Make a list ..

A bride who's booked me for her Wedding next year sent me an email yesterday. She'd been to a Wedding at the weekend and she said that "at no point did the photographer take any group photographs of guests", which she found "odd" and said "Please tell me that's not the norm"...

She asked me in all innocence but, to me, it's a really important question. By way of reassurance I sent her this photograph, taken at one of my Weddings a couple of weeks ago. It shows the Best Man and one of the guests helping me work through a list of guest photographs that filled an entire A4 sheet! They were rounding up each set of subjects for me as I shot the groups one by one. It took quite a while but .. well, that's what most of brides want. They want a good record of who was actually at their Wedding. It seems 'modern' Wedding photographers have forgotten that, and have gone down the pretentious, arty-farty 'Here's what I learnt at a workshop' route that involves pose after twee pose on the part of the Bride and Groom, with more importance placed on what the photographer can do with backlights, or with trickery on the computer later, than with actually capturing the 'true' memories of the day. As 'my bride' said in her email, the bride and groom on Saturday were gone for 'ages'. Well, how can a couple enjoy their Wedding if they spend most of it on a fashion shoot? Now, obviously, I do do some 'nice' shots where it's great to be creative and exciting but not at the expense of the 'traditional' shots. No, I'll stick to my old ways, thank you very much ..