alternative wedding photographer
LONDON, NORFOLK & BEYOND
What is alternative wedding photography?
it’s about cool AF, beautiful images that tell an authentic story
Alternative wedding photography – It’s about being yourself. It’s about quirky wedding photography that looks like your day, no-one else’s. It’s about not taking yourself too seriously, it’s about breaking tradition where it suits and it doesn’t care who you’re marrying as long as you’re in love. I shouldn’t need to spell it out but I am a LGBTQ friendly wedding photographer.
We’ve all heard the classic line about being unobtrusive, or a documentary wedding photographer. It’s almost become a cliche, but it’s still true – my aim is to make sure you don’t notice me most of your wedding day – to collect fragments, memories, and to tell your love story like a beautiful piece of cinema. I want you to look back and feel the emotions you felt right there in that moment.
I’m lucky enough to be able to call being a wedding photographer my career for 13 years now, having shot my first London wedding in 2011; and in that time I’ve photographed over 400 weddings, in 7 different countries. Each one of them different, amazing and wonderful. I can get pretty soppy but I do genuinely feel like wedding photography is my dream job. I also teach other photographers about how to use artificial light and to get comfortable with their flashes, via my online course Learn to Light.
So, what exactly is an Alternative Wedding Photographer?
As photographers, we often feel we have to label ourselves – partly this is for SEO reasons, trying to pre-empt the kinds of things that the couples we might want to work with could be searching for. We use terms like ‘London wedding photographer’, or ‘destination wedding photographer’ with abandon.
In practice it means being inclusive – embracing LGBTQ weddings, weddings from different cultures and approaching them all with curiosity and openness. It means ditching tradition for it’s own sake, and making your own meanings.
So what does it mean?
I wonder if the term has less and less relevance as more photographers adopt a modern, story telling approach? What exactly are we the alternative to?
alternative
/ɔːlˈtəːnətɪv,ɒlˈtəːnətɪv/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
1. 1.
(of one or more things) available as another possibility or choice. “the various alternative methods for resolving disputes”2. relating to activities that depart from or challenge traditional norms.“an alternative lifestyle”
So, if we take that definition as a starting point; I see alternative wedding photography as providing an alternative to boring, stuffy, traditional photos. An alternative to the kind of kind of dated views that still pervade huge parts of the wedding industry, and to saying no to tradition for it’s own sake.
It’s a style of photography that embraces all cultures, races, traditions and styles, as well as all sexualities. its encompassing and open minded.
My Photography style
So how does that fit in with how I label myself? For SEO purposes, I still often call myself an alternative wedding photographer – though my website tagline is ‘Creative Modern Wedding Photography’.
To me, alternative photography, as well as rejecting tradition, embraces some of the same spirit as alternative music – its a bit edgy, it makes you feel something that perhaps the mainstream does not; and it has a cool haircut (maybe not that).
It celebrates fun, laughter, doing things and celebrating your own way.
This feeds in to the way I love to photograph a wedding day – I’m always looking for certain things that feel right for my work – human emotion, story, clashing or surprising colour, unusual contexts and environments (gotta love a couple framed against a filthy London street, literally one of my favourite things ever), eye catching composition, warmth. Using my own vision to tell the story of the day rather than working to a prescriptive list of shots.
If you thought this was interesting, and you want some more advice on how to choose your wedding photographer – check out this blog post.
I also have a completely FREE download – with 10 Top Tips for Awesome Photos.
