Traditional and Photojournalism Wedding Photography Styles

Choosing a wedding photographer may sound to be an easy task, but, it should be taken very seriously. Though every photographer has his or her unique style of photography, these days professional wedding photography is dominated by two major commercial styles, namely traditional photography and photojournalism. Traditional photography is considered to be less creative form of photography which is performed in a controlled environment and often produces good quality results because the subjects are captured with maximum pose and lighting effects. The photographer takes time for setting up everything like locations, camera placements, lighting effects, lighting placements, pose positioning, facial expressions and other important things required for the perfect shoot. Where as photojournalism on the other hand, is performed in an uncontrolled environment and looks very similar to shooting a documentary film. This technique is aimed at producing time lined story-telling shooting in which the photographer shoots a large number of pictures.

Since photojournalism is spontaneous photography and is not done under controlled environment, the picture quality also does not match up to the controlled traditional photography style. The outcome in the form of pictures is often very creative without any kind of interruption in the rituals or ceremonies of the wedding. The photographer covers the events in a natural manner and gives the feeling of real things happening rather than any type of staging done for every particular shoot. The photographer performing the photojournalism technique should be well experienced because it is one of the toughest styles of photography and good photojournalism art involves right emotions, expressions, composition and story telling art. The final decision regarding the type of photography style to be opted depends on the families of groom and bride involved in the wedding process and for them it is very important to identify the photography styles of the photographers by having a look at their wedding photography portfolios. Though many other factors also play an important role in the selection of a wedding photographer apart from the their photography styles like price, reputation of the photographer, photography equipment and other devices, back-up equipment (in case of non- working of the original equipment) and cohesive nature and personality of the photographer to adjust in all types of environments and surroundings.

In countries like India comprising of people with different religions, castes and backgrounds, weddings rituals and ceremonies are also performed in different styles. Though wedding is one ceremony that brings excitement in every person’s life, average middle class Indian weddings are considered to be an expensive affair. Indian wedding photography style comes under the traditional photography style where the stage setting is properly done before any photo-shoot or video shoot. The Indian photographers are trained with basic camera techniques and skills which are good enough to cover the wedding photography or wedding video making. Since in India, no one bothers too much about the qualifications and credentials of the photographers, therefore, any person who can invest in camera equipment and accessories and know the basic know-how of the camera techniques and video-shooting can opt for wedding photography as their career.