As Wedding Photographers predominantly working in a documentary style, we love to capture moments as they happen and build a story around them. There are lots of different types of styles which we go into more detail in this article.
We’ve curated a few of our favourite moments from recent weddings and will discuss the story behind the image and what we love about taking these kinds of images.
First up we have this moment from the speeches at Katie and Charles Wedding. The tears in Katie’s eyes as her dad dishes out equal measures of emotional tales, embarrassing anecdotes and heartfelt memories had everyone in the room in tears. As a dad myself, there is a chance I’ll be reading something similar to a room full of our nearest and dearest one day, so I’ll be keeping copious notes over the coming few decades.
I adore images like this, as a stand-alone image it works, but also as a storytelling moment, when put together with wider shots of the room, her dad and reactions from everyone else, it gives the viewer a sense of what it felt like to be there and that’s the aim of good documentary wedding photography.
I adore this moment from Duaa and Titus wedding. Duaa and Titus were quite a last-minute booking for us, normally we book 1-2 years in advance, but their wedding came in 6 weeks before their wedding – I’m so grateful that we were available for it!
Titus’ Dad was giving a reading during their beautiful outdoor ceremony and the emotions were out in full force. The split-second our wonderful Bride and Groom glanced back I grabbed a shot knowing it was the kind of thing that would bring them straight back to that warm afternoon in August when a hundred or so of their family and friends joined them to celebrate the start of a new story.
When I’m capturing images like this often I’m trying to give context to the emotion – it would be too easy to crop in close on Duaa’s face and entirely isolate her, but leaving more in the frame – Titus’s smile and his dad’s slightly sterner expression captures what was going on and where they were, as well as who they were with.
Another ceremony shot – this time from the beautiful Katie and Max’s day in early 2019. As is the brides prerogative, Katie was running a teensy bit late for the ceremony, leaving Max to stand in anticipation and nerves at the front of the ceremony.
Surrounded by 5 of his closest friends all of who were clearly feeling the nerves of the moment too. It would have been easy for me to stay alongside Katie at this point, but being at the front with Max served two-fold, firstly Katie could have a private moment with her dad (big important life moment for both dad and bride!) and secondly I could wait for the exact split-second that Max saw his soon-to-be wife coming through the doors. I knew the look on his face would be worth it – and it was! A shot like this interspersed with shots of the bride coming down the aisle is a fundamental way of communicating the emotion in the story and something we always look to capture. Shots like these celebrate moments that were truly fleeting – yet are the moments you want to look back on anytime you want to feel what it was like to be there that day.