Photographic Style and Your Wedding - Photojournalism

This is the second in a set of articles that looks at different styles of wedding photography. The previous post focussed on Traditional wedding photography, and a video illustrating that style can be viewed on Vimeo. A separate set of slides has been written to accompany this post, also on Vimeo (Photojournalism files)


One of the most popular approaches to wedding photography is variously referred to as Photojournalism, Candid and Reportage. Where Traditional wedding photography is an extension of portraiture, Photojournalistic wedding photography is like editorial reporting. It is candid; images are unposed and the photographer tries to avoid imposing any control on the day. In this sense it is the opposite of Traditional Wedding Photography, where the intent is to control light, posing and the environment..

The role of the photojournalist is to capture images that report the wedding, images that, viewed as individual photographs or as a collection, evoke the the emotions of the day. In trying to achieve authenticity, the photographer tries to avoid imposing their ideas or interpretations on the parties and to this end aims to be unobtrusive, virtually invisible. This places restrictions on the kind of equipment that is suitable and where the photographer can place themselves - no artificial lighting, no reflectors, no capacity to remove unsightly beckgrounds, and very limited use of Photoshop after because that would undermine the "integrity" of the imagery, and photojournalists are committed to "Truth" in photography.

 In a sense, this is a style that has really only become possible with the advent of high-end digital equipment capable of operating in very low light levels. Until very recently, the best 35mm cameras shooting high speed film were the only cameras with low light level capabilities anything like those of current pro level digital SLRs - cameras with very fast lenses loaded with the fastest black and white films could approximate digital ISO levels with special processing; colour films never achieved similar speeds.

An odd consequence of this is that what was a form of photography possible only for highly skilled professionals with very expensive cameras and top skills in the darkroom is now attracts the least experienced shooters of all. 

Never having learned to handle lighting, posing and the rudiments of quality photography, they call themselves “photojournalistic photographers” and by blazing away with high-end Nikons and Canons they manage to come up with enough acceptable photos  burnt straight to disk with minimal retouching because to “tamper” with the picture would undermine the integrity of the image!

Do not take that as a criticism of the style, nor of the many very skilled photographers who truly ARE photojournalists - It’s just that I have met too many of the other kind lately - or rather, have been brought too much of their work in the hope that I could salvage something from it.

Because the photographer has so little control over the conditions in this style of work, it often requires extra time editing and correcting for exposure, saturation colour temperature, flare... but editing only elements which are not central to the story - that is important, because photojournalists are at heart, storytellers.

The first of these storytellers is generally thought to be Denis Reggie whose photograph of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Bissett Kennedy  after their marriage is a foundation image in the genre. He coined the phrase wedding photojournalism back in 1980 to describe a way of covering the wedding "in real time”, with respect for the natural ebb and flow of the day. The Traditional photographic approach, with its need to set up photos, pose people, alter the setting, light the environment like a stage and prompt subjects as to how they should stand or when they should smile, is obvious contrary to this approach.

Photojournalistic Wedding Photographers work as unobtrusively as possible to capture the “reality” of the event without becoming involved in it. Rather than setting up portraits, they seek out events that happen spontaneously to tell the story. A few are so committed to this philosophy that they will not shoot posed photos at all - but most wedding photojournalists provide at least the basic group photos that your Dad and Grandma want to see on their walls. Even here, though, they will often aim for a relaxed and fluid style, rather than more traditional set pieces.