What is Documentary Wedding Photography

What is Documentary wedding Photography?

Documentary wedding Photography is an approach to story telling through pictures that encompasses both photojournalism & reportage.

It certainly requires a ‘hands off ‘approach with no direction or undue influence on the subjects. This can often be misinterpreted and give people the wrong impression of it being incredibly easy to do.  Such ill informed people see reportage wedding photography as simply a case of standing back and blindly recording happy faces devoid of any context.

I see documentary wedding photography as being one of the most challenging and rewarding professions within which to work.  To be able to tell a story entirely through pictures is a wonderful gift that drives you forward with an appetite to tell more stories with a tighter narrative & punch.

My definition of a true documentary wedding photographer is encapsulated in a person that has a total understanding & awareness of their surroundings and subjects.  Whether in the bridal home, the church, registry office or reception venue – it’s the awareness to the physical location coupled with both the technical & wedding ceremony experience that allows the photographer to capture his subjects behavior & interactions.

As a documentary wedding photographer having no undue influence is very much about blending in & being accepted by all those within the wedding party as being ‘as one of them’ as opposed to being an paid outsider capturing a performance. This acceptance can only be achieved through the actual mannerism of the photographer with their interactions with the bridal party members and certainly staying clear of using any intrusive flash photography.  This acceptance can best be illustrated in close inspection of a good set of documentary pictures where the photographer is using a short focal length lens and is in close with his subjects capturing their engagement with one another without them being camera aware. Often less experienced photographers misunderstand this approach and try to avoid getting camera aware subjects by using a longer focal length lens which certainly delivers camera unaware subjects but it also delivers subjects devoid of any context.

As a light hearted illustration the video below can only be described as a perfect example of someone totally unaware of their surrounding and at the opposite end of the spectrum to a documentary wedding photographer.

Professional documentary wedding photographers work instinctively and seek to emulate the great documentary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in capturing the ‘decisive moment’ – a supremely spontaneous image that witnessed life unfolding with precision & emotion.  Photography was a task, Cartier-Bresson said, that required virtues he had discovered while hunting in Africa – “a velvet hand (and) a hawk’s eye”.

And what a task it is, keeping that sharp eye trained on observing everything and capturing every instance possible.  A documentary photographer intuitively knows his environment and reacts effortlessly to changes in light & action in front of him, changing viewpoint, emphasis & composition in a moment.

He blends and applies different techniques and constantly re-evaluates to suit his subjects and the context in which they are.  This precise & considered psychological approach to documentary wedding photography is the real tool of the trade, not the make of camera or glass in the lens.

All too often many in the industry are selling themselves as ‘reportage’ or ‘documentary’ photographers just because they know the style is very much in vogue within the wedding industry.  Many of the culprits that have hi-jacked the term have never worked within the news & journalism industry like myself; instead they have chosen to jump on the gravy train.  Rather than trying to raise their game and deliver true documentary work they have just fluffed up their tired and often outdated style of formal wedding photography with filler pictures devoid of any context and poignancy.

True documentary photographers should reclaim the term and elevate it back to its rightful status as a highly skilled trade and relevant form of wedding photojournalism or reportage wedding photography.  We need to take time to educate our clients as to what documentary wedding photography really is and how to see through the countless pariahs masquerading as photojournalists and documentary photographers.  Only then will we be able to turn back the tide of incompetence swamping the industry and stop the devaluing of photography as an art and a skilled profession.

If you are looking for a documentary wedding photographer to capture your wedding’s ‘decisive moments’, just remember Cartier-Bresson’s analogy that documentary photographers are just like hunters.  We dedicate long hours in our pursuit of capturing the ‘decisive moments’ in your day, constantly re-evaluating our environment (your wedding) & targets (you and your guests).  Sixteen hour days are common place with the focus & concentration being draining, but the joy of storytelling through photography is both satisfying & rewarding.