Nicky & Martin’s “The Quick and the Dead” Post-Wedding Shoot

Nicky and Martin flew from all the way from the UK to do this Wild West themed shoot with Imagine Photography after they had seen a gangster-style shoot by them on the dry lake. Fantastic decision, I must say, because just look at how gorgeous all these photos turned out! Nicky will tell you more about why she chose this theme in a little bit.

Meanwhile longtime readers of this blog already know that I love JoAnne & Jason Marino’s work (see all their previous features BTL interview). I read on their Facebook page that some of these shots were achieved with JoAnne fearlessly lying on the ground — yes with a Harley and 1000-pound horse hurtling at her direction in full speed — and that just confirmed how much passion they put into their photography. Here they are now for you to enjoy.

The lovely Nicky is here to tell you more about her & Martin and their wedding shoot:

Martin and I are both English and have been together for over four years. Reining (horse riding) is one of my main hobbies, an absolute passion of mine. I had leukaemia when I was 18 years old and ever since then I have always pushed my life to the limit. I like being different and doing things only others dream of. I have always had an interest in America and the Old West. Only two years ago I traveled to Texas and brought a reining horse back to the UK with me.

Martin is older than me and has been married more than once, so I wanted our marriage to be totally different from the others. He loves motor bikes like I love horses. We met through shooting and both of us own guns and enjoy country game shooting in the UK. We both work full time and don’t get to spend much personal time together. When we do have time together I make sure we both have fun and usually end up doing out of the ordinary stuff! It was my idea to collaborate our hobbies and individual characters into our wedding photos, to make it such a unique experience.

“The Quick and the Dead” was not actually my theme, but I suppose it’s an easy way to sum it up as Sharon Stone and Russell Crowe in the movie. When I rang Jason at Imagine Photography I said that I wanted our wedding photos to be something like “Bonnie & Clyde meets Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ with a Wild West theme to it, combining modern and old together”.

I chose Jason and Joanne because I had seen a gangster style shoot they had done in the dry lake. I like their stuff because it was not the usually mushy wedding photos, all their photos were unique and creative. After seeing their gangster shoot I knew they were the ones to mimic the image I had in my head! It was quite hard as I knew exactly what I wanted and it was hard to explain. In the old western photos no one smiles and that’s just what I wanted. I found pictures of the characters from “The Quick and The Dead” posing in an old west style photo and I sent it to Jason & Jo as an idea they could work on, so I suppose that’s how the title came about.

I have crazy mad ideas all the time and have modeled them out in the past, so being in front of the camera is no problem for me. Martin on the other hand was harder to get in to character. My whole idea was based around getting married (kill bill church scene) and then having to run away from “the law”. Hence the run down with horse and bike and the “Bonnie and Clyde” theme. Obviously I had to be on a horse because that’s what I am all about and Martin had to be on a bike as that was what he is about. The guns are part of both of us. To me it is a no brainer. I suppose I wanted our photos to mirror our own inner child fantasy characters. I never do anything be halves and everyone one involved did a great job of making our, or really my, dream come true.?

Huge thanks to Jason & JoAnne for sending their always-stunning images my way, and congratulations Nicky and Martin! Here’s to a blissful married life.

Photographer: JoAnne and Jason Marino with Imagine Photography
Location: Arizona Desert