The other day I was watching a video of a photographer I really respect. He was working at a wedding and it was incredible to watch him at his craft and how he moved through a room, what he saw, what he shot, what he chose not to shoot. I love to watch other photographers work. To me there is nothing more interesting than being at a wedding as a guest and watching someone else shoot. You get ideas that maybe you haven’t though of, get inspired and sometimes wonder what the hell they are doing.
That being said, there is definitely a trend in photography that I find really interesting. With the proliferation in better equipment, it seems like everyone is becoming a wedding photographer. It’s really interesting because if you ask me being a wedding photographer might be the hardest photography job there is. You need to master posing, photojournalism, fashion, macro and all kinds of disciplines to do it right. And you only get one chance to get it right. You can’t ask the bride to walk down the aisle again because you missed it. But people are diving in head first to do it. But the common theme in all of it is they bill themselves as photojournalists. That’s great but I think that’s also a way of saying, hey I don’t really know a lot about the other stuff so I’m going to do it this way. Certainly the trend in wedding photography is to just capture moments – the essence of photojournalism – but there is much much more to it.
Anyway, back to the video I was watching. This photographer was doing some portraits after the ceremony of the bride and groom. Now I have heard countless times from brides, I don’t really want posed shots. After talking about it in more depth, what most brides don’t want are shots where they are standing there staring at the camera. Posed photos have gotten a pretty bad rap. So anyway, back to this photographer who was doing the portraits. Sure he was getting the bride and groom into some positions for the shots. Here’s the difference. None of the photos look like the “posed” photos that brides don’t want. They look like captured moments – but in a controlled environment. And that’s the point. We want to allow the bride and groom to get lost in each other, look at each other, love each other but in a way where we can get you great photos. Wedding photography blends all types of disciplines and part of it is photos that put the bride and groom together for portraits but that doesn’t means you “smile for the camera.”
