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Tell us your story

I’m Rob Dight, founder of Epic Love Photography. I’m originally from England and moved to Northern Ireland in 2005 to help start a church on the Causeway Coast, where I was working as a youth pastor. I met my wife Hannah here, we got married, and settled into life on the north coast. Northern Ireland was supposed to be a chapter — it became the whole story.

Photography found me in 2008 when my daughter Zoe was born. I started taking photographs of her, and they were terrible. But something in me needed to get better. I became properly addicted to learning — composition, light, all of it — and that obsession coincided with the early days of Instagram. I started posting pictures of Zoe, of landscapes along the Causeway Coast, of everyday life, and it took off. I hit ten thousand followers just sharing my world, and enough people around me — friends, family — kept saying I should do something with it that I eventually listened. In September 2011, I bought my first DSLR, a Canon 5D Mark I. It was a big purchase at the time. I shot my first wedding in 2012, quit my job in 2013, and shot fifty weddings that first full year.

In 2014, a couple from America inquired about something I had never heard of — an elopement. They had found my photography online and wanted to come to Ireland. That first elopement was in Donegal, and it changed everything. I loved it in a way I had never loved shooting a full wedding. Over the next few years, the elopement bookings gradually overtook the weddings, and I was choosing them every time.

During that period, I tried every kind of wedding photography going. I shot locally in Belfast and across Northern Ireland, then all over Ireland, and then I chased the luxury destination wedding circuit because that was the thing to do at the time. I shot in Santorini, in France, in Italy, in Poland, in Sweden, in Switzerland, in Scotland, in the USA, and in Iceland. Iceland was the big one — every elopement photographer on Instagram was shooting at Skógafoss and the black sand beaches. I got there, and it was stunning. But I had a realisation that changed the direction of my entire business. Where I lived, on the Causeway Coast of Northern Ireland, was just as beautiful — and actually a better place to elope. In Iceland, I would shoot one location and then drive an hour to the next. At home on the Causeway Coast, I had twenty locations within a 1 hour and fifteen-minute stretch of coastline: Dunluce Castle, Kinbane Castle, Dunseverick Castle, Ballintoy Harbour, Murlough Bay, Whitepark Bay, the Giant’s Causeway, the Dark Hedges. No long drives, no rushed timelines, no compromises.

At that point, most of my Irish elopement inquiries were for the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare or Galway. I started recommending the Causeway Coast instead, pointing couples toward places like Dunluce Castle, and I just kept pushing it. Nobody was looking at Northern Ireland for elopements when I started. I decided it was the best place in the world to elope, and I told the world that over and over again. Now the Causeway Coast has become one of the most popular elopement destinations on the planet, and I have photographed and planned over 300 elopements across Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The pivot from weddings to elopements was a deliberate decision, and it was a little scary after six years of building a business on weddings. But elopements make me happy. I get to meet amazing people, I love being outside, I love exploring, I love nature — and elopements marry all of those things together. My favourite part of a wedding day was always the portraits, and elopements are heavily focused on portraits, so it just made sense.

Outside of work, I have an amazing family — five kids — and my main hobby is being a dad, because with five children that is a significant operation. I am big into strength training and the gym, which keeps me sane and keeps me fit for long days on clifftops in all weather. And I have two Labradoodles, Bonnie and Teddy, who I walk for an hour a day, every day of the week, usually along the Causeway Coast. It is a pretty good commute.

How long have you been working in the wedding industry?

Since 2012. I shot my first wedding that year, went full time in 2013, and photographed my first elopement in 2014. I have been exclusively focused on elopements since around 2019.

What made you get into weddings & elopements?

Weddings came from photography, not the other way around. I fell into photography through taking pictures of my daughter, built a following on Instagram, and weddings were the obvious commercial route. Elopements were an accident — an American couple found my work online and asked me to photograph their elopement in Donegal in 2014. I had never heard the word. But that one day told me everything I needed to know about what I wanted to shoot.

What do you love about intimate weddings and elopements?

My background in youth work taught me to read people quickly — when you’re working with reluctant teenagers, you learn to notice emotion and discomfort that others might miss. That skill became a real advantage when I was shooting weddings. You can feel a room. You can sense when a couple is genuinely enjoying themselves and when they’re enduring the day.

