Your Wedding Isn't a Photoshoot — But Great Photographs Still Need Time
One of the things I tell couples all the time is that your wedding isn't a photoshoot. You haven't invited all your favourite people, spent months planning everything and probably spent a frightening amount of money just so I can drag you around for three hours taking photographs. I want you to enjoy your wedding, enjoying it with everybody else, not spending half of it wondering when the photographer is finally going to leave you alone.
It's one of the reasons my approach to wedding photography has become increasingly relaxed over the 18 years I've been doing this. I'll organise the photographs that need organising, I'll give you some direction when you need it and I'll occasionally steal you away when the light is doing something particularly nice, but I'm not interested in turning your wedding into one enormous photoshoot.
There is, however, a slight catch.
I still need some time to take the photographs you've booked me to take.
That probably sounds ridiculously obvious, but one thing I've learnt over the years is that couples sometimes underestimate just how quickly a wedding day disappears. You come out of the ceremony thinking you've got hours ahead of you and suddenly everybody wants to congratulate you, somebody has put a drink in your hand, your auntie wants a photograph on her phone, half the guests have disappeared to the toilet and somebody else has decided this is the perfect moment to ask where you're going on honeymoon.
Before you know it, twenty minutes has disappeared without anybody really noticing.
I can work quickly. I can't manufacture time that isn't there.
I'm used to working quickly at weddings. Plans change, ceremonies run late, weather happens, cars get stuck in traffic and somebody important will inevitably disappear at exactly the moment we need them for a group photograph. That's wedding photography and, after 18 years, very little of it surprises me anymore.
What I can't do is create twenty minutes' worth of photographs in three minutes.
If you've booked me because you've looked through my website and loved the relaxed photographs of couples together, the photographs around a beautiful venue or those occasional big dramatic images when the light and location come together, I need a little opportunity to actually create them.
I'm not talking about disappearing for an hour while your wedding carries on without you. Quite often, fifteen or twenty relaxed minutes together is plenty. We can go for a wander, have a laugh, give you both a chance to escape everybody for a few minutes and create some lovely photographs without it feeling remotely like a formal photoshoot.
But those fifteen minutes need to actually be fifteen minutes.
If we spend ten of them finding people, waiting for somebody to finish a drink, looking for a missing jacket or repeatedly saying "we'll just do one more thing first", eventually the photography is the thing that gets squeezed.
That's when something that should have been relaxed suddenly starts feeling rushed.
Yes, you absolutely should be enjoying your wedding
I should probably make something very clear here before this starts sounding like the world's least fun wedding advice.
Have the drink.
Seriously. Have a glass of champagne when you leave the ceremony. Have a pint with your mates. Enjoy the wine with dinner and if your plan later in the evening involves shots, questionable dancing and waking up the following morning wondering where one of your shoes went, I'm certainly not there to judge you.
Your wedding is a celebration and I actively want people enjoying themselves. From a documentary wedding photographer's point of view, happy people having a brilliant time make considerably better photographs than everybody sitting politely waiting for something to happen.
But there's plenty of time for the bar.
If we've agreed we're going to spend a little time making photographs of the two of you, I'd always recommend doing that before everybody becomes completely settled into drinking mode. Once people have found the bar, jackets start coming off, ties loosen, lipstick has disappeared and gathering anybody together becomes increasingly similar to herding cats.
Slightly drunk cats, at that.
The photographs don't necessarily become worse as the day goes on — some of my favourite documentary photographs happen once everybody has properly relaxed — but the opportunity to create those beautiful photographs of the two of you while you're both looking and feeling fresh doesn't last forever.
The photographs you love didn't necessarily happen in thirty seconds
Social media can be slightly deceptive when it comes to wedding photography. You see one finished photograph on Instagram or my website, but you don't see what happened around it.
You don't see us walking across the grounds because I've spotted some nice light. You don't see me moving you three feet because there's a wheelie bin growing out of somebody's head in the background. You don't see us waiting thirty seconds for somebody to walk past or me changing position because the light works better from somewhere else.
