one photographer, 12 weddings a year · 2026 and 2027 dates open Ancoats · an hour of Manchester

Thirty-Six Frames Ancoats, Manchester
A wedding dress hanging in a sunlit window.
21
Shoes, perfume and a tiara set out on a dresser.
21A
Shoes and an invitation on a dark nightstand.
22
A veil and a pair of shoes hanging outdoors.
22A
A ring being put onto a finger during the ceremony.
23
Two hands resting together, both wearing rings.
23A
Two bands held in an open palm.
24
Shoes and the hem of a dress beside a car door.
24A
Two pairs of hands raised and joined above the dance floor.
25
Hands resting on a bouquet.
25A
Hands and rings above a bouquet of yellow roses.
26
Two open palms with rings resting in them.
26A

The whole roll,
not just
the good bit.

Wedding and family photography in Ancoats. This is a contact sheet — every frame from a run, including the one with a cross through it. Nobody in this trade shows you those, which is precisely why I do.

Frame —  Frame 23A is the selected frame on this sheet; frame 22 is crossed out because it did not work. Every price, image count and delivery date on this page is published below.

A whole wedding day
£1,450
Edited images
450–600, counted
With you in
21 days
Weddings a year
12, and no more
Telephone
0161 496 0184

Off the sheet

Three selects, printed

The sheet is what the camera saw. These are what lands in your gallery — same frames, worked properly. What you are looking for in a photographer is not the best frame they ever took; it is what the ordinary ones look like.

A wedding dress hanging in the light of a tall window. FRAME 21
The hour before anything happens I arrive two hours early and shoot the room while it is still quiet. It costs you nothing and it is where half the gallery comes from.
Two hands resting together after the ceremony, both wearing rings. FRAME 23A
Available light, always No flash during a ceremony, ever — not because it is a style but because most churches and registrars forbid it and I would rather own a fast lens than an argument.
Shoes and a printed invitation arranged on a dark nightstand. FRAME 22
The one with a cross through it This is the frame with a cross through it on the contact sheet at the top of the page. It is a perfectly good photograph and it is not in the gallery, because you paid for the edit, not the archive.

A whole day

Where I am, hour by hour

The day as one roll of thirty-six. Set your own ceremony time and the whole day moves along the roll — including the two places it stops fitting, which is the part of this conversation everyone has by email in March. We write the real one out together about a month before.

Set your ceremony

The roll is the day you have bought: ten and a half hours, 10:30 to 21:00, eighteen minutes a frame. Move the ceremony and the whole day moves along it.

At eleven o’clock I am at the house by 08:30, two hours before the roll starts, and the last seven frames go unused. That is two extra hours at £150 each — said here rather than on the invoice.

Everything lands on the roll with nothing left over. One o’clock is the common time because it is the one that fits ten and a half hours without buying any more of them.

The speeches at 22:30 and the first dance at 23:30 fall off the end of the roll, and the first ten frames go unused. A four o’clock ceremony is not this day shifted — it is a later day, and I would quote it as one rather than let you find out at nine.

  1. 10:30prep1
  2. 2
  3. 11:00ceremony3
  4. 4
  5. 11:45confetti5
  6. 6
  7. 12:15leave first7
  8. 8
  9. 13:00the two of you9
  10. 13:00ceremony10
  11. 13:30prep11
  12. 13:45confetti12
  13. 14:00the room13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 15:00the two of you16
  17. 15:15leave first17
  18. 18
  19. 16:00ceremony19
  20. 16:00the room20
  21. 16:45confetti21
  22. crossed out — nothing in it to save22
  23. 23
  24. 17:30speeches24
  25. 25
  26. 18:00the two of you26
  27. 27
  28. 18:30first dance28
  29. 19:00last frame19:00the room29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 19:30speeches32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 20:30first dance35
  36. 21:00last frame36

There is a cross through one frame late in the afternoon. The shutter fired between two expressions and there is nothing in it to save. Every roll has one. This is the only photographer’s website I know of that shows you where it is.

On site
ten and a half hours
Ceremony
no flash, wherever the registrar says
Group shots
eight at most, from your written list
Just the two of you
twenty minutes, not ninety
Frames shot
about 520 · 450–600 edited
With you in
21 days

The whole list

Prices, on the page

Not one of the five best photographers’ sites I can find anywhere publishes a price. If you have to send an email to find out whether someone is in your budget, that is a technique, and you can see straight through it once you know it is one.

The three shapes of it

The whole day is the roll above, printed end to end. The other two are the same film cut shorter. One frame is eighteen minutes in all three, so the lengths are the offer — there is nothing to work out from a brochure.

