This is still the preferred style to photograph a wedding, although things are changing. It was most probably this technique that was used to photograph your parents’ or grandparents’ wedding. The photographer will pose his subjects (bride, groom, bridesmaids, whoever it may be) to get the perfect angle, lighting or placement of a background object. With this style, the photographer becomes quite intrusive, and many couples these days prefer a less disruptive wedding photographer. We encourage at least some of your images to be taken using this style as it complements the more informal images in your album, and also keeps nan happy.

This is our preferred style as it allows the wedding to go ahead without the photographer interfering too much. Rather than posing you for your photos, as in portraiture or formal photography, the photographer works around you, capturing the events of your special day. This allows for more spontaneous images, natural emotions, and a truer record of the wedding day. We do encourage, however, some formal photography to balance out your wedding album.

Often portraiture or formal wedding photographers use a flash to generate artificial light to brighten up a subject. The problem with this is that it ‘flattens’ the image and creates unsightly shadows behind the subject. We use some very fast lenses (one f/1.4 and two f/2.8 lenses, for those of you who are photo savvy) which allows us to photograph even in dark interiors or in the early evening, without using a flash. When we do use a flash, it’s always set to ‘bounce’ mode (the light bounces off the walls or ceiling) to simulate natural, angled lighting.

In the old days wedding photographers had to bring different film types (usually in separate cameras) if they wanted to capture both colour and black and white images. With digital technology, however, photographers capture everything in colour and convert to black and white later, using photo-editing software. It is generally accepted that back and white photography is better for portraits as it accentuates the tones across the face without showing up any skin blemishes. Some images just have to be black and white, as they lose their unique ‘feel’ when in colour. When creating your album we will have a mixture of colour and black and white (unless you explicitly ask otherwise) but we will try to keep black and white photographs together on one double page and do the same for colour.

This can range from sepia toning (a brownish colouration of the image), vignetting (darkening the image borders) and soft-focus (the soap-opera look) to more time-consuming effects like masking a brightly coloured object in a photo and turning the rest back and white (see the image on the left). We will use some of these effects but only if they complement the image, otherwise we prefer to keep the images as natural as possible (unless, of course, you ask otherwise!)