The Coast. The City. Your People. The Rest Can Happen Naturally.
Relaxed, natural wedding photography for couples who want photographs full of life without spending half the wedding day making them.
Waterford gives us two completely different worlds to play with. You've got Waterford City, old streets and historic surroundings on one side, then the coast opens up through Tramore, Dunmore East, the Copper Coast and Dungarvan on the other.
Throw in country houses, hotels, gardens and the Comeragh landscape and there's no shortage of places capable of looking incredible in a photograph.
But that's not really the difficult part.
The difficult part is making photographs that still feel like your wedding rather than a collection of nice Waterford backgrounds with the two of you standing in front of them.
I'm far more interested in what happens between the big moments. Your friends losing the run of themselves. Your parents trying not to cry. Somebody roaring laughing at exactly the wrong time. The people you chose to have around you.
I'll give you direction when we need it. Then I'll get out of the way and let your wedding give us the rest.
We can use the coast when the coast earns the trip. We can use the city, your venue, the gardens or whatever brilliant light appears on the day. But I'm not interested in dragging you around Waterford collecting locations while your wedding carries on somewhere else.
Based in Cork and photographing weddings throughout County Waterford and across Ireland.
The best way to understand what it's like having me photograph your wedding is to hear it from the couples themselves. These are genuine Google reviews from weddings across Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Clare and beyond.
James made us feel completely at ease from the very beginning. Everyone from the wedding was talking about him afterwards. Professional, relaxed and brilliant to have around all day. He is exactly the photographer you want beside you on your wedding day.
James blended in effortlessly, brought the craic and made everyone feel relaxed. Every laugh, embrace and tear was captured naturally. The sneak peeks arrived the next morning and our gallery was delivered incredibly quickly. We'd recommend James in a heartbeat.
We are normally nervous in front of cameras but James made us feel so relaxed that we forgot the camera was even there. The photographs are incredible and we couldn't recommend him highly enough.
James captured every emotion of our wedding day with honesty and heart. The album is stunning and the photographs tell our story beautifully. His work is real, natural and unforgettable.
From the moment James walked in everyone was laughing. Nothing felt posed and every smile was genuine. The surprise video and beautiful photographs were more than we ever expected.
James felt like another friend in the room. He kept everyone relaxed, captured beautiful candid moments and delivered sneak peeks within hours. Our guests are still talking about him.
Whether there are two of you or forty of you, the size of the guest list has very little to do with how good the photographs can be.
A smaller wedding changes the rhythm of the day. There are fewer moving parts, fewer people to organise and usually a lot more time to actually talk to the people you've invited.
Waterford gives you plenty of ways to do that. A city celebration, a coastal hotel, a country setting or something much smaller with only the people you genuinely couldn't imagine the day without.
Photographically, smaller weddings can be brilliant. I get to know everybody quickly. The same faces keep appearing throughout the story. The relationships become obvious.
Small wedding doesn't mean small story.
If you're planning something with just the two of you, or a handful of people, Waterford gives you a ridiculous amount of variety without needing to turn the day into an expedition.
The Copper Coast brings cliffs, coves, beaches and Atlantic weather. Dunmore East gives you a completely different coastal atmosphere. Around Dungarvan, the coast and countryside start colliding in all sorts of useful ways.
And if the mountains suit the plans better than the sea, the Comeragh landscape gives us another completely different version of Waterford.
None of that means you need to become models standing dramatically on a cliff. The landscape should be part of your story, not the entire story.
Give me the people who know you properly, a wedding that feels like yours and enough freedom to watch what happens. Waterford can take care of the backdrop.
Wedding Photography Collections
Weddings don’t all run to the same timetable, and I don’t think photography should feel like it does either. These collections simply give you a starting point, from a smaller celebration to the full story of the day. Whichever you choose, I’ll photograph it in the same relaxed, natural way.
Small celebrations
600
Small, simple and meaningful.
For elopements, civil ceremonies and smaller weddings where you don’t need a full day of photography, but still want the important people, moments and atmosphere remembered properly.
Part-day coverage
850
The heart of the day.
For couples who want the excitement beforehand, the ceremony and everything that happens afterwards, without needing photography into the evening.
Most Popular
Full-day coverage
1,450
The complete wedding story.
From the nerves and excitement in the morning to the dance floor that night. This is for couples who want the whole day remembered naturally, without turning the wedding into a photoshoot.
