There's still an art to great photography

It was a day our mother thought she’d never see.

He’d shown precious little sign of ever settling down before, and by the time he’d reached the age of 36 she’d pretty much given up hope.

But then he met the woman of his dreams.

It was all rather romantic really.

Her parents emigrated to Canada when she was in her early twenties but she decided she wanted to stay in the UK.

Over the years they’d tried to persuade her to join them, but she had her own life in Cornwall. Then, after 17 years, she finally decided it was time for her to go.

She broke the news to her delighted family, handed in her notice at work, and booked her ticket.

Then she met my brother. It was very poor timing. They had a few months together, and off she went.

This was the point at which he surprised us all by dropping everything and racing after her. He flew to Nova Scotia, got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. Thankfully, she said yes.

Not that many years ago, when you got married you had a wedding photographer and that was it.

Now half the guests will be holding a camera of some sort, and they’ll all be checking the little screen to make sure they’ve got the shot they wanted.

Even our older relatives were at it on Saturday. Uncle Andrew was glued to his video camera throughout.

Despite having just turned 70, he has enthusiastically embraced digital technology and spends many a happy hour fiddling around with images on his computer.

Mum’s friends Jeannette and Christopher are much the same age. Yet they too were outside with the camera as we arrived at the church.

The only difference between them and our generation is probably what they do with the shots.

While Andrew and Chris were picking out the perfect images to be emailed to mum at some point so she can print something out for the mantelpiece, friends and cousins had their shots on Facebook within hours.

You wonder if the poor wedding photographers feel slightly usurped.

But this one hadn’t missed a trick.

His pictures were on Facebook just as quickly as anyone else’s. Only they were better.

Photos may be very easy to take and share with the world today, but there’s still an art to taking a shot that people really want to look at.

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