LGBTQ+ wedding photography
Your wedding. Your people. Your way.
At Smiling Tiger Studios, we believe people should be photographed as they are, without assumptions about relationships, roles or what a wedding is supposed to look like.
There isn’t a correct way to have a wedding.
Keep the traditions that mean something to you. Ignore the ones that don’t. Rewrite them completely if that’s more your thing.
What matters to us is that when you’re surrounded by the people you love, you’re able to forget about the photographs and actually be there.
Laugh until your face hurts. Cry when you weren’t expecting to. Hold onto someone a little longer than usual. Get dragged onto the dance floor. Disappear together for five minutes when it all gets a bit much.
You live it. We’ll pay attention to everything happening around you.
The moments you experience. The ones you miss. And all the wonderfully human stuff in between.
You shouldn't have to perform for your photographs
Most people aren’t completely comfortable with a camera pointing at them.
We don’t think you should have to become comfortable with one either.
Instead, we work in a way that gives you permission to forget about it.
We’ll get to know you beforehand. We’ll learn who matters, understand the relationships around you and talk through anything we need to know.
Then, when the wedding arrives, we watch.
We anticipate.
We move when something is developing and stay out of the way when our presence would change it.
There’ll be times when a little direction helps. We’ll gather people efficiently for the family photographs you want and we’ll happily steal you away for a few relaxed portraits together.
But we won’t turn your wedding into our photoshoot.
Because the best photographs tend to happen when you’re thinking about absolutely anything other than us.
“Our wedding photos are absolutely beautiful and we could not ask for them to be anymore perfect.”
Photographed without assumptions
Two brides. Two grooms. Non-binary partners. Two families with completely different ideas about what a wedding should look like.
None of that requires a photographic formula.
And you shouldn’t have to spend your wedding explaining yourselves to the people you’ve trusted to document it.
We take the time beforehand to understand you – who’s important, the relationships that matter and anything we should be aware of.
Not so we can manufacture a version of your relationship for the photographs.
Quite the opposite.
It means that when something happens – a look between you, a parent’s reaction, an old friend getting emotional, somebody completely losing it on the dance floor – we understand enough of the story to recognise why it matters.
We understand before we photograph.
And then we let you get on with having a wedding.
The things you didn't see
Here’s the strange thing about your own wedding.
You’ll miss loads of it.
While you’re talking to somebody outside, something ridiculous will be happening on the dance floor.
While you’re getting ready, your guests will be arriving and old friends will be seeing each other for the first time in years.
While everyone’s watching you, your parents might be watching each other.
You can’t possibly be everywhere.
We can look everywhere.
That’s one of the things we love most about documentary photography – giving you back not only the moments you remember, but an entire collection of little stories you didn’t even know were happening.
Sometimes those become the photographs that matter most.
There when it matters. Invisible when it doesn't.
Documentary photography doesn’t mean standing at the back of the room with a long lens hoping something interesting happens.
We’re constantly reading what’s going on.
Who keeps making everyone laugh. Who’s likely to cry. Which relationships are important. Where the energy is moving. When something is about to happen.
Sometimes that means getting right amongst it.
Sometimes it means backing away.
And sometimes the best thing we can possibly do is leave a moment completely alone.
That’s the Smiling Tiger approach.
Present enough to see it. Quiet enough not to change it.
Photography, film, or both
Some memories live beautifully as photographs.
Others need sound.
The wobble in someone’s voice during a speech. The roar when you walk back down the aisle. A ridiculous comment from a friend. The music, movement and atmosphere of a dance floor that’s gone completely off the rails.
That’s why Smiling Tiger Studios offers both documentary photography and wedding film.
Different ways of remembering the same story, created with the same philosophy.
Observed, not staged. Felt, not forced.
One recognisable Smiling Tiger eye.
Smiling Tiger Studios grew from my years working as a professional photojournalist.
That world taught me that the photograph rarely begins when you press the shutter. It begins earlier – noticing people, reading situations and recognising that something is about to happen.
That’s the instinct the studio is built around.
Today, the photographers who represent Smiling Tiger are chosen for more than their ability with a camera.
Curiosity. Timing. Empathy. Emotional awareness. And knowing how to belong in a room without becoming the centre of it.
Different people behind the camera.
Your wedding is for living, not performing
Be with your people.
Get caught up in it.
Laugh, cry, dance, hug everybody, disappear together for five minutes and come back when you’re ready.
We’ll concentrate on everything happening around you – the moments you experience, the ones you miss, and all the little things that make the wedding unmistakably yours.
Tell us what you’re planning and we’ll take it from there.
