Photographing the bride getting ready is always an exciting part of the day for a documentary wedding photographer. There’s usually a great deal going on and emotions are all over the place. In the space of a few minutes a bride can go from calm and relaxed to nervous and excited. The bridal preparations are not only a chance to set the scene and to meet the bridesmaids, mum and dad, but sometimes it’s the first time I’ll meet the bride too as many couples book me without meeting before their big day.

I like to begin the story by photographing both hair and makeup as these are both important parts of the preparations. However, a real pivotal moment in the bride’s day is the moment she steps into her wedding dress. I’ve shot enough weddings in my time that this sort of thing doesn’t embarrass me, but I’m well aware that I am a man and some brides may feel a little uncomfortable having a male presence in the room whilst they hop into their dress. I’m always very respectful of the intimacy of this moment which is why I will ask the bride if she’d like me to leave the room and wait outside or simply face the other way and wait until she’s ready.

I’ve always described myself as a documentary wedding photographer, long before that term became fashionable. To me it has always meant more than just documenting a day with pictures of people not looking at the camera. It’s about capturing the very fabric of the day without interfering. It’s a mindset as much as it is a photographic style.

Weddings make up 90% of my commissions and whilst these are a superb opportunity for social documentary photography, some couples inevitably want maybe one or two slightly more orchestrated shots. A shot of them with Grandma, or a couple of them together on their own. Heavily posed portraits are a little counterintuitive to the way I approach the rest of the day – I don’t create the moments I prefer to capture them when they happen – so any portraits that I may take will be very relaxed indeed, often simply following the couple as they take a short walk around the venue or surrounding areas.

At a recent london wedding, I joined the couple in their Bentley as they made their way from Clerkenwell to the Rembrandt in Kensington when they decided to have a little pitstop at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. I jumped out of the car with them and spent around 10 minutes taking pictures of them walking and talking. This is always a lovely time for the happy bride and groom as it’s often the only time they get to actually spend on their own away from their guests. A quiet moment alone to absorb all the emotions running through their heads.

I try and keep some distance to allow the couple a bit of privacy to talk about all the events of the day so far and as we walked I spotted this overhanging tree. I set up my composition and waited for a bit of interaction between them. When the groom said something to his new wife she turned towards him and I had my shot. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

For wedding photographers: Taken using a Canon 5D Mark III with the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L Mark II at 24mm.

Wedding photography has evolved. It’s not the same as it once was. Sure, there are still plenty of more traditional wedding photographers providing a more formal service. But a whole new style of wedding photography has emerged. This documentary style wedding photography seeks to do more than just record who was there and what they were wearing. It seeks to capture the very fabric of the day. The emotions, the love, the laughter, the big moments and the little moments in between.

When photographing weddings I like to push myself to deliver something unique. Unconventional wedding photography. Things that perhaps another photographer wouldn’t see or capture. Little snapshots of the day that could easily get forgotten if they weren’t preserved in print. I’m not talking about irrelevant details, but little things that played a part in the day.

This picture doesn’t look much like a wedding photograph. It’s pretty unconventional in that it doesn’t include the bride, groom or any guests at all. It’s not a detail shot and it doesn’t even include the venue per se. But there’s something I really like about this photograph taken at Notley Abbey in Buckinghamshire. The horse in question overlooked the entire wedding day, albeit somewhere off in the distance. Since he was witness to the couple’s beautiful outdoor ceremony I came back to revisit him later that day. Whilst guests were celebrating, our horse was grazing. Not a care in the world. A bit like the happy couple that evening.

This picture will make a wonderful scene setting image within the couple’s album as we move from the afternoon celebrations into the evening shenanigans. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

For photographers: Taken using a Canon 5D Mark III with the Canon 135mm f/2L.

Discreet documentary wedding photography is how I always describe my style. I’m not there to control the events of the day, I’d much rather document what I see happening before me. Now, it’s not always possible to completely disappear on a wedding day (I’m no wedding ninja per se) but I do work hard to make sure my presence is never felt to be intrusive. Intrusion goes against my whole ethos towards wedding photography and the feedback I always get from couples (and their guests) is that they were never really aware of me taking pictures throughout the day.

Being discreet doesn’t have to mean hiding behind tress or popping out of bushes with a long lens. By simply behaving like the guests do, and not running around photographing everything that moves, I’m able to adopt a calm and subtle persona and the other guests pay me little or no attention at all.

