What Is The Point Of Wedding Photography? – Part 2: The State We’re In
Photographers have attached themselves almost indelibly to weddings.
This raises two questions that I’d like to explore here.
1) How did this happen?
2) Is there a negative consequence?
The answer to the first question is fairly simple: habit.
Once couples decided they wanted to have a record of their wedding day, they needed to hire a professional: someone who had the equipment and knew how to use it. It stayed that way for a long time. For decades, exposing film correctly and producing a quality print were skilled jobs. If you wanted photographs, you had to hire a professional.
Once we had our foot in the door, we never left. Over the past century, we have made ourselves so much part of the wedding landscape that couples now automatically factor in hiring a photographer for their day.
Which leads me on to the second question about a negative consequence. I’m concerned that there is one – one that might be being overlooked to the commercial detriment of professional wedding photographers.
I worry that our privileged position has caused the wedding photography industry to start placing itself above the occasion.
You can see signs of this in entries for the reportage wedding photography category at professional competition judgings, where staged moments are quite often put forward ahead of real ones. It’s almost as if the wedding photographer has contrived the moment because the real version could never be as good. It’s hardly surprising when you consider that I can recall one judge, himself a successful wedding photographer, claiming: “The best reportage shots are posed”.
You can also hear it in the words of photographers who tell stories of how they “manage” the couple on their day so that they get the shots that they (the photographers) want.
You can see it in those photographers who show up at weddings dressed in trendy black combat fatigues. Clothing is a form of communication. Combat gear, or jeans, or cargo pants say one thing at a wedding: “I do not need to conform to this event” – unless, of course, everyone else is dressed in outdoor gear.
You can hear it in the stories told by couples about the photographers at friends’ weddings. Incidentally, you should read what videographers have to say about us. Just have a nose through the comments posted with the first installment of this series of articles.
It saddens me.
I realize that I’ve opened myself up for all manner of criticism and comment from my colleagues by writing these words. But I really do believe we are allowing this disturbing trend to gain traction in wedding photography.
I also think it has a consequence we might not have fully appreciated.
This lack of respect may be one of the important causes of the commercial problems many professional wedding photographers are experiencing at the moment. We like to blame everything on other photographers undercutting our rates, usually part-timers. Or on the fact that modern cameras mean that anyone can take a picture. Or that anyone can call themselves a photographer. Or that brides don’t appreciate what we do. Yet we never stop to consider that if as a profession we are gradually losing respect for the occasion of marriage, bridal couples might lose their respect for us as professionals in return.
In the final part of this series of posts, I’ll look at what we might do about it.
