Lisa Jane Photography: Portrait of an Artist
“I see wedding photography as an amazing opportunity to tell a bloody lovely story!”
—so says Lisa of Lisa Jane Photography, lover of true crime podcasts (My Favorite Murder gets her endorsement), live music events and photo booths. She’s forty years old, gloriously grey-haired and has been working with a camera since she was sixteen. She’s been a professional photographer for the last twelve years. “It’s weird,” she tells me, her quirky glasses momentarily disrupting her steely fringe as she removes the frames. “It’s only in the last few years that I’ve been able to say that with confidence,” she discloses. Impostor Syndrome is a heavy burden, but for far too long—long enough to rival her multi-decade career as a decorated and celebrated inclusive wedding photographer—it has plagued her. I hope that today will show her just how fab she is—I begin by complimenting her new website, which is just gorgeous; have a look!
It doesn’t seem right that someone who so clearly gives her heart and soul to her work—so invested in her work that she cries at every single wedding—would have anything to prove to herself, but she still feels it’s in the last two years that’s she’s arrived. Those also happen to be the two years she’s been chosen as one of Professional Photo Magazine’s Top 50 UK Wedding Photographers. Lisa Jane Photography is antithetical to “wallflower photography;” to achieve the photos that she personally responds to is to get stuck in, get involved; the best way to do that was for her to be herself. “My business can evolve with me,” she says of her decision to name it for herself. It seemed silly to Lisa to have a name that didn’t relate to who she is—she knows she’s changed through “wonderful adventures and soul-destroying moments,” over the last twelve years, however, “—if I’m just me, [then] people know I’m the person who’ll show up at their wedding—me on the end of an email, zoom call, or showing up at a pub to have a drink and talk things through.”
Birmingham-based, Lisa still considers herself a London wedding photographer; she often finds her couples will either get married in London or are from the city originally. “I’ve come to the conclusion that my ideal client doesn’t quite exist,” she shares with me. Their jobs are all different, ranging from midwife to published author. Their commonalities aren’t in the demographic details, rather in the intention of their imagined wedding day. “The couples I connect with are those who don’t want things too fussy, [or] traditional—who really want to celebrate their relationship and the people who support them.” She counts some of her couples as her bestest friends, even inviting some of them to her 2019 nuptials! Others she’s connected with through a shared taste in music, or similar personalities, and then, of course, there are those for whom Lisa’s work simply speaks to them, louder than any shared taste in music or podcasts ever could.
“I would consider most of what I shoot at a wedding documentary—I have a very candid and relaxed style to it. Wedding photography should always be a reflection of what’s going on around you. You can’t stage peoples reactions to planned moments,” she shares. And she’s all about the moment—not necessarily the big ones, either. She delights in the small moments, sometimes unseen by the couple on the day. Besides providing prolific digital galleries to her clients after their event, Lisa will often send along a box full of film photos her couples didn’t even realize she was snapping! “My favorite is my polaroid, which I’ve pretty much used since I first started in weddings,” she shares after I ask which of her film-based cameras is her pet favorite. “Because the film is slightly unreliable it means that each of those photos is completely unique. It’s one of those things that people love—they know that I’m [going to take] them, but they don’t know when.”
Her love of film photography comes from the nostalgia of her childhood—she recalls large Quality Street tins full of her parent’s most treasured snapshots. “There’s something so magical in those moments of over- or under-exposure,” Lisa says of her challenge to become more present with her non-digital tools to allow them to weave their way into her work. She and her husband still only take film cameras—each with a limited amount of shots—with them on holidays to capture the little moments they never want to forget. One such moment is kept in pride of place in their home, a big/small moment in four frames: their marriage proposal! That’s right, Lee popped the question and Lisa said yes in a photobooth! A perfect proposal for the pair of photographers.
That’s not the only element of their wedding day they’ve hung on their walls. A devoted Grey’s Anatomy fan, Lisa has a pair of post-it notes signed by herself and her husband framed on the wall, as well as an embroidered Patti Smith quote from none other than Julia Bethan, whom she met at a previous Most Curious show! “We have constant reminders of that one particular day and what that means—it’s the two of us, together, moving forward.”
The wedding was a breeze to plan. “We managed to plan our wedding over the space of two pints in a pub in Hackney,” Lisa says with a grin as we both begin to laugh.
With a shared vision for their day and a shared intention—for the wedding to be a real reflection of them each as individuals and together as a couple—it all fell into place once they walked through their chosen venue and the Most Curious Wedding Fair! “I was exhibiting at Most Curious—we both went for a wander around and sorted things through the show…We wanted everyone to have tons of food, drink, confetti and we needed a band.”
The last most important detail was the choice to have a celebrant-led ceremony.
“Having a humanist ceremony meant that the ceremony was the most personal bit.” Their friend Zena Birch stood as their celebrant and surprised them with their ceremony; even those who gave readings planned them as a surprise to the couple with Zena’s guidance. Halfway through the reading given by longtime friend, Audrey, Lisa and Lee realized that her reading was completely composed of lyrics from their favorite songs, rearranged to celebrate their love story. It was a very emotional wedding, but Lisa took her own advice and let the tears flow. “[Speaking] as a photographer, your discomfort is visible and there’s no way to get rid of that—embrace all the joy,” Lisa advises me. She found that her favorite photos from her own wedding day, as well as those she’s photographed, all converge around the people being free with their feelings. “ My friend Bianca could see how emotional I was, and she reached out and touched my arm,” Lisa illustrates one of the best photos from her day, taken as she walked down the aisle towards Lee. Another: “Two of my other friends with faces absolutely gone, red faced and—“ she doesn’t quite finish the sentence, her thoughts momentarily transported to her wedding day and the genuine and powerful joy displayed by her loved ones.
We’ve both already teared up during our talk, but we’re not done yet. “I cry at every single wedding—the emotion gets to me; that’s how invested I am in the whole day. It’s amazing to see people’s reactions, to see people lose themselves on the day—it’s one of the things I talk about with my couples—besides confetti—it’s the one opportunity to look back on the day and see how everyone loves and supports you,” she tells me, hopeful that more wedding parties, large and small, will continue to get comfortable with feeling it all, whether the confetti is flying, or it’s a solemn moment—feel it all, she urges. “It’s easy in the grand scheme of things to forget you have these people who love you. And it’s such a wonderful thing to witness—I’ve stood in those shoes, I’ve waited for the music to kick in. One little thing will change in someones face—,” and then we’re both goners, thinking of being surrounded by those we love and recalling together our grandparents who attend those special moments in our lives in memory only. Wishing she could have had her granddad at her wedding, she makes a point of capturing moments with grandparents. It’s one of the most important reasons to invest with the right photographer—to find the person who will capture the little moments you’ll come to reflect on in the years to come. Photos of our loved ones continue to take on meaning and significance as our families grow, change and experience inevitable losses. “People tell you about your own wedding day through photography,” says Lisa, “[the photos] become part of a bigger and ever-growing story.”
“Wedding planning is difficult and there will always be points where you have to compromise with something, or you can’t have have something you want or you have to go through family dynamics and the nerves will get to you—you’re gonna feel excited, but shit-scared. None of these things are bad things. You spend years planning in pieces and then you know the whole picture is coming together on the day of the wedding. And then you walk in and it all changes and I always say to my couples if there’s a point during the planning process where it gets you down if you start to feel like that and you feel like you don’t have anyone to chat with, drop me a line. But just remember that all the little stresses won’t be something you worry about on the day. I see myself as a cheerleader for my couples—you don’t remember how things came together, you just remember the experiences.” For Lisa, her personal wedding memories are all wrapped up in music. “I know for the rest of our lives together when I hear certain songs I will think of our wedding day.”
The musical artist Patti Smith is a huge influence on Lisa’s life and work both; as a reader, I wonder if Lisa has any of Smith’s memoirs in her bedside stack. “Oh, yes,” she confirms. “It’s kind of wonderful to realize she didn’t have confidence, but she was in these incredible spaces,” Lisa muses. Though she insists the only similarities between herself and Patti Smith is grey hair, I think there’s a similar sensibility between the two artists. A lifelong photobooth lover, she was quite chuffed to read that no matter her financial situation during tours in the early years of her career and beyond, Patti Smith always kept enough change to operate a photobooth. “I’d do anything to take a portrait of her,” Lisa says and I send up a prayer that one day this might happen.
In the present, I’m interested in what this long-time exhibitor is looking forward to about her next Most Curious appearance. “I think it’s just actually being around people and creatives and meeting couples in person. For the last two years the couples I’ve predominantly met are people over Zoom. What I find it that there’s so much creativity and so much diversity in the people who attend [Most Curious]; not everything is there for everyone and I love that. You find your right people.” What might make Lisa Jane the right photographer for you? Well, if her own words haven’t already sold you, perhaps this project will: during lockdown, Lisa contacted some of her previous couples and asked them to select five of their favorite photos she captured during their wedding day and to share with her what makes those five their favorites. She wrote blog posts dedicated to each couple’s selection as she waited for the day she could do it all again.
“As a photographer…it’s interesting to see what’s really important to couples. It’s always the little moments—even things I didn’t know would have the significance that they do. I wanted to let them have their voice—the most important people are the people you’re photographing for. Sometimes your favorites are the pieces of the story—the glass, the abandoned shoes; there are snapshots of the change of emotion, or the beginning of the party. The human connections, the shaking hands holding a speech, the last moments before an aisle—I feel all of that and I hope my couples feel all of that,” she tells me.