Wedding Photography: “Intimate Moments” with Anesta Broad

Award-winning photographer shares insights into capturing intimate moments at weddings

April 4, 2020

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Anesta Broad

Anesta Broad is an award-winning British photographer and entrepreneur with proud Caribbean connections – her parents are from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. As Creative Editor at ACU|BIEN, Anesta shares personal insight into her creative style, which has made her a sought-after wedding photographer. Anesta writes about shooting intimate wedding moments. Her mantra as a photographer is “Moments Over Mountains“.

Shooting “Intimate Moments” is capturing emotions

I adore the intimate moments when I am shooting a wedding; the in-between gestures and connections between friends and families that conjure vivid emotions.

It’s been a hectic year and it’s the eve of preparing Anesta Broad Photography for the Nu Bride The Wedding Show in London. In between editing photos and preparing wedding albums for clients, I wanted to share my take on shooting intimate wedding moments. Nu Bride is a multi-award-winning wedding blog founded by Nova Reid that brings diversity to the UK wedding industry. The Nu Bride Wedding Show offers fresh ideas and solutions to couples from diverse cultures who are eager to plan their special day in a contemporary style that reflects their personal stories and backgrounds. The UK wedding industry continues to cater predominantly to traditional notions of family. The Nu Bride ethos is a beautiful sync with my creative mantra of capturing “moments over mountains”.

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Memories and Moments sparkle into life

A wedding is a benchmark on a healthy relationship spectrum. You and your partner have gone through many stages of growth: from mutual curiosity; friendship; flirty friends; it’s complicated or becoming an item; until finally answering Beyoncé’s alluring invitation to put a ring on it.

The pathway to wedding day bliss is a procession of friends, families, colleagues, and the odd stranger offering pearls of wisdom and titbits of experience. Everyone has the secret to what makes for a happy, healthy relationship. Insensitive or useless advice from that unwelcome advisor is unavoidable. Partners, besties, families, and maybe even the kids have endured your bouts of doubt, uncertainty, and frustrations. Tears have been wiped and shared joys, laughter, challenges, and successes are landmarks along the hilly road to destination “wedding nirvana”.

For me, the wedding day is truly a unique moment when the personal stories, inside jokes, and your guests’ collective memories, burst into life creating multiple micro-moments of magic, shine, and sparkle. Choosing the right wedding photographer is key to capturing these pure and honest intimate moments for all prosperity.

Photographs are our most precious heirloom

When the cake is eaten, gifts are opened, and the wedding attire is packed away, it will be your wedding photographs that remain. The beautifully bound wedding album represents a key part of your journey. Your life stories. Your priceless memories.

For many, the high point and climactic intimate moment is the exchange of vows. You are nervously anticipating stifled giggles when you declare to unsuspecting well-wishers that LSD is the acronym of your middle names: Lorna, Sylvia, Dorothy. Your mom had a great sense of humour and did too much swinging in the 60s. That intimate moment for others may be waiting to shout “timber” as the groom sway to and fro on the verge of fainting from the stifling heat of the registry or church. For some, it is The Kiss; The Rings; or just the inability to hold back the floodgate of tears that gush from knowing what it took to reach that moment of hope, dreams, and utter happiness.

Words alone cannot express…

Couples tell me time and time again how much they value the photographs taken unawares. It is often with the question, “when did this happen?” This is humbling and motivating. I love to capture those intimate moments of a father or mother with a son or daughter that speaks of an infinite bond that cannot be expressed in words alone.

My approach to shooting moments of tenderness and affection is different from when I am throwing shapes on the dance floor to capture those dance floor moments. Intimacy requires discretion to observe and to be unobtrusive. The reality-type documenting of weddings that I shoot is on the increase, particularly, among modern, diverse families. This is why Anesta Broad Photography has become a sought-after creative style and why I frequently collaborate with other photographers to bring this element of magic to a wedding day.

Becoming a visual storyteller

Realising I had a creative eye came with highlights. The signs were there as a child. Drawing, sketching, and intricately colouring for hours. Fashioning clothes or crafts out of leftover fabrics my dad has stored. He was a master tailor. Choosing the study for my degree at the London College of Fashion was driven by a burning desire to explore creative opportunities in business. I worked really hard to realise this dream at one of the best fashion and creative institutions in the world.

Roles that required attention to detail, empathy, and calm reasoning seemed to be a regular motif throughout my career, first in fashion, then in the non-profit sector. I would be sitting across the boardroom table and shoulder to shoulder with business, education, or political influencers one day; then standing before a classroom of unpredictable teenagers on another. I certainly learned fast and in abundance how to work with people from diverse walks of life and the importance of truly listening with both ears.

These skills have served me well in the world of photography, especially within the wedding industry and in my journey into motherhood.