Wedding Photography Styles

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Photography, like any other industry, has its buzzwords and trends and you´ll have heard words like “contemporary” and “reportage” used in marketing materials, on websites and in conversations but do you really know what they mean and, more importantly, does your photographer? Most are innocuous enough; contemporary is what it says – up to date and, typically, less formal than our parents´ Wedding albums were. We´d hope that everyone would be “contemporary” but we believe a blend of styles including the traditional make a perfect Wedding album.

Reportage photography is what everybody seems to be talking about – but what is it? True reportage grew out of news photographers, often working in dangerous conditions, trying to report events on the ground. Great, or even “good” reportage photographers have a very definite set of skills – not just being absolutely at home with their camera but having a kind of sixth sense of what will happen next and being prepared to capture it. There certainly are Wedding photographers who can claim to have these skills but by no means everyone who claims to be a “reportage” photographer for marketing reasons genuinely is. It is used as a lazy shorthand for those impromptu unplanned shots that shooting hundreds of digital pictures without the limitations of film allow the modern photographer.

These can make for beautiful pictures but on their own will not add up to a record of the day. We believe that great pictures are made, not just taken. So even though every so often you capture something unexpected that helps tell the story of the day – a detail that captures the essence of a person or an event, be wary of anyone whose plan is to get the standard group shots in the can and then just play a numbers-game and see what they find.

The best Wedding albums are a combination of planned formal shots, impromptu informal shots and, most importantly, shots that the photographer designs and executes to convey the spirit and emotion of the day.

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