What Makes a Documentary Wedding Photograph?

Wedding photography - and particularly the documentary image - takes up a superb deal of my thinking time when I am sat at my desk editing or reading on the internet. It's a passion as well as a job so I'm quite generally distracted by other photographers web pages or acquiring involved in discussions on the numerous forums that cover the topic. One certain discussion I was involved with earlier this week asked the question:


"What defines a 'documentary / reportage / observational' photograph?"


and it really is one particular of those deceptively easy questions that gets you thinking about every thing that you do.


Weddings are littered with cameras these days - every guest ought to have one - so what is it that I am doing on the day that differs from everybody else that is taking photographs?


**The majority of my operate on the day is unposed**
I am searching for truthful, all-natural and unselfconscious photographs of how the wedding day was for everyone who experienced it on the day. (Guests' photographs tend to be about producing other guests stand and smile for the camera.)


**My photography on the day is about telling a story**
Wether it is inside a single image or a sequence of images I'm always seeking to tell the story of the wedding day in each and every photograph. I am consistently searching to show the emotional interaction that is happening on the wedding day - not every photograph is about smiling and searching at the camera much more regularly it's about the heightened emotions of the day - crying, laughing, kissing, becoming proud, getting overwhelmed, becoming nervous, becoming seriously Truly pleased, becoming human.


It really is most importantly about what is happening 'between' people today. Photographing the connections and reactions of the wedding day. I seriously like that there are so countless emotions that couples, parents and buddies go via that it tends to make telling the story of the day so compelling for me.


**It's far more than 'snapshots'**
I've been asked just before "With so a number of guests clicking away throughout the day why not just collect all their shots together and make an album?".


Some of the explanations above will go someway to answering the question but I would also say that it really is not their 'job' to document the day. They are portion of the day. I am watching, waiting, anticipating and building photographs that are not just tiny slices of the day but form component of a narrative that tells the story of the occasion - in an aesthetic, artistic and pleasing way (I hope).


Just before I click the shutter I am not just thinking about who is in the frame but exactly where we are, what the light is like, what I want to say, how preferred to communicate what the photograph will tell us, what to incorporate in the frame and what to leave out and what is the split second in time that will register the emotions of the scene (or when is the punchline coming in the speech so I can get everybody laughing at the exact same time!).
Every guest takes a 'snapshot' so they can remember becoming there but a fantastic documentary photographer communicates the emotion of the day to people who weren't there - or who haven't however been born.