Weddingbee Blog

I have a great love for candid photography. Here are a few of my own shots, and I love how even candids can have almost pre-meditated composition and portrait-type feels to them. I try to convey to people that I don’t want every photograph of my wedding day to be serene and picture-perfect, like the photographer is holding their breath and waiting for that moment that conveys the bride’s tranquility while she’s in quiet thought. I want photos of me being stressed out. I want photos that convey tension, that accurately convey all the emotion that is going on throughout the day. But they just don’t get it.

My parents look at the image below of my aunt and uncle at a wedding, a photo which I love because it carries such emotion in a way you might describe a painting or any piece of art, but they think it’s just terribly unflattering. I think a photo like this would have likely been tossed out in the editing process from a wedding collection that a photographer presented to the bride. But I still love it, and hey - my wedding photos are for me, and I’m sure at the 500-1000 some odd images that photographers are able to pump out throughout the day there will be plenty of “normal” photos to satisfy the parents.

Photojournalism seems to be a big bridal craze, but more than one book I’ve read has touched on the fact that many brides think that they want a photojournalistic approach to capture the day just as it unfolds and don’t see the merit in posing against a fake backdrop with the studio lights set just so, but then they are let down when they realize they missed out on the “formals.” Granted, I think most seasoned wedding photographers out there that tout a photojournalistic approach do allow time for formals, and do manage to pull them off wonderfully in more natural settings; it’s something to keep in mind to make sure of and to allow time for even if just for 20 or 30 minutes.

And just to prove that not all my candid shots have the subject doing a stare down of sorts with the camera, here are a couple more, again with a bit of an emotional charge to them, but in a more light-hearted sense: