Unplugged Weddings – Leaving the Cameras at Home
Guests with cameras
If a guest at your wedding is a photographer, or is a very keen amateur and offers to bring their camera kit along to ‘help out and give the couple some free images’, can I suggest you politely decline? Odd though it may sound.
Your professional wedding photographer
This isn’t because I feel threatened or feel that someone might steal my thunder it’s actually simpler than that. You have after all commissioned a professional wedding photographer to cover the day in a style that you prefer and comfortable that he or she will be in the right place at the right time, and at some point, politely corral the family for the formal photographs.
The enthusiastic guest blocking the professional photographer
The snag with the enthusiastic guest is more often than not he will try and get the same shots, be that the bride approaching the church with her father, standing before the alter exchanging vows etc. This will necessitate leaning out from the pews and grabbing an oblique shot, at the same time blocking the professional photographer. This continues during the recessional when half a dozen guests lean out towards the aisle to capture the happy moment on their iPhone or worse still a large iPad. Suffice to say, all I can see is a bright sea of screens before a beaming couple walking arm in arm towards me weaving around all the outstretched arms and what could have been one of the singular key shots of the wedding is much, much weaker.
Camera kit
There are often guests with oversized camera kit and so many shots during the reception include photos of the couple with someone within a few feet with their face obscured by a DSLR camera and lens.
Lenses do not improve the dinner tables decorations and central floral displays and fellow guests tire quickly of the guests that keep getting up and wandering off to get more images.
It is the professional’s job to capture all the important moments on the day
It’s the professional’s job to capture all these moments, he’s not a formal guest so not socially obliged to converse at dinner or keep leaving a bored spouse as a camera widow. He’s there to take photographs and is ready all day, all the time.
Focus on the couple
Much better to request all these gadgets are left at home or phones remain in their jackets, to enjoy the day undistracted and be able to spend more time in conversation. You will get MUCH better photographs that capture the true character of the day with the undistracted focus on the couple, guests and family, as of course it should be.
- Wedding in Dulwich and RAC Club Mayfair, London - 18th April 2024
- Autumn Wedding Photography at the Lansdowne Club in London - 15th January 2024
- Family Photoshoot in Oxford - 15th January 2024