On New Years day 2013 I woke up in the mountains and watched two swallows flying in and out of their perfectly constructed mud nest in the verandah roof.  I sat there for ages watching, thinking and reflecting.

My plan for New Years Eve was to party with all of my good friends from school days. We had all gone up to the Drakensberg for the weekend and had planned a big feast followed by champagne, dancing and fun. New Years eve morning rolled in and I woke up with a horrible tummy bug and proceeded to spend the next 24 hours in bed!

My plan didn’t work out but waking up on New Years day hangover free and feeling a lot better gave me the chance to quietly give thanks for the blessings of 2012.

2012 was very good to Jacki Bruniquel Art and Photography. She took us from the Karoo to the Caribbean. Clients ranged from a Stay at home Mom to a Springbok rugby player, from an Accountant to an Architect to an Actress. We photographed a wedding in India. We photographed weddings on farmyards, in gardens, in fancy hotels and in the bush. Some weddings were grand, some were humble.

Every one of them was different and in every one of them there is a common thread.

That common thread is the thread of Love.

I love making pictures about love. I love making photos of the human narrative. I love finding that little thing that makes everyone unique in his or her own way and making pictures about that.

Here is my personal best wedding work of 2012.

Huge thanks to all of my clients for believing in me, for picking me and for becoming part of what was a hugely special year for me.

Thanks also my amazing assistant Tash. She is the hardest-working, loveliest human ever and I owe her more than words could ever express.

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On the 29th of September 2012 I photographed Emma and Murray’s wedding at Netherwood in the Natal Midlands. During the service I stood too close to a candle and my hair caught alight. It could have ended badly but it didn’t …… I just patted out the flames and carried on shooting. It was rather funny and certainly a wedding that I will never ever forget !!! Knowing full well that there were heaps of people in the audience with cellphones and recording devices as well as a videographer  I knew that this incident would hit the internet. I am not afraid to have a good laugh at myself and asked the videographer and my friend Mark Thompson from Beyond Measure Productions if I could publish the few seconds of footage that he got of the whole thing on my blog! You can check out the video as well as what I wrote here.

I didn’t really think about it again ….. life happened … I was in Joburg and then Mozambique …. I got ill with flu and suddenly I was in the UK and then Antigua in the Caribbean and then back to the UK. Things were quite busy and I wasn’t online much.

But while I was on my travels I started receiving all sorts of messages from people from all over the world to tell me that they had seen the video  …..

Then a friend emailed me from Oz to say they saw me on the news ….. the news … What?????

The news?????????????????

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I came home from our Antigua/ UK trip to a mountain of mail, and included in all of that was a brown envelope containing a copy of the latest Umhlanga magazine. Storm Catterick recently wrote an article about me titled “Photographers to look out for” – 6 whole spreads and the front cover. Wow I am honored!

Here are her words as well as pics of the pages.

There’s something about a good photograph that captures the imagination and enchants the eye, whether it’s because it’s a memory that will be forever frozen in time, or the fact that you can capture the most precious moments in someone’s life!

I have always envied the way in which photographers view life – how they can find something aesthetically pleasing in even the most insignificant or less-than-attractive thing. We are so blessed in our small town to have some truly amazing photographers here, all unique and different in their own way, but with one common underlying factor – they are all brilliant!

With this in mind, we decided that during the next couple of months we would profile some of Umhlanga’s best photographers who we think you should look out for when capturing that next special moment.

In our first edition we are profiling Jacki Bruniquel, a photographer who is known for her unique style and honest way of capturing memories in her photographs. Jacki is also an accomplished artist, something which enables her to take photography to an exceptional level. With her incredible knack for capturing wedding memories she is fast gaining the reputation for being one of South Africa’s most creative wedding photographers. Jacki Bruniquel is this month’s local photographer to look out for!

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Everyone who photographs weddings has a crazy wedding story ….

I always thought that my most ridiculous wedding story was the time I sat in horse poo whilst doing a few groom portraits right before the speeches were about to start. I was sitting in the grass shooting away and when I stood up my assistant gave me a look that indicated that something was very very wrong. She had a reason for the horrified expression – My butt was covered in brown manure! Not cool. What was even more uncool was the fact that I didn’t have another pair of pants to change into and it looked as if I had had an accident in my trousers. There was nothing I could do. I just had to laugh and keep on shooting!

There have a been more incadents but this latest one really has to take the cake!

While photographing Emma and Murrays wedding at Netherwood I stood a bit too close to a candle and my hair actually caught alight! One of the videographers managed to get a clip of it just as it caught alight. Unfortunately he didn’t get all of the smoke as I had hopped out of the wayl!!!! In that situation the only thing you can do once the flames have been patted out is to once again …… laugh and keep on shooting. It was funny. It was certainly a wedding I will never forget that is for sure and my hair did actually need a trim! (although I have to say that it hasn’t been quite the same since then!!)

