FOCUS ON FERN PHOTOGRAPHY

Dan Rannoch and Matt Dale let us in on their lives documenting couples’ special days and their authentic approach

With over 10 years of photographing weddings, Fern Photography’s Dan and Matt have established their own particular style. “It’s best described as colourful, vibrant authentic storytelling,” they say. Working together since 2011, they’ve been taken all over the world photographing couples’ weddings, with Dan citing a particular career highlight as when he got to travel to Canada for a wedding in a rainforest. However, wedding photography wasn’t always the plan. Dan first started taking photos when he was a child, using a Kodak Instamatic 110. “I loved taking pictures of anything and everything,” he remembers. “As I started high school, photography took a back seat. However, later as an adult, I took it up again as a personal project. I took a self portrait every day for a year and from that I renewed my passion for photography.”

Not that that automatically meant it would become his vocation. Dan’s varied career has involved time as a silk screen printer, teaching English in France and even playing in a band that toured the UK - “If I wasn’t a photographer I’d probably be a musician in a band and almost certainly playing at weddings,” he laughs.

For New Zealander Matt, the love of photography came as a way to record the memories of his travels, beginning when he was 19, touring south east Asia as he emigrated to Scotland. “My best friend and flatmate taught and inspired me,” he recalls. “Within the first year of being in Scotland my friend and I went to India and Italy where he taught me the techniques I would build on for my wedding photography.” Like Dan, photography wasn’t Matt’s first job. He’d done care work, charity work and also bike repairs.

However, in 2011 their careers were set to change when they met while working as event photographers at the Beltane Fire Festival. That same year Matt’s friend in Australia was so impressed by his images he asked him to photograph his wedding. “It sounded like a great idea but I wasn’t comfortable doing it on my own so I asked Dan if he could help,” he says. Dan admits he didn’t know anything about wedding photography then but they both trained and learned everything they could and said yes to that wedding. “It was such fun I decided right then that this was what I wanted to do forever,” he says. And so Fern Photography was born, with the business name coming from Dan’s surname meaning fern in Scots Gaelic and the national symbol of Matt’s native New Zealand being the same plant. Since then they haven’t looked back. “It’s the perfect combination of always meeting new and interesting people, visiting wonderful places and getting to be creative too,” says Dan. Matt even met his girlfriend when she was a guest at a wedding they shot.

Photography With Integrity

Dan and Matt are drawn to intimate, personal and lively weddings – “weddings where you learn about the lives of the couple and their stories,” says Dan. “Weddings that are a wonderful celebration of love and joy.” And that love and joy comes in all shapes and sizes. Fern Photography’s tagline is “Speak with honesty, think with sincerity and act with integrity,” and their values are stated publicly on their website so they can be held to account. “Inclusivity, open-mindedness and understanding are our core principles,” says Dan. “We’re a people-centred business and treating people with respect is at the heart of what we do. We believe everyone deserves the right to celebrate their relationship however they choose and with whomever they choose; we will always photograph that celebration with respect and understanding.” The duo don’t make decisions to photograph based on gender, creed, culture, race, sexual orientation or physicality. Dan continues, “We believe in the importance of focusing on both (or sometimes more than both) people in the relationship as well as the community that attends the celebration in our work. We choose to celebrate difference and individuality and we promote realistic body images in the work we produce.”

To ensure their continual adherence to their values, they