Way Up North

We didn’t market it, tell anyone about it, wave a big loud flag about it: we just did it. Canon Europe Pro agreed to the wild pitch months ago and next thing we knew, we were in Portalegre. 10 guests, 4 couples, one day, all the Canon gear you could dream of, shared meals, drinks, and no expectations.

Community is built brick by brick. In that part of Portugal, they build it out of voices.

It’s called cante. Thirty-odd people singing together, no instruments, no soloist out front. One voice starts on its own, a second answers above it, then the rest come in underneath until the whole thing is standing. Field workers and miners sang it through the long days and carried it into the taverns after dark. You can’t do it alone, and nobody in it is the star. UNESCO put it on the world heritage list in 2014, which is a strange thing to do to a group of people singing in a bar, but they were right to.

Some of our bricks we lay ourselves with a clear vision, and plenty of them come from you telling us what you need or where we can improve. What you’ve been telling us is that you want more intimate gatherings in real life, in the same place, where the core of it all is creating. A day of creating with nothing expected at the end of it.

Portalegre was the first voice. Quiet, on its own, nobody watching. The rest comes in underneath.

We’ll do more events like this. Stay close to WUN and you’ll see what’s next. Which is the funny part, because we don’t scream for attention. Neither does cante. No microphones, no soloist, nobody shouting over anybody else. That’s the only reason it works.

We’ve been on this slow train since 2015. It’s never once been in a hurry. It isn’t stopping here either.

French photographer Gauthier Le Guen photographs weddings the way most people photograph memories they don't want to forget. Full of feeling, low on fuss, and always with an eye for the quiet moments everyone else missed.

In his Q&A with MPB, he talks about his approach to wedding photography, the kit he relies on and how he thinks about the work.

MPB makes it simple to buy, sell and trade used camera gear. Every item is checked by specialists and individually photographed, with insured delivery, a 12-month warranty and 14-day returns.

Whether you’re moving on unused kit, funding your next upgrade or looking for what comes next, MPB can help you change gear with confidence.

Head to MPB via the link in the first comment to discover more from the wider photography community.

At the start of the year we set out to run more small gatherings. Community in feel, something to sit next to the big spring and fall shows. There have been a few already. This week it’s Portugal.
Canon Europe Pro got behind it straight away. They believe the same thing we do, that good things happen when you get people in the same place.
A one day content crash at Quinta do Carril in Portalegre. Four couples, with Commercial & Wedding Photographer | Vienna Austria Zurich Italy and Fabio Mirulla leading the group.
Here’s the part we’ve never tried before. No application, no marketing, no screaming from the internet rooftops for attention. Just an idea passed around in messages and built behind the scenes over a few months until it was real. The ten photographers coming were invited privately, one at a time, and none of them knew a thing about it until the invitation arrived. That list could have been a hundred times longer, and we mean that. Picking ten out of a community this size was the hardest part of the whole thing.
It starts Tuesday with a two and a half hour drive out of Lisbon, all ten of them in together, and from there it’s a farm, four couples, and meals at the same table every night. Part workshop, part road trip.
The content day is September 30th, so couples, Canon and Portugal are about to take over the feed.
There will be more of these. One is nearly ready to announce for November, and that one you’ll be able to put your hand up for.
We’ll keep making them happen, big and small. Gathering this community is the spark that lit Way Up North over a decade ago, and it’s still what keeps the fire going.

Nobody sits down at a serious restaurant and gets the whole meal at once, dumped on one plate in identical squares. There's an order to it, worked out by people who care more than is healthy. An amuse-bouche first, one bite, on the house, telling you what kind of night you're in for. Then something sharp. Then the fish. A sorbet to wipe the slate clean. The big plate, the one they'll talk about in the car on the way home. Petits fours at the end that nobody has room for and everybody eats.

You already think like this. You know which frame opens a gallery, which one has to stop a thumb dead, which quiet one needs to sit beside the loud one or neither of them works. Then you deliver, and the whole thing lands as a wall of equal rectangles in the order the camera happened to fire.

Pic-Time just handed you the plating.

Gallery Grids. Seven of them, four brand new. Sliders for size and spacing. Drag and drop that happens live, so you move one frame and watch what it does to everything around it. Mobile has its own controls, so the phone version is a decision rather than whatever fell out. Highlights scenes get their own grids. Seven loading animations, if you'd rather the photographs arrived than appeared.

Free and Beginner get the basic grids with editing and mobile controls. Professional and Advanced get the lot.

Congratulations to the Pic-Time team. Handing people control over scale and rhythm without the whole thing collapsing into a mess is much harder than it looks.

Photographers: open a gallery you've already sent, make one frame twice the size of everything around it, and see what happens.

Full details:

Photo Gallery Grids for Photographers | Pic-Time Explore Pic-Time’s new photo gallery layouts, with drag-and-drop editing, loading animations and separate mobile customization for more creative control.

Day 1 in València finishes and we're going for a walk.

