5 Wedding Photographs I’ll NEVER Take…. Probably

…. Unless you pay me and we never talk about it (obviously)

Every photographer has a few pictures they secretly dread being asked to take.
Lets get all the kids together
Lets do all the kilts (If you are Scottish)
Can make this one black and white but keep the flowers in colour?

All of these requests are nails down a blackboard to many photographers.

Not because they’re technically difficult. Not because there isn’t time. Simply because something deep inside them whispers: Please don’t make me do this.

These are mine. My top five

And before anyone becomes furious, photography is subjective. If you love any of these pictures, commission them, frame them and hang them above the fireplace. It’s your wedding.

Just perhaps don’t ask me to take them.

1. The dress or shoes hanging from a tree

Genuinely, why?

Your wedding dress is about to be worn for one of the most important moments of your life. Why, shortly before that happens, would we suspend it from a branch, chandelier, curtain rail or other structurally questionable perch?

The shoes receive similar treatment. Shoes in trees. Shoes on wall lights. Shoes on a table (God forbid! – new shoes on a table will give your granny a fit). Shoes arranged somewhere no reasonable person would ever put a pair of shoes.

I’m very happy to photograph the details you chose. I’ll find good light, arrange them beautifully and make them feel part of the story.

I just won’t make your Jimmy Choos look as though they’ve been chucked from a moving car.

2. The couple trapped underneath the veil

I know I may alienate a few of you here, but I REALLY hate this picture.

It has appeared everywhere, including very recently in coverage of Dua Lipa’s wedding (which scrores extra bonus points for her fingers poking out his nose)

All this proves only that even extremely fashionable people can drop a clanger (imo)

Rather than intimate and romantic, it always puts me in mind of a cartoon trope in which some one has escaped and the ‘men in white coats’ catch them enormous butterfly net (maybe I consumed too many Gary Larson cartoons as a kid) – either way, its gives me the ick.

Veils are beautiful. They move, catch the light and can add something genuinely spectacular to a photograph. I simply don’t feel the need to crawl underneath one with you.

3. The aggressively over-flashed “editorial” photograph

“Hypocrite!” I hear you shout at your phone as you scroll down my Instagram and find several photographs taken with direct flash.

Fair point.

But I’d argue that those photographs suited the individual wedding. Direct flash can look fantastic at the right moment, in the right surroundings and with the right couple.

What it isn’t is a one-size-fits-all recipe for making every wedding look “editorial.”

Set flash to stun. Place couple against wall. Produce enormous black shadow. Tilt camera slightly. Congratulations, apparently we work for Vogue now?

Using flash badly and calling it editorial doesn’t make the picture fashionable. It highlights that the photographer hasn’t yet discovered how the flash works when separated from the camera.

That should perhaps result in a temporary wedding ban while they read the instructions.

4. “Shot on film”

To be clear, there are wonderful photographers producing genuinely beautiful work on film.

This isn’t about them (I used to be one of those guys)

This is about the astonishing amount of absolute guff online being protected by the phrase shot on film, as though loading a roll of Portra automatically transforms poor exposure, missed focus, camera shake and bad composition into ‘art’.

Some of us are old enough to have photographed weddings on film because there wasn’t another option.

Had we returned to clients with 90 per cent of what is currently presented as intentionally imperfect analogue ‘authenticity’, we wouldn’t still be photographers.
We might not even have made it to the following Saturday.

Grain can be beautiful. Imperfection can be beautiful.
Film has a character that digital photography doesn’t precisely reproduce.

But sometimes a bad photograph is simply a bad photograph wearing an expensive little “shot on film” hat.

5. Behind-the-scenes content about me creating your content

I’ve already expressed my feelings about this in [Your Wedding Isn’t Content], but let’s briefly return to the subject.

Ray-Ban Meta glasses. A 360-degree camera attached to the camera. Another camera filming the photographer taking the photograph so the photographer can later post a video of themselves being a photographer.

At some point, the wedding itself becomes buried beneath several layers of content documenting the production of more content.

I’m not an influencer. I’m not a content creator. I’m a photographer, and I’m entirely unapologetic about that.

I’m there to pay attention to the day, look after the couple and produce photographs that matter to them. I don’t want half my attention occupied by how impressive I might look doing it.

Your wedding is not the behind-the-scenes footage for my personal brand.

That’s what hot takes like this are for. 😁

In slightly more serious terms…

None of these photographs is morally wrong.
Nobody needs to report your photographer because they placed your shoes in a tree.

My objection is to wedding photography becoming a checklist of fashionable tricks applied indiscriminately to every couple.

The technique should serve the picture.
The picture should serve the wedding.
And the photographer should serve the paying client.

Everything else is just shoes up a tree.