Richard Murgatroyd Photography: Why This Celebrated Photographer Says That Photography Isn't His Greatest Love, But The Thread That Ties Them All Together
Photography wasn’t Richard Murgatroyd’s first love, won’t be his last love and isn’t the most important part of his identity.
“Photography is the thing that threads all my loves together.”
Photography presented itself as an opportunity—it became the unifying force and thus Richard Murgatroyd Photography began. Richard has recently relocated to Brighton; a family man, Richard wanted his children—he and wife, Nikki, have twins!—to be raised in a diverse environment, full of culture, good food, beautiful seaside views and various personal attitudes and beliefs. It was also a bit of a homecoming as he was raised eight miles from his new home. “Is photography the first thing I would use to describe myself?” Richard asks. “I’m a father, a traveller, a music lover. Photography is a passion of mine that I’ve managed to make my job! It’s something I love doing that fits into what else I love doing—I love events, socializing, music, and photography allows me to do all of that.”
He loves music—music was the first love that he gave his all to—the kind of burning love that led to burn out in his Uni days while studying geography. The lesson, though costly, taught him a lot about striking the right balance in his life between admiration and devotion that has served him well as he photographs people around the world. Still, music plays on in his life! “I’ll listen to anything. I’m classically trained. I can play the sitar, I love gospel music; there’s probably not a genre I don’t like, but in every genre there’s a standard that brings joy,” he shares with me. I want to know if there’s any one song, or genre, that puts him in the right headspace to photograph a wedding. “On the lead-up to a wedding it’s up beat, but emotionally charged songs; not necessarily jumping up and down music, but something that awakens the extra 20%,” Richard says. “Music on the wedding day moves me massively—one of the things I did, which my wife still laughs at me for—I had a strict ‘no’ playlist for our band,” he shares. It’s the first of many anecdotes about his own wedding day that he shares; though married over a decade ago, Richard and his wife’s approach to their wedding was very contemporary—they focused on their wants and their needs, those elements of a wedding that brought them joy, and together with their nearest and dearest, spent a week enjoying their maritime celebration at a unique sea-cave venue in Devon that was great for bouncing sounds off the walls. Richard proudly “sounscaped” the entire event—from the moment the guests arrived on the Big Day to the very last dance, music underscored every step. “Music is such a communal thing; it’s not a passive experience.”
Their choice of photographer was equally important as live music and the sea. Having recently faced a terrible bereavement in the year leading up to their wedding day, Richard knew he wanted someone who would, in his own words, “really take care of [Nikki].” This is the kind of attitude Richard has brought to all of his clients since beginning Richard Murgatroyd Photography. Happy he and Nikki listened to their instincts when planning a celebration that was all about them and their loved ones, he does his best to encourage others to do the same. Richard feels his couples already sit just outside the boundaries of traditionalism and he does what he can to encourage them to be themselves. “It means so much to me—I want my couples to win,” he tells me, hopeful that they will all get invested in their day, rather than allowing norms to keep them from authentically enjoying their experience. Committing to someone and to family is an act of vulnerability—but he creates conditions under which people can let themselves go. “My approach philosophically is centering people back into the moment—through prep, through a first look, you need to be totally in that moment and if they’re in that moment [your photographer will] get great stuff—if you see it and feel it you’ll be able to see it and feel it in the photos.”
“Photographers need to remain present—you can’t hide at a wedding; wedding photographers aren’t wallflowers,” Richard says, recounting what it is to do his work. “I’m emotionally spent after a wedding—constantly, emotionally intentionally present. A lot observation is feeling—you can hear and sense what’s happening. You start to feel it and you move with it and you zero-in. All of your senses are firing,” he says, the triumphant crescendo of his words breaking. “Or at least mine do.”
“I say this to all my couples on being present: come the day, there’s an element of surrender. Everything you can do is now done and anything that’s not done doesn’t matter, or you have other people who will do it for you.”
With a degree in geography and an interest in in the global world we live in, Richard’s love of travel and of meeting people are two more threads that photography has tied together. “We’re all the same kind of spirit,” Richard shares of meeting people along his travels, especially those he has been given consent to photograph. “I love social commentary; it’s people in place and space and their interactions with environment,” he says. Retained by Dog’s Trust, given access to the Royal Family and also brought into a pediatric ward in Malawi to tell the stories of sick children, Richard finds a commonality in all of these situations, weddings included. They’re about people. “Regardless of the environment you think, who are these people? Why are they all here? How do I get the best out of them? How do you photograph with empathy and implied consent—an emotional contract so they know what I’m doing and why I’m here and [that] I’m going to represent them with respect? All people are as human as any others—regardless of celebrity status—they want to be photographed as more human and vulnerable.” Richard’s passion leaves us both smiling.
He says the next bit almost like a secret and maybe it is—not everyone has figured it out yet. “To be able to love you have to be a bit vulnerable—you have to put a bit of you at risk…to have a great wedding you are showing yourself—your vulnerability—you have to put a bit of you out there and show yourself. For me weddings was another way to travel,” he says. Each wedding is a destination for Richard, full of individuals he wants to capture at their most sincere emotions to tell their most authentic story. “We see people at their most vulnerable—physically, emotionally—the private conversations, the private moments between the couples. It’s the human element that I love—embracing the chaos and the elements and the weather.” His advice for all those about to be photographed on their wedding day: don’t carry so much tension in your jaw if you can help it! This isn’t a photoshoot, this is your wedding day. Celebrate the camera capturing your moments of authenticity, rather than striving to project what you think you ought to look or be like on the day.
“My advice to couples when they’re starting to plan their weddings—don’t burden it with expectations of what it should be. [You] should just close [y]our eyes and dream a little about what [you] want as a couple. If you wanna come down the aisle on a llama with a mariachi band, that’s fine!” I don’t get a moment to ask about this very specific combination—I will have to ask him at the Most Curious Wedding Fair, March 4th-6th whether or not he has attended a wedding where this happened, or if he dreams of it happening someday.
He’s excited to be back at Most Curious very soon. He values the work that continues to be put into the show, from the creative elements, to the diverse selection of services and suppliers available to match with clients and couples. And he really does love to play matchmaker! If you’re stuck, or stumped, go see Richard—he might be able to point you in the right direction. This wedding fair and community means a lot to him.
This year, Richard is grateful that Most Curious is aiding in his educational journey; I most recently saw him participate in an educational workshop hosted by one of our Most Curious Coalition members for the benefit of our suppliers ahead of the intentionally inclusive Most Curious ’22 show. I want to know what this well-traveled father of two and long-time champion of creative and personal weddings thinks of the movement towards intentional inclusivity in our society. “There’s two sides of it,” Richard begins, embracing the opportunity to discuss inclusivity from his position of self-aware privilege. “The first bit from my side is appreciating my own position; there is this enormous plurality of believes, backgrounds, desires and my beliefs on the wedding industry aren’t gospel—they’re a personal view—but that’s good. We should have a plurality—we aren’t that good at listening to different voices—even within more enlightened communities there can be tensions. I’m on an educational journey, personally. It’s beautiful and it’s empowering—my own thing is that people should have the day that’s theirs, but the bigger picture is that people should get to have their own identities in their lives.”