At this recent wedding at Wokefield Park in Berkshire, the brother of the bride and his little girl took a few minutes away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the wedding party. I took a slow, considered stroll to join them and discreetly framed my image to include a backdrop of Wokefield Park and all the other guests milling around outside. Symmetry is often important to me so I kept the father and daughter centrally in shot and positioned them lower down in frame to balance them and Wokefield Park with the wonderful dramatic sky overhead. It’s a sort of split composition which I feel balances really well.

My discreet approach to wedding photography allowed me to capture a few different pictures from this moment and this image was my favourite; dad clearly happy to sit and relax, daughter willing him to stand and play.

For photographers: Taken using a Canon 5D Mark III (silent shutter mode) with the new Canon 24mm-70mm f/2.8L Mark II @ 24mm.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this image.

These wedding bridal preparations at Ston Easton Park Hotel were a lovely couple of hours to photograph. Extremely calm and relaxed, it was just Deborah, her two bridesmaids and I for most of the morning. Until Kevin arrived. Kevin is one of Deborah’s very good friends and he was given the honour of giving her away. Once Deborah was in her dress, Kevin made his way up to the room to meet her and in the final few seconds before rushing out the doors of Ston Easton Park for her wedding ceremony, he carefully secured her necklace around her neck. It was especially important to me that I remain as discreet as possible at this point and give these two this important moment alone so I stepped outside the room and shot through the doorway, framing to include the room plaque to add that extra layer of context to the picture.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this picture in the comments section below.

For photographers: Taken using a Canon 5D Mark III (silent shutter mode) with the 24mm f/1.4L Mark II at f/5.6, 1/250s, ISO 3200.

I’ve talked a bit before about my love for working with available or natural light. By this I mean the environmental light present on the day. Working this way allows me to remain discreet, without bursts of flash alerting my presence to all and sundry. But more importantly than this, it allows me to capture the true mood and ambience of a scene so that viewers might really feel what it was like to be there at that precise moment.

Because I never add light sources to make an image more pleasing I need to ‘find the light’ which allows me to capture lovely moments. Flat light will ultimately lead to flat pictures so I work very hard on the day to keep an eye on various natural light sources, be that the sun, candles, lamps, window light and even reflected light from adjacent surfaces.

During bridal preparations at this recent wedding, the dress had been left hanging in front of this wonderful large window creating a lovely diffused light into the sitting room. As the bride and bridesmaid lifted the dress down ready to slip it on I used this natural light and framed the story within the curtains either side for extra narrative. If I had chosen to use flash to introduce my own light source here this moment would have looked very different indeed, and it would have none of the atmosphere that it does now.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments section below.

For photographers: This image was taken using a Canon 5D Mark 3 with the 50mm f/1.2L at f/2.8, 1/2000s, ISO 3200.

Things move pretty fast on a wedding day and as a documentary wedding photographer there to tell the story, I need to keep up. More often than not, my day starts with some of the bridal preparations and this time is usually pretty calm and relaxed. There is normally plenty of time to work with the scene to record the emotion and anticipation of the day ahead. But once the bride steps out of her car, it’s all systems go. There are then a series of moments where there is little time to reflect. Things are happening everywhere and the pressure is well and truly on.

I actually took a couple of shots before this one with my wider 24mm lens, capturing Susie actually stepping out of her car, and these will make their way into the final gallery. But then this moment happened. I saw Susie lead the way into church as her father turned momentarily to thank the driver. Clearly, despite being nervous, Susie couldn’t wait to get inside that church.

The picture itself is not flashy. It’s pretty simple in its construct and content. But when I look at it, I really feel what Susie was feeling in those moments right before the big moment. As usual, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

For photographers: This image was taken using a Canon 5D Mark 3 with the 50mm f/1.2L at f/4, 1/3000s, ISO 400.

As a documentary wedding photographer I’m always looking to capture something real, to portray the real essence of the day. Historically though, wedding photography was more about the posed group shots, or formals as they are often referred. Of course I will take a few small formal shots if the couple request them but the one shot I always advise against is the big group shot of everyone. Firstly, they take the most time to organise, especially with larger weddings, which means less time just enjoying the day with family and friends. And secondly it really announces my presence to the entire wedding party, making it more challenging to blend in and remain unnoticed afterwards.

However, it’s still great to capture a shot of all the guests in context and there are a couple of points in the day when everyone will be together in the one room. The wedding breakfast is usually one of them, and the ceremony is the other. Following this beautiful ceremony at the oh so special Botleys Mansion a couple of weeks ago, I spotted the stairs at the back of the atrium and knew they would make for a wonderful sweeping shot of everyone in the room. So I made sure I was in prime position as the happy couple made their way up the aisle following their marriage.