Over hundreds of weddings, I noticed something: not every couple was having the best day of their lives. Some were having an okay time, but for large parts of the day, they were just enduring it. Many weren’t wired for a big wedding — they were more introverted, a bit shy, and didn’t enjoy being the centre of attention. I’d estimate about twenty per cent of couples fell into that category, and I felt that tension.

When I started shooting elopements, I realised these were exactly those people. They weren’t wired for a big wedding, but they were wired for an elopement — a personal, intimate experience rather than a big show. And that is what makes elopements so much more satisfying for me to shoot. You get to see people who would not have loved a big wedding actually have the most amazing time. Every moment is something they can enjoy, something they can cherish, rather than something they are getting through. I am quite a sensitive person, and I pick up on things like that. Seeing couples experience pure, genuine joy on a day that was designed entirely around them — that is why I do this.

How would you describe your approach to your work?

I am both the photographer and the planner, which is unusual in the elopement industry. I do not photograph a day that someone else has designed, and I do not hand couples off to a separate coordinator. I choose the locations, build the timeline, coordinate the vendor team, manage weather contingency on the day, and then photograph it.

About five years ago, I realised something that changed how I work: the photographs are important, but they are not more important than my couple’s experience. I started leaning into that completely. I help couples plan their entire trip to Ireland — not just the elopement day, but the four or five days around it. Hotels, restaurants, pubs, whiskeys, Guinnesses, activities. By the time they arrive for their ceremony, they are already in the midst of the best trip of their lives. They have stayed in five-star hotels, eaten at Michelin-starred restaurants, and explored Dublin and the coast.

That matters because when I deliver them an image — a stunning photograph with incredible light and Dunluce Castle in the background — that image is not just a great photograph on its own. It is tied to a memory, a moment, a feeling, an entire experience. Some of the most precious photographs in people’s lives are not necessarily the best-looking ones. They are the ones tied to how they felt.

So I am endeavouring to pair that experience design with genuinely beautiful, technically excellent images. It takes the final deliverable from a ten out of ten to a twenty-five out of ten, because the couple is not just receiving an awesome photograph — they are receiving a photograph of the greatest day they have had in the midst of the best trip they have ever taken. That is a cheat code as a photographer.

What’s your favourite part of a wedding day?

Portraits. Always has been, even when I was shooting full weddings. Elopements are built around portraits, which is one of the main reasons I made the switch. On the Causeway Coast, I can take a couple to three or four completely different landscapes — castle ruins, cliff edges, hidden beaches, ancient woodland — within minutes of each other. That variety means the portrait session never feels like one long stretch in one spot. Every move gives us something new. The other moment I never get tired of is private vows at sunset — two people, no audience, saying exactly what they mean to each other while the light drops over the Atlantic.

What advice would you give couples who are in the process of planning a wedding or elopement?

If you are eloping in Ireland, work with someone who lives here and works here year-round. Ireland is not a studio — the weather, the light, the access, the logistics all change constantly. A photographer who has shot one elopement at the Cliffs of Moher on a sunny day in July does not have the same knowledge as someone who has spent a decade working these coastlines in wind, rain, and mist. The difference shows in the images, but it also shows in whether your day actually runs smoothly. And if you are considering the Causeway Coast, do it. The location density is unmatched anywhere else on the island — Dunluce Castle, Kinbane Castle, Dunseverick Castle, Whitepark Bay, Murlough Bay, Ballintoy Harbour, the Dark Hedges, and the Giant’s Causeway are all within a short drive of each other.

When you’re not at a wedding, what do you love doing?

Being a dad to my five kids, which is a full-time job in itself. Strength training and the gym. And walking my two Labradoodles, Bonnie and Teddy, along the Causeway Coast for an hour every day — which, honestly, is not a bad way to scout locations either.

Do you have a dream wedding or elopement you’d love to do?

I spent years chasing the dream wedding or elopement. It took me all over the world — luxury weddings in opulent castles, waterfalls in Iceland, parties overlooking the caldera in Santorini, ceremonies in the Swiss Alps and the Scottish Highlands. Then I realised the dream was not a place I had not been yet. It was the place I had been all along. Elopements on the Causeway Coast in Northern Ireland, right on my front door, in a landscape I know so deeply that I can tell you how the tide, the wind, and the light will affect every angle of every location on any given day. That knowledge is not something you can learn on a single trip. It comes from over a decade of working these cliffs and castles and beaches in every season, every weather, every hour of light. It means I can shoot elopements here in a way nobody else on earth can. I am not chasing the dream any more. I am shooting it every week.