Ian ‘Wilko’ Wilkinson, a Brisbane wedding photographer,  has been a friend, colleague and mentor to me now for many years. I first met Wilko when I was working for a creative software company and it was he who first dragged me along to shoot a wedding. The idea of choosing photography as a career had never even crossed my mind until that day. From memory, the shoot was about a 90 minute drive from Brisbane and I think he may have invited me along just so he had come company for the drive. The results however, I think, surprised us both. I absolutely loved every moment of the day and Wilko told me I was the best assistant he had ever had. For all I knew, he may well say this to everyone who ever assists him, however it was enough for the cogs in my mind to start turning and working a path to truly turning this into a career… and loving every minute!

It has been a number of years since I have assisted Wilko on a wedding, so when he said he was shooting at Mavis’s Kitchen, practically in my backyard, I jumped at the opportunity to tag along.

Kylie is also a photographer, so it was no surprise that she chose Ian Wilkinson to capture every aspect of the day. Ian and I were capturing the entire day digitally. Ted Hagemeijer from ‘In The Booth’ was working hard entertaining the guests with his photobooth. And as a special treat, Wilko organised Alex Kennison to capture tintypes using old-school, wet plate collodion techniques that date back to the 1850’s. We are pretty sure this is the first wedding to combine the modern digital capture with techniques from the 1800’s. Alex had converted his Tarago into a mobile darkroom so that he could prepare the plates and process them as soon as each image was captured. It was a real treat to watch and a great crowd-pleaser!

Kylie and Andrew, I hope you had an amazing day… you certainly won’t have any shortage of imagery to remember it by.

RW