Before I ever photographed a wedding, I was trained as a fine artist. Visual communication, oil painting, the practice of looking slowly at something until you understand what it's actually saying. That way of seeing has never left me and it shapes every photograph I make.

I spent over a decade photographing weddings in South Africa before immigrating to New Zealand, where I now call Auckland home. Two very different countries, two very different kinds of light  but the same truth holds in both: the moments that matter most on a wedding day are almost never the ones you planned for.

I've been married since 2008. I have three children. I know what it feels like to stand at the beginning of something enormous and be completely overwhelmed by the weight of it. And I know what it means, years later, to look at a photograph and feel the whole day come back.

Weddings are a rollercoaster  and that's exactly what I love about them. The nerves before the ceremony. The laughter that breaks the tension. The tears that arrive from nowhere. The quiet moment between two people in a room full of everyone they love. I'm not there to manage any of that. I'm there to witness it, and to find the beauty in it with the eye of someone who has spent a lifetime learning how to look.