This is real. This is storytelling. This is my kind of group shot. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

For photographers: This image was taken using a Canon 5D Mark 3 with the 24mm f/1.4L Mark 2 at f/8, 1/500s, ISO 1600.

The one thing truly unique to any photographer, whether a documentary wedding photographer or otherwise, is the way they see the world. This is what sets them apart from other photographers. The way I work when photographing a wedding is to be reactive to the moments presenting themselves. But I never just ‘grab’ shots. Composition is really important to me and I put as much thought into this as I do the moment itself.

I like my pictures to be neat, balanced and tidy so I’m always looking for lines and shapes to help balance the picture and lead the viewers eye through it. I’m also a sucker for a bit of symmetry. The shot below was taken during bridal preparations at Home House in London the weekend just gone. The main door into the bedroom was backed with mirrored glass and I spotted this might make for an interesting angle. So I braced myself tightly up against the wall with my 24mm lens, inched closer towards the door and managed to position myself (after a little bit of contortion) in such a way as to be able to mirror in the door the action taking place in the room.

As a documentary wedding photographer, I pride myself on my discretion. My ability to remain low-key throughout the day and almost disappear amongst the guests. This is fundamental to my style and my whole ethos regarding wedding photography is built on this premise. I am not there to run your day. I am there to photograph it. I am there to tell the story of your wedding, and to do this I need you and your guests to behave as if I wasn’t even there.

There are, of course, times when there are no guests to blend in with. The candid portrait below is a prime example of this. At this point of the day the only people in the room were the bride and myself. For a while I simply observed. If there’s one sure way to make someone feel uncomfortable in a situation such as this it’s snapping away with a camera to my eye. As she walked over to the window, finding the bouquet of flowers her father had left for her, I spotted the wonderful, diffused light falling onto her face and the symmetry formed by the bride and the lamp. I adjusted my settings with the camera held low, raised the camera to my eye and took one frame. Although it could well have been posed, this was a completely real, unposed, candid portrait. The bride, lost in her own little moment. A quiet moment of reflection before the biggest day of her life.

I photograph weddings of all sizes, from intimate weddings with just a handful of guests to extravagant weddings with 200 or more. One of the things I always look out for is groups of guests. As a documentary wedding photographer I very rarely take the typical ‘large group shot’ of every guest stood in front of the venue. There are several good reasons for this. Firstly, these large groups take time to organise. This is time that the bride and groom don’t spend enjoying their day with their family and friends. But perhaps more importantly, by controlling the entire wedding party and effectively announcing myself as the ‘official photographer’ in this way, it makes it much more challenging to then blend in and continue shooting in my documentary style.

So instead, I always look for different naturally formed groups at weddings. Over the Christmas break I was covering a wedding at St Audries Park in Somerset. St Audries is a beautiful venue and has a rather handy balcony that overlooks the main reception room. Whenever I cover a wedding here I like to make my way up there at several opportune moments of the day to photograph guests milling around, laughing and even dancing later in the evening.

I like this picture as both a record of the reception room, and a record of the guests.

It’s all about timing when photographing weddings. You can have the most amazing scenery and achieve a perfect composition, but if nothing happens the resulting photograph is going to be a little flat. I’m a reportage wedding photographer but first and foremost I am a people photographer. People are what make a wedding day for me and so I use people in nearly all my pictures in some way or another.

Quite often I will find myself playing the waiting game. I watch groups of guests, trying to predict when something interesting might happen. While this is going on my subconscious brain is already looking at the direction and quality of light, and my eye is wandering around looking for the best way to frame the shot. Sometimes I get lucky and things fall into place. Click. I have my shot. Sometimes it takes a little longer. Sometimes the perfect moment never presents itself and the scene I’m watching morphs into something else. That’s just the way it goes. I am there to capture what happens, not force a situation to create a great shot.

This picture came about following a wedding ceremony at St Marylebone Parish Church in London. With rain pouring down, the guests waited patiently under shelter for their transport to the reception. The best man was on look out and when I saw his head peek out moments before this I got into position and waited. Then as if by magic, the London Routemaster bus pulled up, perfectly framed by the tree, just as the best man peeked his head around to pillar. Click. I had my shot.

