Are you looking for a wedding photographer, but you’re not sure how to tell a great photographer from a mediocre one? I’m going to tell you what makes a great wedding photograph and how to identify great wedding photographers from not so great ones.
Your Wedding Photos Should Tell a Story!
Each photo should tell a story, a self contained story, so that anyone looking at the photo instantly knows what is happening in the photo and the context of the photo. Now you might think that’s obvious and easy to do, and almost every photo does this. But I’m going to tell you how MOST wedding photos fail at this and how to identify which photos tell a complete story, and which photos only tell a partial story.
Why is telling a full story important? Well, your wedding photographer’s ONLY job is tell your story through photographs. We should judge photographers on their story telling capabilities first and foremost. Look and style are personal preferences, but storytelling is objective. 5, 10, or especially 20 years from your wedding you’re going to forget a lot of the context of your wedding pictures. You might remember a few special details about the day, but everything else that you remember is only what was captured on your wedding day. Your photographs are what is going to preserve the memories of your special day.
A poem isn’t great because it uses refined prose to describe a mountain, what makes the poem great is when it draws out our humbling awe that the mountain makes us feel. Or how a poem connects two seemingly unrelated concepts into a unified idea through the use of metaphor or simile. A great poem combines multiple elements into one story, a great photograph does the same. So the way to tell how full of a story a photography has is simply to see how many elements are in the photo. Your wedding story is bigger than just the two of you, there’s a reason you’re inviting the people you are. You want to celebrate with them and have them be a part of your wedding too! The more elements, the fuller the story. Often that simply means a wider field of view. But more isn’t always better, all the elements also need to work together and be unified in a single goal, that’s the difference between a noisy cafe and a world class choir. There isn’t a single goal in a noisy cafe.
So what does combining multiple elements look like for wedding photography. You can have a photo of the two of you cutting your cake, which is a single element, or you can have a photo of the two of you cutting cake with all your closest friends and family cheering you on in the background, that’s multiple elements and tells a much fuller story. You can have a photo of your first kiss, that tells a focused and narrow story, or you can have a photo of your first kiss that includes your mom wiping a happy tear in the background, that tells a wider and complete story, it gives context to the subject of the photo. This applies to detail shots as well. The decorations you spent hours scrutinizing over don’t exist by themselves, they compliment all the other decorations! Why shouldn’t your detail shots include those other elements too?
And every story is a human story, so including details in the context of how they are meant to be used and enjoyed by us humans tells a fuller story than just a photo of the detail by itself. A simple example of this is a detail shot of your signing book, it’s part of your wedding day and should be captured. But, your guestbook is not just to look at, it’s there for your guests to fill out, so a much better photo is one of your guests filling out your guestbook. A ring shot is nice to have, I love ring shots as much as anyone, but a photo of your rings while you and your new spouse wear them, along with other details like a necklace, boutonniere, bouquet, tie, or even your own smile is a much more complete and compelling story than that of a photo of just your rings by themselves.
Having a focused photo of just a single element is fine, there is nothing wrong with those photos, they go great in albums next to other photos. You just need to also have photos of the whole scene. Just think about how you are going to experience your wedding photos. Unless you going to flip through your whole wedding album, you’re probably only going to view 1 or 2 or maybe 5 of your wedding photos at a time. Will those few photos tell enough of a complete story, or will you be missing some context? If you hire a storyteller, you can be sure that your wedding photos will tell a complete story that combines multiple elements. And when looking for a photographer, as you are looking through their portfolio, ask yourself what the story of each photo is. Do the photos capture enough elements to provide a deep, emotion, and complete story by themselves? Do their photos have emotional impact, leaving you to feel something about a couple that you don’t even know? That emotional impact often comes from combining multiple elements into a single story.
Start by checking to see how well my portfolio tell complete stories HERE
