It takes two people to tell a story

Who are we?

We are Elvire and Xavier, a couple of traveling wedding photographers. Behind the keyboard, it’s her (well, it’s me, stay focused please), behind the camera it’s him. This is the simple version. Reality is slightly more complex.

Martyn Photography, through pictures.

A lot of our customersare not very confortable with pictures being taken and don’t like being photographed. And here is a thing : we feel exactly the same ! So in order to understand what it’s like to be on the other side of the camera, we do it once a year with colleagues. And that way we have pictures to show you what we look like !

Thanks to our colleague Arnaud Chapelle for this picture of us !

Martyn Photography in a video

I don’t know if you know that, but we move places very often. That’s why we prefer working far away as photographers than where we live. Double objective. First one is I will feel like moving out later (there is always a time when this happens will me). And second one is when I will get tired of living here and we want to move 500km away, it won’t be a problem for our customers as they are all over the place anyway !They know we can move and travel far away to meet with them when they need us. We arrived home two years ago (already), and for now no sign of getting tired of being here ! Almost a record for me so our plan is working ! Let’s show you what it looks like where we live in a small video.

Wedding documentaries, our favourite playground.

Xavier and I we love trying a lot of different things. But if we had to pick one speciality, it would be wedding. Why wedding ? Because we are romantic and believe in true love ? Wrong ! True reasons are different from this.

Demanding nature of wedding photography

To be able to document a full wedding day, you need to master everyting. A wedding documentary can include : landscape pictures, details pictures, couple pictures, family pictures, food pictures, outdoor pictures, under a bright sun or under rain, inside pictures, in very dark places like churches, or with artificial lights like city halls, dancefloor pictures, portrait pictures. You get the point. If you know how to properly photograph a wedding, you know how to photograph everything. And these skills can then be usefull to lots of other projects that have nothing to do with wedding !

The encounters

From our couplesto their guests, documenting weddings allows us to meet incredible people, all very unique. Plus we get to meet them in a moment full of joy and happiness. This is such a blessing ! And other wedding vendors are also great people to get to meet ! Photographers, videographers, hair stylists, make-up artists, dress designers, DJ, wedding planners, … Encounters are countless, and as time passes we have a nice little net of wedding vendors who share values with us.

The value of our work in the eyes of our customers

Doing photos and videos is of course great for us, because we love creating and telling stories, whatever get us inspired. But in the wedding world, the images we create have a value that other photos don’t have. Wedding pictures are the foundation of a family’s photographic heritage. It has an enourmous value and importance ! And it’s of course a great responsibility for us. But our images will still be cherished in dozens of years, maybe hundreds ! They will be there when most of the people present on the day will be gone and won’t be able to tell the story. They will be handled with care, discovered again by people that weren’t even born when they were taken. These people will try to understand this important day in their family history, and they will get to relive the emotions of the day through our images.

Her or him?

Since we mainly do weddings, I want to present ourselves in the style of a well-known wedding party game: the “her or him”. So I’m going to put some questions below and you can find out who of us is behind this proposal. I did this as a dropdown, so you can try to guess the answer. If you are curious and want to know something that is not on the list, send us a contact form to ask us the question. Maybe your question will be added in this presentation section!

How did we end up where we are?

Xavier was the first one to fall into the magic world of images, through landscape and concert photography. Naturally quiet, good observant, the soul of an artist, he was already making great photos as an amateur. But to be able to live from photography, you also have to be good at communicating, and he was pretty bad. So he went from one job to another following me where science was taking me, in Wales (UK) then in Bordeaux (France). He invested all his money in cameras, lenses and filters, and all his free time in tutorials and field experimentation.

And one day I had to take a break and leave behind me the world of scientific research. As I thought he was sitting on a goldmine, and liked communicating, I did something I excel at : I took us both out of our comfort zone. Dare or not jumping into photography and becoming traveling wedding photographers?

Wait, what exactly is a couple of traveling wedding photographers?

It’s the best wording we found to describe what we do. The heart of what we do is telling stories. Stories of happy people, who want to spend a strong and emotional moment with their closed ones. In other words, wedding stories. And why travelling ? Simply because after spending a dozne of years switching appartements/city/country every year I decided it was about time I start assuming this part of me. I just can’t put my suitcase somewhere and tell myself that it’s going to be my home forever. We want to be able to change where we live whenever we want. No children, no animals, and almost no furnitures. We do have a van that is a bit of our home everywhere (when it’s not broken), and we love waking up with a different landscape every morning.

So yes we are settled somewhere (for now), of course we are not full nomads. At the moment we live in Normandie (where we were both born). But we go in an adventure somewhere else at least once a month, for days or weeks, discovering places our customers love. That way we get tired of where we live less fast, and who knows maybe we’ll find our next home in one of these trips ! We already visited lots of regions of France thanks to our couples, and we can’t wait to see where the next ones will take us !

Do we only shoot weddings?

Our main activity is wedding photography, because photographing weddings is a challenge we love to take up to. You have to know how to adapt to situations you don’t always control to get the best images possible. And of course there is the social aspect. Capture a wedding, with pictures or videos, is stepping into a couple’s intimacy, but also meet with their families and friends, and discover their culture. It’s being for one day a honored witness with a special mission : making sure this day will never be forgotten by telling the story.

When we are not taking care of our bride and groom, we like to put our talents at the service of everyone, privates and professionals. We also travel quite a bit, in search of beautiful landscapes and original buildings. If you want to show us your piece of paradise, we will be delighted to come to you!