Wedding Photography Style: Traditional, Contemporary and Documentary

When booking a wedding photographer you need to ask yourself an important question - "what style of wedding photography would we like?"

It's fair to say that us photographers can sometimes baffle people with jargon - especially when describing our styles of photography, such as traditional, reportage, contemporary, documentary, photojournalistic etc. So, here we have set out the 3 styles main styles on offer today. Of course, some photographers offer hybrids that pinch elements from all 3 of these style but most offer one main photographic style.

Hopefully this article will help you to decide on the style of photography you would like at your wedding.

Traditional Wedding Photography

This is a style you will all be familiar with. Carefully posed shots of groups ranging from the whole guest list right down to just the bride and groom themselves. The poses will be more classical that contemporary so don't expect any quirky shots including running or jumping for example. This style was very much all that was on offer up until the arrival of digital photography and it's fair to say that it is a much less popular style these days. Without wanting to stereotype this style is favoured more by the older generation whereas younger couples are more likely to favour a more contemporary style.

Documentary, Journalistic or Reportage Wedding Photography

This style of wedding photography is nothing new in terms of being a general photographic style, but it is relatively new to wedding photography. This style is informal when compared to traditional wedding photography as the photography is likely to have little or no interaction with the bride, groom or guests as the primary focus is to document the day as it happens. Don't expect set poses with this style as this is all about capturing you wedding day in as natural a way as possible. The photographer will try to remain as unobtrusive as possible and this will mean the avoidance of flash photography too. When done right this style produces the most emotional and naturally captivating photography and albums produced from this style are absorbing and addictive.

Contemporary wedding photography

This style sits somewhere between traditional wedding photography and the reportage styles, in many ways this style could be considered a hybrid of the two and that the only true styles are traditional and reportage. The reason this is a style in itself is because you will get the usual posed group shots but mixed with a much more fun and contemporary posing style. Often the photography will look for interesting way to use locations and settings in the setup of a shot and take advantage of the willingness of the bride and groom to create something extra special. The photographer will look to use unusual and interesting viewpoint in the shots in order to set them apart from being in any way traditional. Quite often, in addition to the contemporary posed shots the photographer will mix in some reportage style of shooting to create a balanced album that creates the story of a wedding day. The photographer will also spend longer editing the photos in post production so as to give the finished album the optimum impact.

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