Documentary Wedding Photography

My approach to telling the story of your day.

Documentary Wedding Photography

Imagine your wedding day. You’ve spent months, maybe years, waiting for this moment. Everything looks exactly how you hoped it would. Your guests are so happy for you. The food is delicious. The games are fun. The band know exactly what songs to play to either blend in for ambience, or get everyone up on their feet.

And you’re twenty feet away from it all, having your photo taken.

Sounds kind of rubbish, doesn’t it? I want you now to imagine yourselves inside the action. Catching up with your mates, doing the shots at the bar, eating the food, playing the games and having genuine moments with your favourite people. And all the while, someone’s there, photographing it. They’re letting the action unfold around them, finding the best angles to tell the right stories at the right time, anticipating what’s about to happen so the story can continue, shooting through a moment to find the best shot instead of directing people.

The first approach is probably what you’ve already seen at a wedding. The second approach is documentary wedding photography, because it has authenticity, memory and spontaneity at its heart.

Being in the moment…

Moments are the parts of wedding I focus on most. Details, location, group and couple photos all matter, but people turn these things into a wedding.

What’s a moment to me? It’s a one-off event. Something spontaneous that I didn’t create or direct. An emotional reaction. Some elements coming together and all clicking at once. Something that you want to see.

Photographing moments is a skill I’ve worked on and developed over time. Noticing things and capturing them while they’re happening means that I never intervene when a genuine moment is happening in front of me.

…and ready for the next

Expecting the unexpected

Stop posing. No really. I mean it.

Don’t ever pose.

Most couples want to spend a short amount of time taking some nice photos of themselves on a wedding day, and a documentary approach works well with this. As with the rest of your day, I like to be led by the couple I’m working with. The couple photos I like most have documentary or storytelling elements to them - you might see a bit of the landscape or some detail of the location, they might include movement or reflection, or be close and intimate.

I take care to make sure every couple can have beautiful portraits, without ever feeling like they’re posed. Most of the couples I work with get more awkward with more posing, so I like to pare it back, keep it simple and sometimes just go for a walk.

All the People

Most full day weddings include between 70 and 150 guests. While there’s a lot of focus on the two people getting married, there are at least 68 other people there, doing lovely things, having moments and emotions all day long. I think they should be represented in your photos. Taking a documentary approach means fewer straightforward couple photos, and fewer detail photos, but it means more people in your photos.

Letting the day unfold - the key to beating nerves

My tip for busting those camera-shy nerves? The one thing I tell every couple I work with?

Feel the fear, and do it anyway.

Because it’s disingenuous to suggest that being photographed is anything but awkward. I absolutely hate having my photo taken, and will run away from cameras. Camera shyness is real, but please don’t let it hold you back from enjoying your wedding.

I appreciate the tension between wanting to look good on camera, and wanting something real, but let me be super honest here.

Awkwardness comes across in photos when you try to pose. When you accept there’s a photographer there, but be involved in whatever you’re doing to the point of ignoring someone like me, that’s when you get the best photos.

It’s my job to get the real moments without any awkwardness or camera shyness on display.