Photo Adventures 2015 by This Modern Love

2015. Wow! We've had babies, we've started businesses, but building a house - as well as keeping the aforementioned babies and business happy and healthy - turned out to be quite a roller-coaster...

But now we're here, at home, and we've have had some much needed time out to reflect on the year that was.

And it was actually pretty wonderful! 37 amazing weddings, some fashion, some portraits - adventures the length of breadth of Ireland, exploring remote corners of France, shooting in Ibizan salt flats, keeping airbnb in the black ;) 

But as much as we loved the travel, it was the people we worked with in 2015 that made it so great. You are a kind-hearted, creative lot - and you really know how to put on a good wedding! It's felt at times like an extended road-trip with friends. A crazy, mud tramping, light chasing, pint drinking photographic adventure...

A few accolades also came our way this year, which made us pause and be thankful. Being named as one of Rangefinder Magazine's 30 Rising Stars of Wedding Photography 2015 was a staggering highlight. And having a photo selected for Junebug's Best of the Best Wedding Photography 2015 provided another holy grail type moment. But really we can only take part of the credit. Our couples and the places we found did a lot of the heavy lifting here...

As always, our wedding industry friends have infused our year with their life-saving and fun-making powers. Photographer comrades, we don't tell you often enough how much we love you.

These are some of our favourite images from the year - a lot of weddings, some fashion and some personal stuff... It couldn't begin to be representative of our year. But these are the images we find ourselves drawn to...

Cormac & Richard make history! by This Modern Love

Cormac & Richard make history!

When we shot Cormac and Richard's day in September, we didn't know that it would turn out to Ireland's first legally enshrined same-sex marriage. Nor did they!

But we did know that we had just taken part in something extraordinary. Not because of what the law said, or didn't say. But because of the unequivocal love between Cormac and Richard, and the palpable joy of their families and friends. Their wedding was a glorious, heartfelt celebration. With top hats and canes. As you do :)

Cormac called me yesterday to tell me they had an appointment with the registrar this morning at 8.30am, to convert their civil partnership into a marriage. The first same sex marriage in Ireland!

We couldn't be more thrilled for the guys, and all their friends and family. Couldn't think of finer people to make the history books!

More on the story: Irish Times / Pink News

Lauren & Garrett - Wedding on the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland by This Modern Love

Lauren & Garrett's Wedding on the Cliffs of Moher and The Burren, County Clare.

We will be eternally grateful to Buzzfeed, whose interview with us was spotted by two amazing human beings, Lauren & Garrett, at home in Oklahoma.

And then somehow they're here, in Ireland, getting married. On the Cliffs of Moher in Co. Clare. And I'm there shooting it with them. And I'm moved by this day in ways that I'm barely able to articulate. What it meant to them, and their families and friends... And what it came to mean to me, to be a very small part of their story. I'll have to leave it to the photos to do the talking this time...

There was also the small matter of the car accident with Lauren on board. And the bit where I enthusiastically grabbed an electric fence to prove it was safe - which it wasn't - and vibrated for the rest of the day.

But it's not these small dramas that I'll remember Lauren and Garrett's wedding for. It's the good kind people that they are that's left a mark, and the grit and the love that has brought them together.