Years ago, when I first worked as a wedding photographer there appeared to be only one style. Every picture was posed and wedding photographers seemed to dominate the wedding day. I didn’t enjoy that very much and I heard that couples and guests didn’t either. I did other sorts of photography work, advertising, industrial, architectural, Press and editorial. I always did a few weekend weddings, early on, I did them the way I was trained, but it never felt comfortable.
I was always very interested in documentary photography. Work by people like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliot Erwitt and W. Eugene Smith inspired my personal work.
One day I got thinking about documentary photography and weddings. What a great subject a wedding would make for a documentary photographer. At the end of the eighties a photographer friend of mine asked me if I would photograph his Sister’s wedding. He could have done a great job himself but he was an Usher and a guest. We talked it over and with the blessing of everyone involved I set about it as a documentary photographer would. We agreed I would do some posed pictures of the Bride and Groom and the principle guests but the majority of the pictures would be in a “fly on the wall” style. My chance to try a new approach to wedding photography had arrived. I had a great time but I never really saw the pictures because I handed the films over to my friend. From that wedding on though I decided I would work as a documentary photographer whenever I was asked to photograph a wedding.
Around the same time that I started working in this way, as is often the case with trends, other photographers began to offer a similar approach. What happened next was a new style of wedding photography. I thought long and hard about what it was I was offering. Choosing to work this way was not a purely stylistic decision. It was in response to the “photographer dominated” style of wedding photography that was around at the time. I heard loads of complaints about photographers spoiling the celebrations by taking a long time over posed pictures. I also believed I could make beautiful documentary pictures while working virtually unnoticed.
I decided the way forward for me was to formulate a philosophy, a kind of manifesto of wedding photography. What I didn’t want to do was take over, I didn’t want to set up or contrive pictures in any way and I didn’t want to influence the day. My involvement as a photographer would end with looking for, and making images that would be both flattering and tell the story of the wedding.
Photography is all about light, the word comes from the Greek and literally translates as light writing, the traditional wedding photographer would position the subject in the best light or add lighting to create an interesting or beautiful image. As an impartial observer I couldn’t do that, I would have to look for the light, position myself and wait for my subject to move into the best position. Traditional photographers posed their subjects and encouraged a suitable expression with banter or requests to smile. The impartial observer has to watch and move and follow until the elements that make a strong, story telling image come together, what my hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson calls “the decisive moment”. As a wedding photographer, my job is to collate a series of “decisive moments” that will work together in sequence and series to create the story of a wedding day.
In those early days I made a lot of the pictures on black and white film and printed them myself in the darkroom. I made some pictures in colour because couples have usually thought long and hard about the colours they want to use on their day so it is important to record them. Black and white though is an excellent story telling medium. When you look at a colour picture the first thing you notice is the colour, even when it is subdued colour can be a distraction. Even though now we can decide at the processing stage whether we are going to make colour or black and white we still favour black and white for about 60% of the pictures. We offer customers the choice to have all of the pictures in colour but almost all choose to go with our decision.
So now there’s two of us. Part of our job as impartial observers is to be as unobtrusive as possible. That does not mean that we hide with long lenses like voyeurs, it means we blend in to the day and conduct ourselves in a way that doesn’t draw attention. As much as possible we will avoid using flash, for one it is intrusive and secondly available light is often more attractive and realistic.
It’s not all “fly on the wall” though. Couples still ask us to make 4 or 5 group pictures so that they have an assured record of some of those that shared their day. It would be remiss to not make a beautiful portrait of the Bride and Groom soon after they are married. Even with these posed pictures we are very careful that the pose and lighting is very natural and in no way contrived.
Together we photograph around 40 weddings a year all over the UK and beyond in our narrative style as impartial observers.
Steven Taylor
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