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9 out of 10 wedding photographers make wedding day portraits.
Ok that might be a slightly sweeping statement but I reckon that the majority of wedding photographers, and there are thousands at the moment, still work in a similar way to the way I was trained in the mid seventies. Each image is staged, the subject is moved to the best light and shown how to pose for the image. It makes sense, the photographer controls all of the elements. The light should be flattering and the fabrics should hang as they were designed. The expression is teased from the subject and any decent photographer will make several exposures, adjusting here and there and bringing out alternative expressions.
It really is the best way to make flattering portraits and a record of the apparel of the subjects. Some photographers will take the subjects to dramatic or beautiful locations just for the shoot, maybe even somewhere incongruous like a building site or city street. Some of the posing might be exaggerated to show the line of the garments. These images are very much influenced by the pages of fashion magazines. On the wedding day itself controlled portraiture and “fashion style” pieces can eat into the time of the day. Some photographers I know take 2 or 3 hours working like this. That’s all time away from the guests and time not spent enjoying the day.
It was in response to the time issue mainly, but also because I found the whole thing of posing the exchange of rings, cutting the cake, walking down the aisle etc. a little contrived to say the least, that I started to photograph weddings the way I do now, as an impartial observer. That doesn’t mean we never get asked to make some portraits or family group pictures. We spend around 10 minutes at most of the weddings we document making these sort of pictures. If we spent an hour we could give a lot more but we don’t want to spoil the couple’s enjoyment of such a special day, a rare opportunity to spend time with friends and family who may never meet in other situations.
We’ve had a good look around at our competitors and we reckon given that we only spend 10 minutes at the moment on portraits we do them quite well. We also reckon that if we set some dedicated time aside we could end up producing something really quite special. So we’ve come up with an idea.
We are offering to spend another 1 or 2 hours with some of the couples we photograph after the wedding, not on the same day but at a time that suits, they can dress up in the gear again, get the make up and hair done again and we can go back to their venue or somewhere else they fancy. We can make a series of stunning portraits of the Bride and Groom, in the most flattering light, with a backdrop that is important to them and at a pace that will allow us all to work creatively together without having to worry about keeping guests amused or the diner warm.
We can still spend the usual 10 minutes doing some of these at the wedding but this would be something extra.
We would like to give it a try this year so we are offering this service for free to each of the couples we have already booked… And we would also like to offer it for free to the next 5 couples that book full wedding day coverage as well. Because we are not charging for the attendance we will limit the location to one within the Lake District National Park. Couples can then choose to buy products from our Ala Carte price list.
This service is not exclusive to couples whose wedding day we are photographing. You can book us just for the portrait shoot, but not on a weekend when we would normally have weddings to document.
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