Let’s talk wedding photography styles

My photography integrates editorial, fine art and documentary/candid/reportage photography. What does this actually mean?

  • Editorial wedding photography - fashion/magazine influenced, posed or at least directed by the photographer. The photos are creative and tell the story of the day with a glamorous or stylised look.

  • Fine art wedding photography - soft, natural images, often with a light and airy look and muted colours. Romantic and timeless, again often directed - but perhaps more gently - by the photographer.

  • Documentary, candid or reportage wedding photography - capturing the story of the wedding without posing or interfering. This is the most common way of photographing the ceremony, speeches and dancing, sometimes called photojournalistic wedding photography.

Trust in your photographer.

Hiring a wedding photographer is like one of those TV shows where they remodel someone’s house and don’t show them until it’s done. And when it’s done, it’s really done - no redos. You really have to trust the designer, to love their existing work, and be excited about them interpreting you/your thing and giving you their best work because you really can’t micromanage what they’re doing. It’s exactly the same when hiring a wedding photographer. You will get best results if you hire someone whose photos you love, and who shoots roughly the sorts of wedding you’re having.

So terminology about style aside for second - do you like the FEEL of the photos you’re looking at? Do you feel like you’re in the wedding, or observing it? (Both are ok.) Do you feel the tension, the anticipation, the release? Do you feel the calm? Do you like what you’re feeling?

Whichever wedding photographer you book you need to trust them. Their eye, their sensitivity, their energy. We are not all the same. For example I shoot mostly on a 50mm lens - this is typically used for editorial and fine art photography, is a beautiful, ‘normal’ lens that looks quite similar to how we see things with our eyes, with minimal distortion. Other wedding photographers might predominantly use wide lenses and get very close to the action - these are the photos where people/body parts on the edges look a bit distorted, and walls slope in or outwards - but they often have lots of energy. (I feel this look is a bit 2015, but I still do it for fun receptions and the dance floor).

So, look carefully at the work on these pages. Are these the sorts of photos you want? There is a refinement to the way I shoot and it’s essentially a luxury, international wedding style of photography but, at a reasonable price. Also the service I provide before and around the day I think is also important - a calm, warm presence, very chill, and very much in service of the couple and the day.

What will your wedding look like?

  • Fine art wedding photography

    For a fine art wedding photography style your venue generally needs clean, white or grey walls, and you'll have mostly neutral, muted colours. A fine art approach of 'light and airy' wedding photography is much harder to achieve with red brick, woodland, dark rooms, or bold colours. Couples appear natural and fairly unposed.

  • Editorial wedding photography

    Often overlapping with fine art, an editorial wedding photography look to me means something a bit more punchy. Bolder colours, and a more direct interaction with the camera for a characterful magazine/fashion photography style, this can work in a whole range of settings and colour schemes. Particularly when couples are up for posing a bit, this can be so much fun.

  • Wedding reception photography

    Did I say I love photographing the evening dancing? You might think a photographer on the dance floor would make it awkward but in reality you get some amazing memories - and reminders of things you might otherwise forget from this often blurry part of the day. I often use a small flash off the dance floor to get truly epic images of your party.

Colour or black & white?

I deliver a full set of colour images - the number depends greatly on the occasion but it’s usually between 600-800. You’ll then get every photograph in black and white too.

With wedding photography we often don’t have control of light and if bad light is affecting skin tones and sub-optimal colour I don’t want to give you that or have my name on it, so may deliver those images only in beautiful black and white.

The three discussed styles can both overlap and contradict each other. They are also all wonderful and usually fun. Invariably a wedding will have some documentary/candid photography and although it’ll be unposed and natural, it will ideally have a similar look to the rest of the wedding photography - maybe not quite as polished.

Fine art wedding photography relies quite heavily on the setting and other details. To truly nail a fine art look you can work with me to plan the look (flowers, suits, dresses, decor, colour schemes). For light and airy, colours are generally pastels and muted, the light is soft (not direct sunlight or harsh indoor lighting).

Editorial takes a bit more energy and fire from the couple on the day - I will meet you in this! - and we can work with the surroundings, with your people included.

To an extent these are all just words that have become popular and used to describe quite a wide range of types of photos.

If this FEELS like your look, then I can’t wait to meet you!