I really like the colours in this picture and the diagonals of the stairs draw your eye from the best man to the bus. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

The decisive moment was a phrase first coined by the late Henri Cartier-Bresson to describe the precise moment when everything in a scene comes together. In his own words “Inside movement there is one moment in which the elements are in balance. Photography must seize the importance of this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.” There are various ways of capturing that decisive moment. One way is to just keep shooting a scene over and over trying different compositions and working with the subjects until you feel you have your shot, sometimes only realising which one was the decisive moment when you look back through the images after the event. Another involves having quick reactions and an intuition about what will happen next. Any sort of social reportage photography involves an element of psychology. Understanding human behaviour definitely goes some way to helping predict when these moments might present themselves.

Personally I combine both these approaches depending on the scene I am capturing but I always prefer the latter. Just watching a scene unfolding without the camera to my eye often enables me to see the shot clearer. I’m able to decide which elements from outside the frame I may wish to include, and which I can opt to exclude to best tell the story.

This picture from a wedding earlier in the year is everything I look for in a wedding photograph. It tells a story, has context, bags of emotion and that all important decisive moment. I actually took 4 shots during this sequence because I knew collectively they would make for a great page in the wedding album. But this was the shot I was aiming for. The position of the bouquet is near perfect. The boys expression is priceless. The grandfather on the right hand side not quite keeping up with the action. This picture will be going into my portfolio for 2013 because I believe it sums up my style perfectly. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

There are many ways to describe my style of photography, candid wedding photography being one of them. The dictionary describes candid shots as unposed, informal, uncontrived, impromptu, natural. I certainly think that sums up my style of documentary wedding photography. Regular followers of mine will already know that I’m always looking for those moments that happen naturally. The image below is another typical example of this.

Something I always do on a wedding day is to scan the room during the speeches looking for interesting reactions and ways to bring the story together. I like my pictures of speeches to be more than just the person standing up talking. And more than a laughing guest picked out amongst the crowd. When I am photographing speeches I like to give the pictures context. Whilst the best man at this London wedding was giving his speech I was looking to do just that. The room at Burgh House in Hampstead where the wedding breakfast took place was at full capacity this day, which made it all the more challenging to manoeuvre around. There were long tables down either side of the room with no gap between them and the walls behind, and only a narrow aisle between the tables themselves. Once the speeches started guests slid their chairs back thereby blocking the centre aisle completely.

Thankfully I had already foreseen this challenge and worked out a plan earlier in the day whereby I was able to walk around the outside of the building and use a doorway in the far corner of the room (behind where the best man is standing) to reenter and get some close up shots in and around the top table. However, I also really wanted a picture or two that gave a sense of the room at this point of the wedding day. I was able to do this by including guests in the foreground but in doing so I wasn’t able to include much of the all important top table. I positioned myself so that the best man was nicely in frame and waited for the exact moment when the guests in front of the couple parted and the bride and groom leant in towards each other. The light here really accentuates the couple and the use of black and white frees the picture up from distractions.

This shot was all about patience and working with the scene in front of me to capture the essence of the moment. A tender little moment amongst the frivolity of the best man speech.

A well thought out firework display can be incredible to watch, always generating a few oohs and ahhs along the way. But fireworks don’t just have to be reserved for 5th November or New Years Eve. Fireworks at a wedding can be a great way to end the days celebrations. I actually had a firework display at my own wedding, a surprise one I might add. My usher, Dan, disappeared on the morning of my wedding and returned a bit suspiciously a couple of hours later to help put the finishing touches to the venue. Little did I know that he and my brother were planning a surprise firework display on Tankerton beach, looking out to sea.

But anyway, back to this image taken across the lake at Birtsmorton Court near Malvern, a beautiful moated Medieval Country Manor House. This entire Septembers day was a stunning as the venue itself with a beautiful church ceremony at the Anglican church of St. Thomas of Canterbury with St. Peter and St. Paul next door. At around 10pm all the guests were ushered outside where the organisers had arranged for a firework display to take place across the lake. There were oohs. There were ahhs. There were cheers. Lights. Explosions. Bangs. Crackles. Pops. And every colour you can think of. The perfect end to a perfect day. And it wasn’t just the kids who enjoyed it.

Fireworks at a wedding can be challenging to photograph though, with the ever changing light levels playing havoc with the cameras metering system. I shoot in full manual mode almost exclusively these days and I’m no stranger to working with available light. So I set my exposure accordingly and then manually compensated a stop or so either way during the various sections of the display. This was my favourite shot that evening.

