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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Wedding Portraits - It's All In The Planning


What photography style is the best for my wedding? Every photographer has their own preferred style be it: Traditional, Photojournalism, Illustrative or Creative. It's All In The Planning!

Traditional photography is any formal or informal portrait of the bridal party, family, and friends that is close-up or full length, as well as candid photographs of key events at the wedding. Most brides choose this mixed version of photography for their wedding day. The nice part about traditional photography is that, ultimately, you have a set of professional portraits of your family and loved ones. The disadvantage of relying only on traditional portraiture is that your pictures may lack the energy, passion, and the raw emotion surrounding your wedding.

Wedding Photojournalism has become a very popular style of wedding photography and is essentially a series of candid photographs covering the events of the entire day. Wedding photojournalism is said to appeal to the bride and groom that want a series of unique photographs designed to "tell a story" or narrate the wedding day. Photojournalism means photographs that are not posed. All photographs would be taken without any instruction from or awareness of the photographer. There are drawbacks to wedding photojournalism since there is usually no pre-planned "shot list." The resulting images can be unpredictable because the images reflect only the wedding photojournalist 's response to events as they happened.

Illustrative photographers think in terms of design elements, composition and backgrounds. Good use lighting is said to be a trait of this style of wedding photography. The photographer provides subtle direction and the couple and bridal party are encouraged to interact with one another. This results in a more spontaneous feel. The disadvantage is that your images may look like the images one sees in magazines.

A Creative photographer takes advantage of engaging camera perspective and the lure of natural lighting provided in the scene to create aesthetically pleasing portraits. This type of photographer creates his or her artistic impression of your wedding day. While these effects can help create a modern photo collection, the drawback is that ten years from now, your photographs may look dated.

Of the many approaches to wedding photography, the good photographer does not limit himself to one photographic style. Rather, a combination of styles (traditional, photojournalism, illustrative and creative) come together to create one personalized style representing the lasting partnership being formed by the bride and groom.

The value of a Wedding Pre-Planning Consultation cannot be overlooked. The goal is to fashion a vision of what the wedding storybook will become. The entire wedding party will feel more at ease on the wedding day and truly enjoy being involved in the creation of original wedding images. Each collection of wedding images then becomes unparalleled in its ability to chronicle the adventure, the epic drama and the romance of this most wonderful day.