Any Given Saturday - Woodgate Photography

To kick off the new year I thought I would put together a series of blogs showing some of my favourite photos I captured in 2017. Today’s blog is going to be very different from the rest of the ‘best of’ series. In the past I have done Wedding couples, wedding parties and wedding moments. Instead of the wedding moments best of blog this year I have done something very different. This blog has been 10 years in the making.

A bit of backstory, in my second year of university for my fine art degree I bought my first DSLR camera. It was 2007 and I was in a documentary photography course, while at Uni full time and working 3 jobs to help save up to go on exchange (which is what first brought me to Canada). I would often be the designated driver because of the jobs and because the bars that we went to were around 20-30 min drive away from where I lived (in Australia). Inspired by documentary photographers such as Nan Goldin I decided to photograph my world at the time. I took my DSLR to the bar for most of 2007 and what came together was a series I named ‘Any given friday’. I even had an exhibition of the photographs at the university gallery. I remember saying to my friends at the time that it would be cool to look back on the photos in 10 years time to see how we’ve changed.

Fast forward to 2017 and I did think about this series at the beginning of the year and actually thought it would be fun to go to a bar here in Canada and see if things have changed much and see if I could get some matching images for shots I had taken back then. The thing about bar nights is generally they are on fridays (the night before weddings when I need to rest up) and Saturdays (the night of weddings when I am pooped after photographing them. I was also held back by that I would now be one of the old ones at a bar and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t let you take pro gear into a bar unless you were the official photographer these days. So the year came and went and I didn’t attempt it. It came to the very end of the year and I thought about it again and as I was going to be looking through all the weddings from the past year to get the best pics for the ‘Best of’ blogs I decided to take a look at the reception photographs to see if there were any match ups- there were. I also thought the name was perfect. Any given Saturday- you’ll find me at a wedding photographing receptions like this. Any Given Saturday a sequel to Any Given Friday- 10 years on and how my weekends are spent.