“We’re not good in front of the camera” - How to rethink your wedding day photography
“We’re not good in front of the camera.” This is something I hear often. And my response is “Same.” It doesn’t matter that it’s my job, as soon as there is a lens on me, all of my anxieties rise to the surface… my right eye is weird, I don’t want a double chin, I am so tall, how goofy is my smile going to look?, please for the love of beauty don’t be a goof…. but I sink into some mechanized half-version of myself, warping my face into a photograph I never want to look at again.
SO, I GET IT! And there is so much aspirational wedding content out there. Try to give those photographs context: is it styled? is it real? are they models? The luxury market can portray weddings a certain way without giving much attention to the natural ebb and flow of real wedding days.
It’s not very natural to have a camera to follow you around all day. But I will say this, wedding photography is different.
There is so much going on that inevitably, that the assumptions we make: I need to be good at this, I need to know what to do, how to stand, where to look… that gets abandoned. And in the hands of a skilled photographer, they will take on those responsibilities for you.
Your wedding day isn’t supposed to be a performance. It should not be designed as an eight hour photo shoot. It’s a series of moments that already carry their own weight, their own movement.
The role of photography isn’t to improve them, but rather find frames that are evocative of story, feeling, and light.
There may be moments of guidance, but this happens in a photographer’s ability to notice when it might be right for you to get a moment of quiet, how the light falls beautifully on your face, what you can do with those hands of yours.
From there, things tend to unfold on their own, especially as the less formal aspects of the day fall away. Most couples are surprised at how little they had to try and how much fun they had even when they knew they were being photographed.
When there is trust and comfort, I find couples worry less about how they look and focus on how they feel. And that’s what stays in the photographs.
Below a small gallery of real couples on their wedding day, in front of my camera, at various moments. Their awareness of my presence flickers in some of these photographs, at other times, they’re immersed in the moment. Regardless, all wonderful people deserving of great photographs.
