All you wanted to know about Photojournalistic Wedding Photography Style!

Photojournalistic Wedding Photography style is a new age wedding photography which combines elements of Candid (Natural photography), with artistic styles. The photographer’s focus is on pure STORYTELLING, with the narration of the entire wedding ceremony captured as a story through Images.

Photojournalism is the style of photography which captures everyday life as you see it. A lot of wedding photography has a staged feeling to it. This amounts to the rise in demand of a photojournalistic approach to shooting weddings, which brings in the storytelling photography, interviewing, and efficiency that goes into newspaper reportage into weddings.

Fast, loose, creative, organic, and most importantly: storytelling.

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It always has to be: Half Story, Half Photoshoot!

As a photojournalist, your approach to a wedding should be similar to the approach taken when doing an important assignment because both a wedding and a news event only happen once. The moment is there and then it is gone forever. So, you have to bring the same preparation, technical skills, and storytelling to bear.

How to Prepare for the Wedding Day?

It starts right from employing the technical skills to check boxing all the right equipment for the job. Not knowing the schedule, v.i.p’s, and venue could leave you scrambling. A must do in the process is while consulting with a potential client get to know them and ask as many questions as possible, about their hopes and aspirations, likes and dislikes, hobbies and painpoints, what makes them tick; and particular about their special day and how their relationship has grown. Take notes.

Knowing the ebb and flow of their relationship will assist your photography later on because you will be able see why a particular song, color, layout or custom is significant. It will also help prioritize your efforts because you cannot literally shoot everything or be at two places at once.

In addition to getting to know the couple better and learning their story, you need to know if they like your work, style and approach. It is pointless for you and for your client to make your respective investments if they don’t like photojournalism. Maybe they like everything posed, lit like a studio, or they like another photograph better. Before committing too much of yourself, find out if your client actually wants this particular artisitic style of wedding photojournalism.

Thesedays, all the majority of wedding packages also include a lot of peripherals like the Pre-Wedding shoot, Couple portrait sessions, Post wedding shoot or even a fashion shoot. In my experience, every couple — no matter how much they insist to the contrary — want some of the “standard” shots. They want a picture with their parents, family, bridal party even though they also want photojournalistic coverage of their day. You’re not barred or realistically exempt from getting these posed photos.

The ART of Group Photographs:

The beauty of this setting is that, you’re not confined to a formula that governs these photographs. You can include a lot of styles and elements here, from being creative, quirky, funny, serious, or just dead-pan! The mantra is Whatever Works Best!

Just make sure that the image brings attention to the bride and groom. You can position them in the center of the image or use creative composition to draw the eye to them. Like this image here: http://www.cajunmoonphotography.com

And to remember, portraits are always a major part of the day.

The Equipment

What you bring to a wedding varies greatly across photographers and depends on your personal shooting style as well as is contingent upon the venue, venue rules, wedding size, time, and a host of other factors. However, it is good to have a standard one-size-fits-all-Wedding-Kit which should usually have at least two DSLR bodies, multiple pro lenses, speed lights, and plenty of battery power and memory. Wedding photography doesn’t require the flagship, but good gear doesn’t hurt either.

If you can’t afford a Canon 5D or Nikon D700, opt for their cheaper (but excellent) bretheren. Whatever DSLR you use, always use the best lenses you can afford. Good glass will seriously improve image quality and enable you to address more situations creatively.

A consistent aperture throughout the zoom range allows you to use the same ISO settings on all your camera bodies despite the lens you have attached. This small factors make you all the more efficient because you won’t need to thunder-thumb a new ISO setting when you switch lenses. It also helps mitigate the lower image quality due to high-ISO noise that cropped sensors can produce by allowing you use a lower ISO setting.

Keep tuned in for the next post, where we share some of the most awesome Photojournalistic shots from Weddings across the Globe!

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