About
We’ve been photographing weddings since the early 2000’s, portraits for a lot longer.
At first, the thought of a wedding terrified me! One chance to capture that special day. But I got talked into my early weddings by my then work colleagues and actually enjoyed them, especially the reactions from the delighted couples.
From photographing anything and everything I realised that my passion was for photographing people, and at the time holidays revolved around visiting places where there would be interesting people to photograph; the spectacular Venice carnival with everybody dressed up in costumes and masks, the characters of old Havana (okay, cars and crumbling buildings too), Zanzibar, Morocco, Japan, in fact anywhere with people to photograph.
In the mid noughties (horrible word!) I had my mid life crisis and took part in a charity trek in Vietnam. Of all the charity treks that I considered this was the one for me; trekking in the mountains of North West Vietnam staying with the hill tribes. A physical challenge that I survived, but which also gave me the opportunity to photograph the people. It also allowed me to approach Photography Monthly magazine and they were prepared to contribute to my sponsorship and write a feature provided that my photographs were good enough. They were, and they did!
That trip made me realise that portraits could be taken on location, without the need for a studio. A light went on inside my head and I planned my escape from the corporate world of IT compliance, signed up for the right kind of training, and left to start Nigel Ord-Smith Photography in the mid 2000’s.
Since then we’ve photographed some fabulous weddings for some super couples at some rather nice venues throughout the area and beyond, and used the influence of photographing people on location throughout the world to grow the portrait side of the business.
I honestly believe that as a wedding and portrait photographer I have the best job in the world. I go to an all day-long celebration for a couple in love!