St Chads Church
As the shadows dance and flicker in time to the warm rays of a dawn sun refracted through the dappled glass of St Chads Church in Shrewsbury, all kinds of people come to pay their respects to a much-loved man who did so much for his community and built a funeral business where sensitivity, care and consideration are at the core of its foundation.
Vicars, Vergers, candle bearers, gently gather to support and accompany Funeral Director and daughter, Leanne, as she guides the funeral procession into St Chads for the service of Aubrey Kirkham.
Aubrey’s daughter Selina invited me to come along to sensitively capture the service so they can show other families the care and compassion provided by Aubrey Kirkham Funeral Directors.
I double check with Selina what was required and how best to capture the sensitivity of the service without being too in-depth. I pointed out that this could be a challenge bearing in mind the emotions that the family would be going through on the day and it may get caught on camera, Selina replied that the family trusted my judgement and was sure I would carry this out with the family in mind and knew I would do my best to provide something that Aubrey and the family would be proud of.
No easy task considering how personal this was for the Kirkham family along with a packed-out church and all eyes on the service, no room for error and a keen eye was required to reflect a professional funeral service that was going to be a difficult time for the family
To record and capture moments that you hope will fit in with the family request and the Aubrey Kirkham business as a whole and for any possible similar assignments in an area that is so sensitive and new to the normal photography assignments, the best approach was to become invisible and very aware of your surroundings with regard to emotions and learn along the way. A good deal of time would be in looking back on this service to see what works for funeral service photography both for families and the photographer.
I arrived at St Chads early and met up with Brian, one of the candle bearers, incredibly helpful, who ensured I had a parking place. With the help of Brian, I found a great spot to place a video camera, top of the stairs will be fine said Brian, I doubt we will need to open that up, downstairs seats 500 people. There’s plenty of room around the camera if you do I reply and I can secure it in place if required.
As more and more people arrive, I manage to have a quick chat with Rev. Sam, I met Sam on a previous service I had live streamed for a family, Sam said, whatever you need to do or where ever you need to go is fine with him – those words were such a relief, as I really wanted to position myself at the altar facing towards the entrance. When I arrived earlier, I looked at this position and it looked amazing with the full circle seating in front revealing the beauty of St Chads as well as the procession moving towards me.
I keep an eye on proceeding; my video camera captures the bottom of the stairs where Ann and Selina were doing most of the greetings.
We come to a point where people are still arriving and they’ve opened the upper circle, Ann has joined her family, so I start recording. I bump into Brian again, goodness me he says, I’ve never seen so many people!
As the procession gathers at the entrance, I know it’s now time to become absorbed into this 35mm DSLR where my world is viewed with one eye looking through the lens and the other gathering information from around me. I take a couple of doorway shots then move towards the altar.
I arrive at the altar, turn round and have in full view, hundreds of faces all looking at the photographer knowing this was a sign that the procession was about to arrive, similar to a wedding, when you see the photographer, the bride is on her way away.
Looking around, I am blown away by how many people are there, as the procession gets close to the altar, I step away, luckily, it’s wide enough for me to move out of sight, the candle bearers move to their seats and I follow and go round the outer circle, back to the entrance for a final shot.
There is not much more I can do here; all seats are taken and anything else would be obvious and possibly intrusive, so I gather my video camera and make my way to the crematorium where the family will say their final farewell to Aubury.
I only met Aubrey once, that was at a service in St Chads just before Christmas while I was live streaming. He came up to me to say hello and shook my hand and thanked me for all the work I had been doing for them. That would have been my 3rd job for Aubrey Kirkham and he was very pleased.
I wish I had got to know him better…..