Imagen are taking us out into the heart of Valencia with Orly Morgenstern leading the way. Two hours, golden hour, ends at a bar. Bring a camera, bring your phone, bring neither.

Here's the fun part: two of you won't be shooting it. You'll be in it. Put your name in when you sign up, on your own or as a couple.

Free for València ticket holders, and it's a small group. Learn more and sign-up here:

Imagen Photo Walk Through El Carmen - Way Up North A guided photo walk through El Carmen at golden hour with Orly Morgenstern, straight after Day 1 in Valencia. Forty places, and two of you get photographed.

We're juggling a few balls at the moment, which is exactly how we like it.

The big one is Valencia. The photos in this share are a few of the presenters we can't wait to see on stage next month.

Then there are the announcements. One is a huge swing we're taking, and we're saying nothing about it until it's time. The others are events that sit outside our spring and fall shows, and we think you'll be pretty happy about those.

And then there's the spring show. Another ball in the air.

Last week we visited the venue for our spring 2027 event, May 4-5. We took a wander in the streets around it and kept thinking the same thing: how did we win the lottery with this cinema.

It's close to the things you'll want to see while you're there, and all of it is easy to get to on foot. That wasn't what we loved most though. What we loved most is that locals will want to be there too. They know the neighbourhood. They know the vibe.

That's the magic combo. Central enough that visitors can go and get their postcards, with enough local flavour for the people who have no interest in postcards and just want the real thing.

We'll share the city on October 14th. If you trust us before then, tickets are at their lowest price right now. We don't want to hype it too much, but we're as confident as we've ever been: you'll want to be there.

"Gallery is gorgeous, thank you!! Random q, is this the same site my sister's photographer used? Looks identical x"

Because it is.

Your website is yours. Your emails are yours. The box the USB goes in is yours. Then the gallery link lands and it belongs to the platform.

Pic-Time shipped Custom Colors & Fonts to fix that. You pick three colours: background, content, accent. Pic-Time builds the whole palette out of those three on its own. Hover states, buttons, all the fiddly bits you would never sit down and choose. A light version and a dark one. Gallery and shop.

Fonts too. Upload yours, say which one is the headline and which one is the body, and it works out every size and weight so you don't have to. Save the lot and the next gallery takes one click.

There's also a thing in the colour picker that tells you when your brand colour has stopped being readable. We needed that one. Anyone who has put white text on a beige button and then admired it on a very expensive monitor knows exactly why.

Congratulations to the Pic-Time team. A palette that builds itself is a lot harder than it looks.

Photographers: open Pic-Time, pick your three colours, upload your typeface, and make sure the next sister can tell the difference.

Community works when it communicates, and a recent email lifted our spirits. It wasn’t expected. The sender pitched an idea: a new category for the WUN Awards. We read it, nodded, and thought; that’s so obvious, of course we’re adding that. So at least one new thing for the Awards is happening.

The timing of the message was uncanny because we’re planning right now for the Awards, and for another significant addition to the WUN “ecosystem”. What we’re building has been a long time coming, and we believe it’s a real addition to the community. More on that soon.

Why stop there, though. The Awards have grown year upon year, and one reason is listening to you. So... what’s missing? What can go? What’s good but can be better?

If you have something to share about the awards, we’re listening. We’re not asking for comments to boost engagement, so if you’re more of a private communicator, DM us. Or email us. Or write us a letter and send it by post (that’d be awesome). However you want to share what’s on your mind, we’re here.

We’re aware awards aren’t for everyone. We’re also aware awards can change careers. The pendulum swings in different directions for everyone.

Photos in this share are from each winner of Europe’s Best Wedding Photographer since the Awards began in 2017.

2025: Inta Lankovska (Latvia, Wedding photography & education by Inta Lankovska)
2024: The Framers (Portugal, The Framers | Portugal Wedding Photographer)
2023: Danilo & Sharon (Serbia, Danilo & Sharon | Vasic)
2022: Anna Ascari (Italy, Anna Ascari • Italy Europe Wedding Photographer)
2021: Fabio Miglio (Italy, Fabio - International Wedding and Elopement Photographer)
2019: Linda Liv Eliasson (Sweden, Linda Liv Eliasson)
2018: Karin Lundin (Sweden, Karin Lundin)
2017: The Kitcheners (United Kingdom, Scotland Elopement & Wedding Photographer)

The amount of time we put into choosing the host city and dates for Way Up North is... ah, you don't want to know. It's a lot.

So having the spring 2027 dates settled is a good moment. They're up on the site now, along with a set number of early bird tickets.

The city remains a secret until we announce it to end our show in València. But we've left two hints on the post, and this one was a long time coming. For years you've asked for it, for years we couldn't get the venue, now we have.

So our path is set. Have a guess.

Our Spring 2027 Dates - Way Up North Way Up North is unique in the sense that we host the show twice a year, spring and fall. That’s one side of the coin. The other is that we rotate the