Full day + heirloom album
1,950
Your wedding story, made to be held.
Everything you need from the wedding day, finished with a proper handcrafted album. Not something that lives on a screen, but something you can sit down with, pick up and keep.
The complete album collection
2,550
One story. More than one home.
The complete wedding-day collection with your own handcrafted album and additional parent albums, so the story of the day isn’t kept in just one home.
The album I keep coming back to
Forever and Eternity include a handcrafted 30 × 30cm / 12 × 12" wedding album, designed around up to 80 photographs from your day. You’ll have a choice of finishes, but if you ask me which one I’d choose, I’ll nearly always point you towards the Acrylic Prestige.
The crystal-clear acrylic cover gives the photograph real depth and the lay-flat design lets the story flow beautifully across the page. It feels substantial without being fussy, and it’s exactly the kind of album I want my couples to still be taking down from the shelf years from now.
No long wait afterwards
I aim to share a small selection of sneak peeks as soon as I can after your wedding. If I’m not photographing another wedding the following day, that can often mean the very next day. Your complete gallery is delivered within 4–6 weeks, although, as many of my reviews mention, it’s often considerably sooner.
Your photographs are yours to keep
Your private online gallery makes it easy to view, share and download your photographs in high resolution. Intimate and Moments galleries remain online for 3 months, while Memories, Forever and Eternity galleries remain online for 6 months. You can download as often as you like while your gallery is live. Once it arrives, I always recommend downloading the complete collection and keeping at least one extra backup somewhere safe, as the online gallery isn’t intended as permanent cloud storage.
Make it yours
Start with the collection that suits your day, then add only the things that genuinely matter to you. There’s no need to squeeze your wedding into a package just because that’s how the price list was written.
Talk to Me About Your PlansWhether you're planning a massive session in Cork, an elopement in Kerry, or a celebration somewhere further down the road, tell me everything. Share the details, the venue, the general plans, and exactly how camera-allergic you both are.
A country house setting near Waterford City, with the kind of grounds and interiors that can give us plenty of options without automatically disappearing from your wedding for hours.
Faithlegg brings together the things that are genuinely useful for wedding photography: character, space, gardens and strong indoor options.
That matters because the best wedding photography plan isn't always the one with the longest list of locations.
If your venue already gives us somewhere beautiful for portraits, somewhere practical for family photographs and good options when the weather changes, there is very little sense in packing the two of you into a car and disappearing across Waterford.
We can make the photographs that need a little direction, use the surroundings when they're adding something, and then get you back to the people you invited.
Classic architecture gives the wedding a sense of place before we've taken a single portrait.
Outdoor space gives us options for couple portraits and family photographs without making the day a road trip.
Useful indoor surroundings matter in Ireland because the weather has absolutely no interest in your photography schedule.
The venue sets the scene. The reactions, laughter and people inside it are still what make the photographs yours.
A venue like Faithlegg should make the photography easier, not give us an excuse to keep you away from your guests. We'll use what works, move quickly when direction is needed and leave plenty of room for the unplanned photographs happening everywhere else.
The venue can make a photograph beautiful. The people in it are what make you care about it.
That's the balance I'm looking for at a Waterford wedding: enough direction to make something brilliant, enough freedom for the wedding to remain a wedding.
An island castle, extraordinary gardens or a hotel overlooking the sea. Waterford doesn't exactly force you into one kind of wedding.
Waterford Castle immediately gives a wedding something unusual: you have to take a ferry to get there.
The castle sits on its own private island on the River Suir, giving the celebration a sense of separation from everything happening back on the mainland.
From a photography point of view, the attraction isn't simply the castle itself. You've got the journey onto the island, historic architecture, open grounds and woodland all within the same setting.
That variety can be incredibly useful because we don't need five different locations to create photographs that feel completely different from one another.
Mount Congreve offers a completely different Waterford backdrop, with the emphasis firmly on gardens, woodland and the changing seasons.
For couples drawn to outdoor surroundings, it gives us layers of foliage, pathways, mature planting and quieter corners rather than one obvious place where every photograph has to happen.
That's particularly useful for relaxed portraits. We can walk, talk, find good light and make photographs along the way rather than planting the two of you in one spot and working through a list of poses.
And because gardens change through the year, the setting has its own personality depending on when you're getting married.
