Wedding Photography Styles – Williamism 6

“Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.”

~ Jean Corteau, French Poet

It does not matter if you are a bride about to get married or a wedding photographer about to capture someone’s special day – these days it’s all about style!

For the bride, style encompasses her whole wedding, from the dress and shoes to flowers, invitations, table settings, music… the list goes on.

For the photographer, it is a label attached to our photography and art.

What do the words candid, posed, photojournalism, classic, traditional, documentary, fashion, romantic, artistic, vintage, portraiture, impressionistic and blended all have in common? They are used to describe different forms of wedding photography. Who knew it would be so complicated? Does this mean that the bride and groom must first review the list above and settle on a style before beginning their search?

Let’s do a little recap of current wedding photography styles:

• Classic: This would include traditional, posed and portraiture. This approach is heavily dependent on posing the bride and groom during the day. This includes wedding party and family portraits. These images tend to be very formal and structured.  The often make very classic wall portraits.

• Photojournalism:  This style would include candid and documentary.  This is what I call stealth photography. Your photographer simply blends in and captures the day as it unfolds with very little input. I actually know of a photographer that believes you should have no communication what so ever with the clients except during formal family portraits. Depending on the actual wedding, this style can produce some beautiful results with many images converted to black & white. Where this style can falter is if it is a very “low key” wedding or a very disorganized one.

• Artistic: including fashion, romantic and impressionistic methods. Very sexy and dramatic images. Many images look like they belong in Vanity Fair or Vogue magazine. This has become a very familiar style these days adopted by some of the world’s greatest wedding photographers.

• Vintage: although this could fit under the artistic category – I listed it separate. Images produces in this look are very dependent on post production in Photoshop and or other imaging programs. The final photographs often have muted colors and layers of additional textures. The images can be very dreamy and beautiful.

For some brides it will be very easy to choose a style. I know a few photographers that specialize in the vintage look and their work is awesome. It is so unique that a potential client would definitely be aware of the style.

For other brides – it’s not so easy. Maybe there is a certain look they like, but can’t put a label on it. I have spoken about this many times; I believe the best tool a bride has to decide with is her heart. Look at images online, in magazines, or in a photographer’s studio and it will soon become evident what you like: bright colors, black & white, classic posed or totally out there wild and funky! You will know. Then you can seek out similar styled photographers to find the person for your special day.

It’s a little different for us photographers. I think we all start out a little homogeneous and slowly develop a certain look or style, which I believe is always evolving.  Our look comes about by emulating the work of other photographers and artists. Eventually we end up with something we can call our own.

I like to call my look  – “freestyle” (I can’t remember where I heard this, but another photographer coined the phrase). I am about 50% artistic, 45% photo journalistic and the rest a little vintage and posed – hence freestyle. All I know is when brides and grooms see my work and “get it” they usually become  clients.

I would be very interested to know what you think. Leave me a comment or contact me via the contact button above.

Visit my website at innesphotography.com to see additional examples of my freestyle work.