Regular followers of my website and blog will already be aware of my love for black and white wedding photography. There is something very timeless about a beautifully crafted image devoid of colour. Once you strip away the colour it becomes all about the content, the subject, the light, the shape, form and composition. No distractions. Don’t get me wrong, I love a colour photograph too. In every client’s wedding gallery I always include a mix of colour and monochrome wedding photography and I actually find myself switching the balance of black and white to colour on a wedding by wedding basis. It really does depend on the day itself.

If colours plays an important part in the day, there tend to be more colour pictures in the wedding gallery as a result. I process both my colour and monochrome wedding photographs with exactly the same approach. Classic, filmic, timeless. I don’t follow the latest trends or fads with my processing. I want your pictures to still look amazing in 1 years time, 10 years time and even in 100 years time.

This picture is one of my favourites from a recent wedding at Burgh House in Hampstead. The venue is quite dark with warm lights in the main room and much cooler blue lights in the room behind the bride and groom. The focus of this image is obviously the couple and the beautiful little moment they are sharing, and the mixed temperature of lighting would prove distracting. I knew when I took it this shot would be processed in black and white. As strange as it sounds, I actually do see the scene in black and white when I am taking the picture. This particular photograph will look wonderful in their album today and for generations to come.

See more timeless pictures from some of my favourite weddings in my black and white wedding photography gallery.

Following on from my previous blog post, I thought I would share another image from the same wedding that showcases low key wedding photography. For an image to be considered low key it should be dark with a majority of black areas. With this image of a bride and groom dancing, I wanted to really give a sense of the mood of the moment. It was dark in this room. Very dark indeed. But rather than reach for the flashgun and blast the scene with artificial light (and at the same time destroy the ambience) I chose to embrace the darkness. Waiting for the right moment when the couple’s body positions fell into place and the wandering disco spotlight left a fairly even light on them, I took my shot. This scene was awash with multicoloured spotlights and lasers (which as a photographer often prove extremely difficult to work with). The black and white conversion takes away the this distraction and I even really like the laser dots left in this one. It’s almost as if confetti is being thrown during the first dance.

What is high key wedding photography? For an image to be considered high key it should be bright with a majority of light or white areas. With this image of a bride and groom entering to meet their guests for dinner, I wanted to create a mood that was fitting with the grand entrance the couple were given. The contrast in light from inside and out was such that I wouldn’t easily retain detail in both the interior and exterior without some major dodging and burning. So I decided to use this to my advantage. Using the greeting waiters on either side as a frame, I exposed for the couples faces (effectively overexposing the scene) allowing the highlights and background in particular to completely burn out. I often expose with the purpose of retaining the fabric details of the wedding dress, but the high key effect created here still leaves enough detail in the dress whilst also giving this particular image an almost ethereal feel, which I love.

What is a wedding photograph? To put it simply, any picture taken on a wedding day can be considered a wedding photograph. It might be a picture of the bride and groom, but equally it might not feature anyone at all. Wedding photography has evolved way beyond the traditional bride and groom portraits. With my own documentary style wedding photography, I’m looking to tell a story. As long as something has context within the wedding day itself then I will look to make an interesting picture out if it. Just because something was there, that doesn’t mean it has relevance so it’s important to me that I always stick to my core objective – telling the story of your day.

This picture is an example of this storytelling. As the guests enjoyed a pre-ceremony reception outside The Plough in Clanfield near Oxford, the 1949 Bedford bus (which the couple had arranged to transport their guests) arrived. It parked up outside the pub across the road and so I made my way to the main road. Using the stone cross I was able to really put this bus within the context of a wedding day. A day traditionally all about religion.

My style of documentary wedding photography is all about moments. Real moments of the day that flow to form a narrative telling the unique story of each couple’s day. There are of course the big moments; the vows, the kiss, the speeches, the first dance. But there are also a multitude of little moments throughout the day, too. Moments that for the most part will go unnoticed on the day or forgotten in the passage of time. With everything going on that day, it’s simply inevitable. And that’s where I come in.

Since I am not a traditional wedding photographer and pride myself on storytelling in its purest form, I always look for these quiet moments on the day. In this picture the bride waits patiently with her father outside the doors to St Etheldreda’s, perhaps peeking in to check whether all the guests are in their pews, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of her husband-to-be. What we can be sure of is that this is the moment before it all happened. The last few seconds of her unmarried life. And for me, it’s a really important part of this individual story.

Compositionally this picture works for me as the shadow, windowsill and pews all serve as lead in lines, drawing your eye to the bride who is neatly framed by the one open door.