The Haven gives you another version of Waterford entirely. You're in Dunmore East, with the coast, harbour and village all contributing to the atmosphere.
A coastal wedding doesn't mean we need to spend the afternoon marching around looking for increasingly dramatic cliffs. Sometimes the sea simply needs to be there.
The venue and its surroundings give us options, and Dunmore East itself adds another layer if the timing, weather and wedding schedule make going beyond the hotel worthwhile.
If the weather turns, we adapt. If the evening light suddenly becomes ridiculous, that's when it may be worth stealing you for another five minutes.
Choose somewhere that works for the wedding you actually want. The number of guests, the atmosphere, where everybody can stay, how much travelling is involved and whether you can imagine spending the whole day there matter far more than one perfect spot for a portrait.
Give me a great venue and I'll use it. Give me great people and I'll barely know where to look first.
Waterford Castle, Mount Congreve, The Haven or somewhere completely different. The venue sets the scene. Your wedding is what fills the photographs.Prices, portraits, rain, small weddings, photographs and whether you'll actually get to spend your wedding day with your guests.
Yes. I photograph weddings throughout Waterford, including Waterford City, Dungarvan, Dunmore East, Tramore, Ardmore, Lismore, the Copper Coast and the surrounding towns and countryside. I'm based in Cork and my wedding collections include travel throughout Munster.
My wedding photography currently starts at €600 for intimate weddings, with my main full-day Memories collection at €1,450. There are also larger collections including a full wedding album and parent albums. You can see the current options on my wedding photography packages page.
Waterford has a brilliant mix rather than one particular type of venue. Faithlegg House, Waterford Castle, Mount Congreve Gardens and The Haven in Dunmore East all offer very different settings. The best venue isn't automatically the grandest one. It's the one that suits the number of people you're inviting and the kind of wedding you actually want to have.
Absolutely. Small weddings can be some of the best days to photograph because everybody knows everybody and there's usually less ceremony around what a wedding is supposed to look like. Whether it's an intimate celebration or an elopement with only a handful of people, the photography can be built around the wedding you're actually planning.
No. Most couples tell me some version of this before their wedding. You're not expected to arrive knowing where to stand, what to do with your hands or how to magically become professional models.
I'll give you enough direction to get things moving when we need a portrait. After that, I'd much rather the two of you talk, laugh and behave like yourselves. I'm not trying to make you good at posing. I'm trying to make posing largely irrelevant.
I prefer short, focused portrait sessions rather than disappearing with you for a huge chunk of the day. We'll make the photographs that are worth making and get you back to your people.
If beautiful evening light appears later, I may steal you again for a few minutes. But the principle stays the same: you get brilliant photographs and you also get to be at your own wedding.
We change the plan. That's about it. Irish weddings and unpredictable weather have been acquainted for quite some time.
We can use windows, doorways, interiors and covered areas, watch for breaks in the weather and move quickly when one appears. Sometimes the weather actually gives us better atmosphere than a perfectly clear day. Rain changes the photographs. It doesn't end them.
My main full-day collections include 500+ individually edited photographs. Shorter and intimate weddings naturally vary depending on the coverage and what happens during the day.
I'm more interested in giving you a complete story than stopping because we've reached an arbitrary number.
I send sneak peeks very quickly, often the next day when I don't have another wedding immediately afterwards. Your complete wedding gallery is delivered within 4–6 weeks, and often considerably sooner.
I know what it's like waiting to see photographs you're dying to see. I'm not particularly interested in keeping you in suspense until Christmas.
Popular Fridays and Saturdays can book well ahead, particularly during the busier part of wedding season. But dates move, plans change and gaps appear, so don't assume it's too late.
Send me your date. The worst I can tell you is that somebody got there first.
The island, the castle, the coast, the mountains and the venue can make the setting incredible. But none of them will be the reason you keep going back to your photographs.
It'll be your father's face when he sees you. Your mother laughing at something she probably shouldn't. Your friends becoming increasingly unreliable as the evening goes on.
It'll be the people who travelled to be there. The ones you haven't seen in years. The ones who know exactly how to make you laugh. And the moments happening while everybody thinks nothing particularly important is going on.
I'll make the portraits when we need them. I'll organise the family photographs without turning the afternoon into a military operation.
Then I'll step back and watch your wedding happen.
You enjoy the wedding. I'll photograph the hell out of it.
