Stockbridge Farm Barn Wedding Photographer

Stockbridge Farm Barn is a medieval barn on a small working farm four miles south of Sherborne, in the Dorset countryside Thomas Hardy wrote about and only just over the Somerset border from Yeovil. The barn seats up to a hundred and ninety-five and has changed very little in hundreds of years; the Old Workshop takes smaller ceremonies, the Garden Room is the outdoor ceremony space, and the whole thing is a blank canvas that couples dress the day before. It opens from the end of March to the end of October. I’ve photographed two weddings here, one in September and one in June, and the barn’s honesty is the thing: there’s nothing to hide behind, so the photographs are about the people.

The farm gives you fields and hedgerows for portraits, the barn gives you stone and timber and the big doors open to the evening, and Sherborne, with the abbey and the castle, is ten minutes away for couples who marry in town and come out to the farm afterwards. It’s a venue that rewards a relaxed, rural wedding with good food and a band.

How I photograph a wedding

Documentary first. I don’t run the day or stage it; I pay attention to it, and I keep the formal part to ten minutes of group photographs and twenty minutes of portraits in the best light we can find. Natural light, no flash during ceremonies, and editing that will still look right in twenty years. I take a limited number of weddings a year, which is partly how I get to give each one my full attention.