W1 The whole day thirty-six frames · 10:30 to 21:00 · 450–600 edited £1,450
W2 Ceremony and the two hours after eleven frames · three hours · 180–260 edited £690
F1 An hour, wherever you actually are five frames · an hour, and the clock does not start until we have said hello £220

Weddings

W1 The whole day 10:30 to half an hour into the dancing, as set out above. 450–600 edited images 21 days£1,450
W2 Ceremony and the two hours after for a register office or a small do. 180–260 edited images 14 days£690
W3 A second photographer someone I have worked with for years, not an agency stranger. Worth it if you are over 90 guests or getting ready in two places —£340
W4 Each extra hour on the day decided on the day if you want it, settled afterwards. Never sold in advance —£150

Families and portraits

F1 An hour, wherever you actually are your house, Heaton Park, the allotment. 40–60 edited images 10 days£220
F2 Newborn, at home, first three weeks two to three hours because babies decide the schedule. No props, no baskets, no hats 10 days£265
F3 Headshots, per person 45 minutes, three finished frames, in my room in Ancoats or your office 5 days£140

Prints, if you want them

P1 A 40-page album, made in Italy I lay it out, you get two rounds of changes, then it is made. Ten weeks from sign-off 10 weeks£390
P2 Anything else printed at cost, and I will tell you what the cost was — you own the files, so you can also just take them to a printer yourself —at cost

What you actually get

Seven questions, answered

Everyone in this trade sells the pictures. Almost nobody will put in writing what arrives, when, or what happens if I break my wrist in March. So here is the whole of it, on the page rather than in a contract you see after you have paid a deposit. If you are comparing me with somebody else, these are the seven questions worth asking them — take the sheet with you.

The seven questions

Thirty-Six Frames · Ancoats · ref TF/Q7 · sheet 1 of 1

takes my answers off and leaves seven blank boxes — screenshot it and put it in front of whoever else you are seeing
  1. 01 How many edited images do I get — as a number? 450–600 from a full day, culled and colour-corrected, every one. If it comes in under 450 I tell you why. Nobody gets 1,200 — that number means unculled, and unculled means you do the work.
  2. 02 By what date, and what arrives in the first week? Twenty-one days from the wedding, not “six to eight weeks”. About fifteen frames inside forty-eight hours, so you have something while you are still away.
  3. 03 Can I print them — anywhere, for ever? Full-resolution files and a written personal licence to print, share and reproduce them for the rest of your life. I keep the copyright, which is normal, and it only means I may use a frame in my own portfolio — never one you ask me not to.
  4. 04 What happens if you cannot come? The one nobody answers. I am one person: illness, a bereavement, a car that will not start. I hold a written arrangement with two photographers whose work I would be happy to hand you, and if none of us can come you get every penny back the same day, deposit included.
  5. 05 Where do the files live, and for how long? Two drives in two buildings and one cloud copy, from the evening of the wedding until twelve months after delivery. After that they are yours alone, and I say so at eleven months rather than quietly deleting them.
  6. 06 Is the gallery a download, or a rental? A link and a zip. The link expires; the zip does not. Never let a photographer hold your only copy behind a login — galleries get shut down, and I have watched it happen to two studios whose sites are now parked domains.
  7. 07 Will you show me your insurance? Public liability and professional indemnity, sent with the quote. A lot of venues ask to see the certificate before they let a supplier through the door, and nobody should be chasing it a fortnight before.

Cal Ferris · Thirty-Six Frames

Issued

This page is the contract. Nothing on it changes after you have paid, and there is no second document with different numbers in it.

Ask about a date — you get the number in the first email, without a meeting

One camera

Who turns up

The same person you email, the person behind the camera, and the person who edits every frame. There is nobody to be passed to and there is no studio behind me.

The best photograph from most weddings is one nobody asked for and nobody noticed being taken.

I’m Cal. Eleven years, the first four as a picture desk assistant on a regional paper, which is where you learn to work in a bad room with the light you are given and no second chance at it.

Twelve weddings a year and no more. It is not scarcity marketing — it is how long the editing takes if the editing is done by the person who took the pictures, and it is why the delivery date on this page is twenty-one days rather than a season.

Two bodies on me all day and a third in the bag. What is in it and why is written out with this, because it is the part of the job a couple is entitled to check and almost never gets shown.

In the bag

kit list · as it goes on the schedule

  • Body one35 mm on it from the moment I arrive. It is the lens most of your gallery is taken on.
  • Body two85 mm, over the other shoulder, all day. Two bodies means no lens change during a vow.
  • 50 mmIn the pocket. It goes on for the speeches and for a dark room.
  • Body threeIn the bag, charged, formatted. It has never come out. That is the point of it.
  • Two cards, every bodyWritten to at the same instant, not copied over afterwards.

Every frame lands on two cards inside the camera, at the moment it is taken. It is the one thing on this page most worth asking anybody else about, and the answer takes them five seconds.

Starting

The light on your day

An example — Saturday 18 July, Manchester

  1. Sunriseabout 05:00
  2. Golden hour fromabout 20:30
  3. Sunsetabout 21:30
  4. Last lightabout 22:15
On 18 July the sun goes at about 21:30. After a one o’clock ceremony the portraits sit in the golden hour, about 20:30 to 21:30 — we’ll be outside for it.

Tell me the date

Type it and the bar above redraws for it. If the date has gone, I will say so in the reply and send you two people I would have at my own wedding, rather than leaving you to start again.

How this goes

You tell me the date. I tell you within a day whether I have it, and what it costs, in the first email — no meeting required to find out a number. If you want to meet after that, I would like to, and it is a coffee rather than a presentation.

Thirty-Six Frames Studio 6, Rope Walks, Bengal Street
Ancoats, Manchester M4 6LN
0161 496 0184
There is a lift, and there is parking on Bengal Street after 6pm.