, we let it simmer for a while. We often meet somewhere halfway or come up with something new.
I’ll give you an example. A lot of disagreements these days are about the website. One year we couldn’t agree on a brand color. Neil wanted green but when I placed it on the website it clashed with our photos too much.
In the end, we both enthusiastically agreed on black. I now know that if we don’t both enthusiastically agree on a branding decision then it’s probably wrong entirely and we need to go back to the drawing board. When we get it right, we both just know. This intuition saves us a lot of time and energy that would otherwise be wasted pushing something that's fundamentally flawed.
Them Frames: You’ve shot over 350 weddings…what have been your biggest lessons during that time?
Neil: Get clued up about business stuff, tax, money, forecasting, understanding your numbers. I’m really bad at that naturally whereas Lisa is like a laser in her approach.
Previously though we’ve been blindsided by tax, not known if we’ll have enough money to get through Winter/s, had to deal with all the years of Covid (that’s a separate book on its own probably!) etc. It’s actually scary to think of all the malarkey we’ve had to pick up over the time.
Lisa: My go-to business phrase is “feelings are not facts”. I have spreadsheets for everything now. Before my world of spreadsheets I’d spend every December stressed out about the fact we weren’t getting any enquiries.
I now track these numbers and expect that in December we just won’t book anything. People naturally aren’t thinking about weddings that month. We have monthly targets and these allow us to relax or stress accordingly.
Them Frames: Finally, please finish this sentence: We need photography in our life because…
Neil: This feels uncomfortable, I’m not a fan of the faux emotional bullshit photographers drop in conversations about photography. Briefly though, I feel it’s something I’m good at, that I enjoy doing and that pays the bills so I can investigate other fun stuff life can offer.
To expand, I hate the way modern workplaces seem to work, paying poorly and treating people as disposable. Jointly making a workplace that treats me and Lisa well and provides something really practical and emotional to nice folks - well I owe that to photography.
Lisa: it completes us 🫶. That’s a very millennial answer (sorry, not sorry). This is my perfect career and I know because I have tried other things. I had a panic post covid and thought I needed to diversify my skills.
So last year I dipped into marketing and became head of SEO within 6 months at an agency. I hated it. I was great at it but I hated it. I hated working for someone else, I hated working for other businesses.
Doing your own SEO vs doing SEO for someone else is like chalk and cheese. If I had to create a tick list of everything my dream job would involve, wedding photography would tick every box. I didn’t know that when I started but luck is a lucky thing.
You can see more work from Lisa & Neil and make a booking via their website. You can also catch them on their Instagram.
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