One of my childhood joys was being allowed in to my father’s dark room

pstairs, in the house I grew up in, there was a dark room at the end of the landing. The curtains were kept drawn at all times, the door closed, often locked. Downstairs, in the dining room, there were occasions when a guillotine graced the table.

These were the trappings of my father’s cherished trade. Because for a lot of his working life, up into the 1970s, my father was a wedding photographer who ran his business from home. There was a large cardboard sign fixed to the inside of the dimpled glass of our hall door with his name and profession. In the days before Instagram and the internet, he had to rely on word-of-mouth for his business and this was his publicity.

The dark room was full of magic. My father often locked himself in to ensure no one opened the door by accident, because a flood of light at the wrong moment could ruin the developing film. His work table was laden with equipment and supplies, hypo and developer, and overhung with lines strung with pegged-up negatives. One of my childhood joys was being allowed in to stand and watch in the dim red safelight, as with reverent care and attention, my father slid blank white sheets into a bath of chemicals and brought them alive with black and white images of the bride and groom and the story of their wedding day. In those days, this would be the first glimpse of a couple’s wedding photos, often their only photos.

With 24 exposures on a typical roll of film, and no preview available, my father had to be mindful of factors such as composition and light, shutter speeds and depth of field before he pressed the button, never mind ensuring no one had their eyes closed. There were few second chances.

Soon after the wedding, my father would produce 30 or so proofs, prints that were 6in x 4in in size. Stamping the legend ‘proof only’ on a blank strip across the bottom and his contact details on the back was another childhood joy.

The couple then chose a selection for their wedding album, whereupon my father would produce full-size prints, and guillotine the edges of these to make sure they fitted perfectly into the leaves of the album, before using a product called Cow Gum to glue them into place. He would then thread the leaves, each protected by a translucent inlay page, between the tassled string of the album, tying it off with a flourish. It was a momentous occasion.

How different it all is these days.

The first big change occurred when analogue photography made way for digital, and photos could be produced without the costs associated with film reel. However various economic pressures, including a family of now teenagers, combined to cause my father to give up his dream business and opt for a secure and pensionable job. The dark room was dismantled, the equipment disposed of. He kept his most beloved cameras – a Zeiss Ikon and a Mamiya – which passed on to my brothers when he quietly departed this world some 30 years ago.

How I’d love to talk to him about wedding photography nowadays, when far from his mindful composition, the magic of his dark room, his meticulously produced proofs, hundreds of images can be captured indiscriminately by guests in no time at all. Indeed, the bride and groom can hardly exchange vows or march up the aisle without being surrounded by a forest of iPads or iPhones. In these days of instant gratification, wedding parties can see photos of the special day immediately and launch the best of a carefully curated selection on Instagram.

Videographers record every moment and drones are harnessed to produce panoramic images that would never have been envisioned, all of which can be edited to glossy perfection. But in spite of all this, I’d like to tell him that the wedding photographer is still very much in demand. An experienced professional with a trained eye for the perfect shot, they will work with the couple to provide stress-free photography and capture the moments that count.

But mostly I’d love to sit and talk to my father about what it took to give up his cherished business, and how he coped and really felt deep down inside when everything was dismantled.

I was an angst-ridded, self-absorbed teenager at that time, too immature to appreciate the courage and resilience it must have taken to initiate such a big change after a lifetime of photography.

But I kept some of his trappings to this day. After he was finished with his yearly appointment diaries, my father passed them on to me. Among the arrangements for his various bookings, including the names of the happy couple, the time of the wedding, the church and reception hotel details, wherever there was free space available, I filled it with childhood stories and scribblings, and there, still, our dreams sit side by side.