And you definitely don't see me standing there looking at the sky thinking, come on... just give me another thirty seconds before that bloody cloud moves.
The photograph itself might take a fraction of a second to capture, but creating the opportunity for that photograph takes a little longer.
That's especially true if we're going somewhere specifically for photographs. If your ceremony location doesn't give us much to work with and there's somewhere nearby that would be fantastic, sometimes spending an extra fifteen or twenty minutes getting there can completely change what we're able to create.
Whether that's worth doing is entirely your decision. It's your wedding and I'll work with whatever time and locations you give me. I just want couples to understand that those decisions inevitably affect the photographs we're able to make.
You don't need hours away from your guests
This is probably the other extreme couples worry about. They've heard stories about photographers disappearing with the bride and groom for two hours while everybody else sits waiting for dinner and understandably think, absolutely not.
I wouldn't want that either.
My style of wedding photography is about telling the story of the whole wedding, which means I actually need you spending time with your guests. Some of the most important photographs I'll take won't involve any direction from me whatsoever. They'll happen while you're laughing with somebody, being hugged by a parent or completely unaware I'm photographing you from across the room.
The couple photographs are simply another part of that story.
Give me a sensible amount of uninterrupted time and we can usually create them far more quickly than if we're constantly stopping and starting. You can then get straight back to everybody else and, for the rest of the day, I'll mostly work around whatever you're doing.
Ironically, giving photography a little dedicated time often means spending less of your wedding thinking about photographs.
Build a little breathing room into your wedding day
One of the best things you can give yourself on your wedding day isn't another decoration, another favour or another carefully planned little detail.
It's time.
Wedding schedules that are packed down to the minute look wonderfully organised on paper, but weddings involve human beings and human beings are spectacularly bad at running exactly to schedule. Ceremonies start late. Congratulations take longer than expected. Somebody goes missing. Cars take longer to arrive. Your photographer asks for five minutes because the sun has suddenly appeared.
A little breathing room changes everything.
It means your group photographs don't feel frantic. It means we can take a relaxed walk rather than marching across the venue like we're late for a train. It means you can stop and talk to somebody without immediately worrying that you're now eight minutes behind schedule.
And it means that when we're taking photographs together, you're actually enjoying it rather than looking over my shoulder wondering where you need to be next.
That shows in the photographs.
Tell me what's important to you
Not every couple wants the same thing from their wedding photography, and that's absolutely fine.
Some couples adore photographs and want to make plenty of time for them. Others mainly want documentary coverage with a handful of photographs together. Some want lots of family groups; others want three and they're done. There isn't a correct answer.
The important thing is that we talk about it beforehand.
That's one of the reasons I have a final meeting with my couples. We can look at timings, talk about the photographs you want, work out when we're going to do them and make sure your expectations actually fit the time available.
If photographs of the two of you are particularly important, tell me. We'll make the time.
If you'd rather spend almost the entire day with your guests and only give me ten minutes, tell me that too. I'll make the best possible use of those ten minutes.
What I don't want is for you to expect the results of thirty minutes of photography while only allowing five minutes to create them.
Your wedding will disappear frighteningly quickly
Ask almost anybody who's already married what surprised them about their wedding and eventually you'll hear some version of "I couldn't believe how quickly it went."
You spend months, sometimes years, planning a day that seems to disappear in what feels like an afternoon.
That's partly why the photographs matter.
Long after the food has been eaten, the flowers have gone and nobody can quite remember how many drinks they eventually had, the photographs are still there. They're the bit that lets you see things you missed and remember people, conversations and moments that disappeared far too quickly while you were living them.
So yes, absolutely enjoy your wedding.
Go and talk to your guests. Have the champagne. Eat the food. Get on the dance floor. Have another drink and make some questionable decisions about whether you can still do the dance you used to do when you were 19.
Just give me a little bit of your time somewhere amongst all of it.
I don't want to take you away from your wedding. I just want enough time to make sure you have something brilliant to remember it by.
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