What is a wedding photography style?
You may have already read out blog on how to choose your wedding photographer and are now considering specific aspects that you may not have even considered before including wedding photography styles. But the question is where do you begin and what is it do you specifically look for? Wedding planning is stressful enough without all of these additional details that you didn’t expect to find when starting your wedding planning journey.
We have created this step-by-step guide on how to choose your wedding photography style, answering all of the questions that you as a wedding couple need to consider when booking your dream wedding photographer. As a popular Cardiff Wedding Photographer we have not only established our own wedding photography style but have also had the pleasure of working alongside other wedding photographers who have different styles to us.
Exactly how the artist Banksy is different Vincent Van Gogh, wedding photographers can vary massively in how they capture wedding days and its important to establish how you want your wedding day documented.
In this blog we are going to dive deep into the world of wedding photography and help you find the wedding photography style that suits you best for your wedding day.
Three wedding photography style types
There are three main styles of wedding photography that us wedding photographers describe ourselves as being. Each having a unique twist that definitely impacts on the type of wedding photos you should expect to have on your wedding day. However, this doesn’t cover the wedding photography editing styles that you have to choose from. Click here to take a look at the different editing styles that wedding photographers have and how that can also effect your choice of wedding photographer for your wedding day.
Documentary style wedding photography
What is documentary wedding photography?
This is the style of wedding photography that we define our work as being closely related to. This style truly embraces the emotion of a wedding day, capturing those precious candid moments in a timeless manner that will be cherished by you forever. Documentary wedding photographers are not massive fans of posing their couples and would much rather prompt them into moments by having fun interactions with them instead of those awkward and even uncomfortable posed shots.
What does documentary wedding photography include?
Documentary wedding photography doesn’t mean hiding in the tree’s in camouflage, like something out of Blue Planet (For all the David Attenborough Fans amongst us). For example, we like to engage with our couples and their guests on their big day. Making everyone feel at ease in front of the camera and becoming their friend rather than “The Photographer”. By gaining this trust we are able to capture more intimate, documentary styled moments without anyone feeling awkward. And its these moments that we pride ourselves in capturing for our couples, as these are the ones you will remember with happy memories rather than the time your “Wedding Photographer” took you off for hours on end!
What makes a good documentary wedding photographer?
Capturing the moments that you didn’t’t even know had happened and make you grin from ear-to-ear when you see them after your wedding day. Being a documentary wedding photographer is about embracing every element of a wedding day and not just capturing the perfect wedding couple photos. It’s about telling the full story including nan pinching your cheek like she did when you were a toddler, its about your uncle bob break dancing on the dance floor, its about your family.
Traditional style Wedding photography
We have all looked back on our parents wedding albums where the photos are stuck into the paper with soft tissue paper in-between. The photos that were more than likely captured on film and where you had only a select amount of photos which include the family group shots, one at the church and then a few couple shots.
It is this format that the traditional wedding photography style falls into. Now technology has advanced so that you get more than 24 photos but the traditional style does remain amongst some wedding photographers. This is the most posed style of wedding photography where you will have a lot of direction off of your wedding photographer. Where you are told to stand against a certain backdrop, sit in at a specific angle and look in a certain way.
Traditional wedding photography is a more simplistic style and does what it says on the tin. You will have some lovely staged photos but will more than likely have minimal if any candid moments captured on your wedding day.
Although you can make even the traditional wedding photos more interesting with the right photographer!
Editorial style Wedding Photography
The young kid on the block, the trend setter, the style that every celebrity wedding is having. Editorial wedding photos embrace trends such as direct flash that has been popular in 2022-23.
Typically editorial wedding photography is related to magazine publications and news articles. This style in a wedding setting is based around a theme and can be seen as the more Hollywood style. This wedding photography style is fun and exciting but can also date quite quickly and may not be as timeless as the other two styles of wedding photography.
Editorial wedding photography is an interesting blend between documentary and traditional wedding photography where every detail is made into a masterpiece to fully capture your story. Its about capturing the intimacy between you and your partner and not just focussing on the perfectly posed shot, but more about capturing all the little moments that bring you back to a fond memory every time you look at them.
We lied…
At the start we said we were a Documentary wedding photographer but in fact we are a balanced blend of all three. We personally don’t like posing our couples or taking them away for hours on end. Through capturing weddings for over 5 years we have perfectly crafted our wedding photography style so that your wedding story is captured beautifully without any awkward posing and only happy memories from your wedding day.
Found this blog useful?
We hope you found this blog useful and that you have fallen in love with our style of wedding photography. Put simply, we want to document your wedding day without any awkwardness and no moments missed. If you are interested in booking us as your wedding photographer then lets book in for a chat! Click the link below and we will be in touch to arrange a date.