Thanks so much to Mark Thompson from Beyond Measure productions for freezing that moment in time …. (I think …!) Mark is a dream to work with if you are in the market for a videographer!

Recently I heard of a couple who waited A YEAR for their wedding album to be ready! A whole year …. 365 days. Now that is just completely and utterly ridiculous.

On the flip side we live in a digital, technological age where people expect instant results and often clients are disappointed about having to wait a couple of months for their wedding album. I mean if you are shooting on digital the results should be instant right? WRONG!

I learnt photography back in the days of film. One would shoot off rolls of film and unless you had a darkroom at home, the film would be delivered to a lab who would take care of everything. They would process the film and print a contact sheet for you. You would then make your selects and the lab would print everything whilst fixing any colour or tonal issues. Easy peasy! It was actually quite a quick process and there wasn’t too much post-production work for a photographer. Shooting on film did mean that your technical ability had to be spot on though!

Digital photography has changed the whole game! Digital pics are instant in the sense you can view them immediately BUT there is a whole load of work that goes on behind the scenes from the shoot to the delivery of the album.

Here is the whole process step by step

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On the 23^rd of July last year my Stu proposed to me in aqua blue water whilst snorkeling with turtles in Madagascar. It’s been almost a year and we still haven’t set a date!! There are many reasons as to why this is but one of them is that I am secretly rather scared of tackling the whole wedding elephant. From my side of the camera I have seen enough strung out brides to know that organizing a wedding is a stressful affair!

On the flip side weddings are just wonderful. I love the way that friends and family all come together to celebrate love and commitment. The communal joy and hope that bears witness to promises made and ties forged is a rite of passage. I have nothing against eloping but having a wedding without this just wouldn’t be the same.

My assistant Tash recently got engaged, so we have been chatting a lot about all the Do’s and Don’t of weddings! We have been to enough now to know a thing or two about what works and what makes things bloody stressful!

I decided to turn our conversational Do’s and Absolutely Bloody Don’ts into this blog article you are reading. Grab a cup of tea, its probably going to be long!!!!!

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I just cannot believe that 2011 is nearly over!! Has anyone else out there noticed how ridiculously fast this year has gone??? It’s been a huge year for me on so many levels. I broke down with burn out at the beginning of the year, picked myself back up again. I stopped drinking alcohol for 9 months which gave birth to the fact that I am no longer a smoker. I stopped biting my nails. I traveled to Madagascar and Hong Kong. I got engaged with Stu. And I worked. I worked alot.

Looking through a years worth of images is quite a reflective process. Going through all of these I am floored by just how lucky I am to do a job that I love so very much. More so, I realise how incredibly lucky I am to have such awesome clients. I wouldn’t have been able to make these pictures without wonderful clients!!!

2012 promises to be a cracker. We start the year off with a wedding in the Karoo which I am really excited about, then we are back at Netherwood which is one of my favorite venues. After that we head up to Clarens to photograph the wedding of a Springbok rugby player and his lovely lady and then we jet off to India for a wedding in Goa (yaaaaaaay!!!) And that is all before the mid February!  How exciting!

Thanks to everyone for everything and thanks to my friends and family  for not disowning me due to my workaholic tendencies!!! (that’s the problem with doing a job you love … sometimes its hard to stop doing it!!!)

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I have recently had a number of people call, mail and Facebook me to ask my advice about getting into the wedding industry and to find out what it is like to be a wedding photographer.

These people have ranged from photography students to people who enjoy photography as a hobby.

My answer is always the same. Wedding Photography is an insane amount of work and to do well you need to be creative, adaptable, technically sound, good with people and skilled at running your own business. It also helps to be a little obsessive! People seem to think it is an easy job or a way to make a quick buck and unfortunately it is this attitude, along with the digital revolution, that has resulted in a lot of fly-by-nights and wedding photography disasters.

I have therefore decided to write this post on what it is really like to be a full time professional wedding photographer. Please note that this is written from my own personal perspective, and I tend to be a workaholic who is constantly pushing myself to be better, do better and create more ….. Sometimes to the detriment of everything else!

I know there are wedding photographers out there who have it all figured out and have successful businesses, take amazing images and have a balanced personal life. I bow down to those photographers and wish I could be more like them. (By the way … I don’t really know any personally! Except for, maybe, one!)

I also know there are those photographers out there who are happy to deliver sub-standard work. I am not one of those.

So here we go.

What it is really like to be a wedding photographer?

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Stu and I recently got engaged and so now I am going to be on the other side of the camera!!! We are probably only going to get married in 2013 and we are slowly starting to work out what our priorities are. I decided to put a question out on facebook and the results were just too good not to share. I asked “Did you have any regrets about your wedding day?” Here’s what people had to say! Please feel free to add to this by adding a comment if the mood takes you.

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