I’ve been photographing people for more than forty years. For a lot of that time, my job was to walk into a room with someone the world thinks it already knows – a novelist, an artist, a public figure – and, in the half-second before they put their public face back on, find the real one.

Some of those portraits sit in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. Among the people I’ve photographed over the years are David Attenborough, Robbie Coltrane and Shane MacGowan – people who are very good, by then, at not being read. The whole craft is getting past the mask to the person.

That’s the same thing I do at a wedding. Different room, higher stakes, more joy – but the same eye, looking for the same thing. Your partner’s face when the words land. The friend who travelled a long way and can’t stop grinning. The parent watching from the side. I’m not there to interrupt your day and rebuild it for the camera. I’m there to see it clearly and keep it.

I work quietly. Most of the time you’ll forget I’m there, which is exactly the point – it’s how the photographs end up looking like your day instead of a photoshoot. When the pictures come back, the feeling people tend to describe is that’s exactly how it felt – which is the only review I really care about.

I take on only a few weddings a year. Partly because each one deserves the full attention, and partly because I’d rather do a small number properly than a large number on autopilot. If your day is one of them, it’ll have everything I know in it.