How to choose a wedding photographer

A couple faced with choosing a wedding photographer enters a world which should be fun but rapidly becomes daunting. Every photographer they visit shows them a majestic leather bound tome in which the perfect couple looks stunning. With nothing to distinguish one photographer from another, the couple asks the photographer if the photographer is discrete and into candid photography because they hate posing. “Of course”, each photographer responds. So without staging a wedding rehearsal to test each photographer ,how do you choose a wedding photographer? On price?

I think the main question to ask yourself is do you want fairytale photography or photojournalism? The former focuses on the material symbols of weddings such as the couple as an ideal unit, the rings, the bridal party and  the dress whilst the latter is about candor, images not necessarily technically perfect but capturing the wedding as it actually was. 

A fairytale photographer might criticise the photojournalist as being all substance with no style whilst the photojournalist might criticise the fairytale photographer for being all style and no substance.

A great example of a fairytale wedding photographer is Yevant, a brilliant Melbourne based wedding photographer. In my view, the following photo by Yervant (www.yervant.com) is stunning. The lighting is intriguing, the composition  classic and the use of the building to frame the couple perfect. Interestingly, the groom's face is partially hidden and this is most likely because males are generally far more awkward than females about posing so the photographic compositional trick is to 'bury' them. The female in this portrait also has her eyes shut - possibly in rapture or is it because Yevant wanted to avoid the wariness that is often found in normal (i.e. not a professional model) peoples' eyes when they are asked to pose?

However, as a wedding photographer  I don’t aspire to take this type of photo because it is a posed image and does not focus on what I consider to be the most important quality of my photography which is capturing tenderness.

A great example of a wedding photojournalism is the renowned English photographer Jeff Ascough (www.jeffascough.com) whose photo is below. 

With  photojournalism wedding photography, the couple may not look deeply into the camera, there may not be perfect lighting but the photo is unmistakably that of a wedding and chances are the couple will remember how they felt at the time when they see the photo.  My only criticism of this photo, based on the groom’s grin, is that he has either been asked by the photographer to pose, or knows the photographer is there. Like Yervant's photo, the couples' eyes are shut.

I personally prefer wedding photojournalism to fairytale photography because for me, the photo’s worth is less dependent on the material surrounds and therefore is more humanistic. 

My wedding photography style is a variant on photojournalism in that I am endeavouring to capture a wedding by photographing the unique emotions present on the day, those which can never be repeated. The following photos for me exemplify my photography.




In the first image, the surrounds aren’t opulent but the mood is overwhelmingly tender - a father is farewelling his son as a single man and the son is deeply grateful for everything his father has done.

In the second image, the image is posed but has an intimate feel and uses soft afternoon light.

So perhaps there are as many types of wedding photographers as there are reasons for marrying and you may need to understand why you are marrying in order to work out which photographer will meet your expectations.

Once you have decided what style of photography you want, make sure you are happy with how the  photographer responds to the following questions before you engage him or her.

Will you be the photographer on the day? Some studios may outsource photography and this may be disconcerting if the first time you meet the photographer is on your wedding day.

When will my wedding album be ready? Some studios only want to focus on signing up clients and taking photos in the ‘wedding season’, preferring to prepare albums in the quieter winter months so if you don’t want to wait six months, ask the studio to commit to a delivery time that meets your expectations.

When will my wedding photos be viewable on line? For friends and loved ones overseas, they want to see your photos sooner than later and anything more than three days may be too long for you.

Should a photographer refuse Indian weddings when they aren’t in a maharajah's palace in Rajasthan?

I was asked to photograph an Indian wedding that was organised very quickly, within a week; an auspicious day not to be missed meant very little planning so when I drove to the venue in Sydney on the wedding day, I had no idea of what to expect though I doubted it would be a magnificent maharajah's palace since there aren’t any in Sydney's suburbs!

The venue turned out to be a brick house. At this point I could have jumped up and down, outraged that the venue wasn’t even a temple but rather than take on reality and lose, I did what all professional photographers do and looked around for opportunities.

Where to photograph the bride? The house’s front door had a glass decorative panel and since the house faced North East, I was able to take advantage of the morning sun streaming through the door’s glass panel. The location wasn’t ideal – a light switch threatened to feature prominently in any photo, the glass panel was at chest height meaning anyone wanting to take advantage of the ideal 45 degree light would have to ask the portrait sitter to crouch down and even worse, it was the front door which meant I couldn’t have an elaborate set up or the guests wouldn’t have been able to enter the house. So what to do?

Here is a “location shot” to give you some idea of what I was faced with.



Below is the final photo, taken within 5 minutes of this location photo – no flash has been used, both sides of the bride's face are illuminated because I took advantage of the lighting reflecting off the walls and most importantly and the bride is not apprehensive or impatient because I worked quickly. I showed the bride the photo immediately afterwards and from then on, any doubt the bride might have had about whether I was able to photograph her at her best disappeared.




The wedding ceremony was housed in a mini tent that was within a marquee in the back yard- it would be safe to say that the natural light was dismal, no beautiful 45 Degree light, just dull light struggling to get though two layers of canvas.

Here is the location shot of what I was faced with:



The location shot is slightly misleading because the mini tent is illuminated since I had placed a flash in the mini tent’s ceiling that fired upwards into its ceiling via remote control (no messy wires tripping up the guests). This turned the humble mini tent into a Bollywood film set. Having the flash fire into the ceiling also meant the wedding couple weren’t being blinded by direct flash. It also meant that I could move around and photograph the couple from various angles knowing that the front of their faces would always be exposed.

Below are some examples :








I wanted to take photos of the couple from the side. Since the bride was sitting in a chair next to the groom, I was faced with deciding who was going to be blurred, the bride or the groom. But rather than make such a decision, I photographed firstly the groom, then the bride and when I got home, I merged the two images to get the couple both beautifully sharp.

Here is the before photo of the bride that was used to make the final image.


Here is the final image showing both bride and groom in perfect focus:




I also took candid shots of the guests. In my experience men are far more difficult than women to photograph so the secret is not to let them know you are photographing them which means no poses and no flash: here are two candid images:






After the wedding ceremony, I took advantage of the lighting set up to photograph the family in the mini tent:




But how to cope when the couple left the mini tent to mingle with their guests in the marquee? I abandoned the flash and took candid photos making sure that the white canvas walls of the marquee did not confuse my camera’s exposure. Then, when I got home, I brought out the magic of the images but altering their exposure and tonality.

Here is a before and after photo of the couple greeting a guest where I have deliberately ‘blown out’ the scuffed walls of the marquee and its plastic window so nothing detracts from the warmth of the greeting.






I then took photos in the house. The living room had a lovely plain white wall and white ceiling so I asked one guest to point the flash at the side wall whilst fired my on-camera flash into the ceiling. This enlarged the apparent light source to give a lovely soft feel to the portraits since the light wraps around the face using this lighting technique. In short, I turned a living room of a suburban house into a professional light studio within two minutes. Here is one image from this 'studio':





In conclusion, I was able to take great photos because I never tried to fight reality. I accepted the location for what it was, a house in suburbia, and then worked out how to best capture the wedding day. To see more photos from the day, click on the link: http://www.johnslaytor.com.au/slideshows/celebrations/hindu_wedding_sydney/index.html