Recently, I submitted two articles to Southern California’s Wedding Compass blog: the first one was posted here on my blog last week, about the different styles of wedding photography. The article below was my second submission that is more personal and emblematic of my passion and style. In writing this article, it is my hope that potential clients, other wedding vendors and photographers will have a better understanding of what defines a wedding photojournalist and what sets one apart from another. Please feel free to add any comments or questions you have to these posts.

The Real Wedding Photojournalist

So what is a true “wedding photojournalist?” He/she is a photographer who is dedicated, from beginning to end, to photograph a wedding like a Time Magazine photographer might photograph the “day in the life” of President Obama. His/her desire is to capture the actual story of the day with all the emotion, drama, and reality that develops without any prompting whatsoever. A client who selects a wedding photojournalist or a documentary wedding photographer should be doing so because they are not interested in contrived, staged, posed or set-up style photographs that their photographer creates for the sake of making a “perfect” photo. This client has no interest in having photographs made that are more like illusions or portrayals of truth, controlled by the photographer. A client choosing a documentary style photographer does so because they desire for their photographer to capture the reality of the day with all it’s beauty and all it’s flaws. Emotional, spontaneous, quirky, unique, energetic images of the day that a skilled and artistic photojournalist will seek to capture, with careful anticipation and thoughtful composition.

The wedding photojournalist usually arrives well before the bride is dressed and stays until they take the last photo of the bride and groom well into the reception. At times, finding him/herself up close and personal so that the photographs make the viewer feel as if he/she is a participant of the moment. Other times during the day, the wedding photojournalist steps back to seek imagery that includes the environment and elements within the scene to help make interesting compositions. These images are those that you would find as a single image used by a magazine that provide much detail. The who, what, where, why questions are all answered in one image. The end result is a narrative collection of images that show actual emotions and experiences of the days events.

A true photojournalist will not work off a list of photographs that the bride provides him/her (except the list of formal portraits). The goal of the photographer is to allow the day to happen without any intrusion. The photojournalist stays out of the way as best as he/she can and allows the personalities and memories to develop without any help. A traditional or hybrid photographer will either work off a list provided by the client or have a memorized list of “must have” photos he/she accomplishes each and every wedding: the same pose or set up, just different bride and groom. The perfect client attracted to the style of a wedding photojournalist is more interested in having a collection of photos that are real to life, memories of their unique day, photos that will show how the day actually unfolded, and are not concerned about making sure everything looks perfect. If you are requiring your photographer to create “illusions” of reality, employing him/her to contrive and stage the photos to ensure they portray moments of “love”, “passion”, and “happiness” that the photographer directs (something more like a fairy tale), then you should be more inclined to choose a traditional or hybrid style photographer.

Photojournalism is a skill, not just the name of a style of photography. The very best wedding photojournalists have the unique talent of anticipating and capturing moments and simultaneously able to position themselves so that they frame their images in powerful compositions that tell a story in a single photograph. Often a photographer using this style has experience in journalism – newspapers, magazines, etc. If not, the wedding photojournalist learns his craft through finding inspiration from those who have media backgrounds. They find their inspiration from outside the world of wedding photography, studying great journalists and media photographers like Henri Cartier Bresson, Sebastião Salgado and James Nachtwey. They also associate themselves and collaborate with wedding photographers around the world who having had prior journalism backgrounds, who have made the successful transition into wedding photography.

Many photographers claim they are wedding photojournalists because they capture “candids” during the wedding day to some degree. There is a difference between candid and documentary photos, however, which separates a true wedding photojournalist from every other wedding photographer. There are some pure photojournalists who will not pose one single photograph through out the day. These purists typically won’t lift a finger to “beautify” a messy bride’s room, or move details, like the bouquet or the bride’s shoes, to better light or a more pleasing setting. There are those photojournalists who do fudge a little and break the rules for staging some portraits and provide some creative license when photographing inanimate objects like the bride’s jewelry, flowers, and hanging dress. For those “less pure” photojournalists, their breakdown between posed and documentary style is more like 3 to 5% posed/contrived, 95 to 97% non-posed. A more “hybrid” style wedding photographer will have ratio of posed to candids in the range of 30/70 or even 50/50.

If you are not sure whether your photographer is truly a photojournalist or more of a hybrid style photographer, look at his/her complete work. Ask him/her to show you a complete set of proofs from one wedding. Also, what does he/she show mostly on their blog or website? Do you have to really look hard for posed or contrived images or are they displayed just as prominently as their candid and documentary photos? You will know that your photographer is a true photojournalist if you have to search through hundreds of proofs in one wedding before seeing your first posed image or if you have to flip through several pages of the photographer’s sample albums before finding a few posed images.

Moments of time are “momentary,” never to happen again. A wedding photojournalist doesn’t create moments, he specializes in capturing them as they naturally happen.