Step 2: Style (and finding yours)
There are lots of wedding photography styles, and every photographer has a slightly different way of working. To get the images that you want on your wedding day, you need to make sure that your vision for your wedding photographs matches your photographer and their style.
Before you can even begin narrowing down photographers, you need to work out what styles you do and don’t like!
It may sound simple, but it is important to pick a wedding photography style that will work for you and your vision. The best way to find your photography style is simply by looking at other wedding photographs. Start by collecting images that you like, and noting the ones that you don’t.
Pinterest is a fabulous tool for this as you can save images to different boards. After a while you’ll start to see a pattern emerging. If your board is full of posed, dramatic, highly edited images then you know that this is the style you need to look for in photographer’s work. If your collection is full of ‘natural’ images, you know you need to look for a more documentary style photographer.
How does style affect your day?
The style you choose should also give you an idea of how intrusive your wedding photographer will be. If you’re drawn more towards big artistic images, expect your photographer to play a huge part of your day. To get this style of image they’ll need to spend a significant amount of time with you. They'll need to pose you and move you around a few different locations until you have the perfect photograph. If you are drawn to the more natural photographs then you can expect your photographer to blend into the background. In order to get a natural image, they need to almost disappear so that people don’t freeze when the camera is held up.
Get in touch
If you’re still unsure about what wedding photography styles will suit you, speak to some photographers. Wedding fayres are a fabulous way to meet a lot of varied photographers (and other suppliers) all in one day. As you look around you’ll get a feel for what kind of images draw you in. It also gives you a great opportunity to ask questions about certain images.
To find out a photographers preferred style, the quickest way is to go directly to their website. They’ll have a selection of their wedding images to view, showing the style that they use most often. This will help you to narrow down your search without leaving your living room!
The next step in choosing your wedding photographer is Experience. Take a look at our next blog for more tips. Step 3: Experience.
If you'd like to find out more about our photography style head over to the real wedding section of our blog and take a look at some of our past weddings.