After concentrating on learning about fashion and celebrity portraiture for the past 18 months, I've been doing some research on wedding photography and traditional formal portraiture. (I've got to start making some money!)

However, I'm really surprised at just how different the stylistics of these fields are. I've always believed that a firm understanding of fundamentals is important, but what is considered fundamental for formal wedding portraiture is - to my eye - incredibly artificial and dated looking.

For example, I've been looking at the examples on Monte Zucker and Gary Bernstein's www.Zuga.net (under free lessons). Monte is very good at quantifying traditional posing techniques - but they still look forced and artificial. He's much better with location shots. Meanwhile, Bernstein apparently hasn't taken a picture since the mid 1980s - and it shows (and not just in the bad hairstyles and out-of-date actors in his examples). Finally, they've just added a section by Joe Zeltsman (who may be several decades behind Bernstein). He's got some good basic information, but I don't think the results would make very many people immersed in today's culture happy. Contrast them with The Art of Portrait Photography by Michael Grecco. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0936262850/qid=956685050/sr=1-6/002-2099742-1765837)

I'm hoping that there will be a market for bringing wedding and formal portraiture into the new millenium.

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), April 25, 2000

Answers

As you've noticed, wedding and portrait photography really covers a wide range of styles. I usually think of "the fundamentals" as that technical knowledge you need to produce the kind of photos you want to create. As for how the photos should look, I believe there may be certain styles that are predominant in certain markets, but there really are no "fundamentals" in that sense.

I fully agree with you assesment of Zucker (I think of his portraits as "still lifes with people"), and I'd add that his greatest talent in in marketing--he's more adept at convincing others that he's a great photographer with his words than with his photos.

As a practical matter, you should be looking at the kind of work that sells in your area to the market that you want to reach. That will still probably encompass a range of styles, but it will give you a good idea what your competition is. Then you can see how your style fits into that market (and how you want to develop your style to be marketable). Being distinctive will help you to stand out from the masses, but being TOO different is not a profitable way to go. I have a more photojournalistic approach than most wedding/portrait photographers in my area, though I still do formal portraits and poses (the bread and butter shots).

-- Mike Dixon (burmashave@compuserve.com), April 25, 2000.

Take a look at this site... t

http://www.weddingbureau.com/rates.htm

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), April 25, 2000.

Well, I'm glad I'm not getting married! (And I probably never will at these prices.) However, I guess, if I'm good, there's potential to make some money.

And I have been looking at some photojournalistic style coverage (like that of Andrew Marcus). But I still see that as a supplement to more formal shots - not a replacement. It's just that I think the formal shots could be a lot more exciting.

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), April 25, 2000.

The wedding pros I've talked to say that although lots of couples love the idea of photojournalistic coverage and creative formal portraits, what most of them actually buy is the boring old grip-n-grin shots. If you're in it for the money you'll have to pucker up or go hungry.

I got married last autumn to the most wonderful woman in the world. Pros the world over will swoon and spit blood to learn that I did my own wedding photography. Batchelor photographers will join them when they hear that the major reason was that my fiance preferred to take the cost of hiring a wedding pro and spend it on a new camera for me. Very bliss it was and all that.

Anyway, the best non-formal shots were taken by my good lady's twelve-year old nephew wielding my old ME Super. Not only did the lad have no fear of getting in close (and an interestingly different eye-height), but his subjects behaved completely differently to the normal rabbit-in-the-headlights behaviour they adopt when confronted by an adult with a camera. Sobering.

-- Struan Gray (struan.gray@sljus.lu.se), April 26, 2000.

John, I've started and plan to continue making formal portraits at weddings. I use Polaroid 665 pos/neg in a 600SE that images on the full sheet. Setting up a small studio (15x15 feet) at the reception, I use one lge softbox for a main, 1 grided head on the muslin background, and a full length silver cloth reflector on the shadow side. My assistant coats the prints, puts a sticker with my name, Phone #, e-mail address and a short reprint price list on the back of a folder that holds the print, and tell the subject(s) to come back in 15 minutes when the prints will be dry. They work great to get more people to step into the light. The bride and groom get a contact print of every portrait made. The first wedding was a gift to the couple, the second was $1000 the third was $1600, the next will be $2000. I have made between 75 and 110 portraits in a 4 hr party and people go nuts about it, telling me what a genius I am... very gratifying. I've posted this picture before, but I don't recall if it was on this forum, so I'll try it again. It was made at the $1000 event (an ex girlfriend... got some of that money back after all!). The next step is a brochure and a web site, there's gold in them thar hills... t

IMG SRC="http://tphotosite.homestead.com/Files/mombaby.jpg" I hope this worked (or) why didn't that work?... t

Oh yeah, family and wedding party shots are done in the "studio"... no cake in the face shots, no bouquet to the crowd and no garter in the teeth. That's for my partner (that I haven't found yet) to do, and another $1000 per wedding... any takers?

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), April 27, 2000.

rats...

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), April 27, 2000.

John, I've noticed and been surprised by the same thing. I like to shoot fashion/beauty, and my tastes are very much skewed towards the visual iconography of that environment. When I look at traditional wedding portraits by people like Zucker, I find them to be extremely unappealing. I have done a fair bit of wedding photography for friends, and my pictures don't look much like his. Of course, they usually aren't of half-naked brides glaring haughtily at the camera and shot at a 45 degree angle with blown out highlights, toned blue, either :-). If you are trying to do this commercially, you have to shoot what people want. I suspect that younger customers in particular would be attracted to a less overdone treatment, but I have repeatedly seen pros who do this for a living claim the opposite. If you really want to make a go of it as a career, you'd probably want to try both approaches and see how well they sell - if you do that, please let us know what happens.

Cheers.

-- Oliver Sharp (osharp@greenspice.com), April 28, 2000.

I find that most of the couples with whom I work want me to take a lot of photos of a lot of people doing a lot of things and showing them having a lot fun. I also find that most don't want to buy individual pictures after the wedding, but prefer to buy everything as one big "proof album" package, up-front. Formals and portraits are a part of all this, but full documentation is what I am hearing. This may be typcial only to my niche of clients, but that's what I hear them say when I ask, "What do YOU want?" I guess there is a place for many different styles, but I get fewer and fewer requests for formal wedding portraits. I don't really know what's best or what the trend is for the next decade...I'm just reporting what I hear...right or wrong.

-- Todd Frederick (fredrick@hotcity.com), April 30, 2000.

I haven't shot weddings in decades, but something which most of my clients said then was 'I want something DIFFERENT'.

I was doing a mostly journalistic approach--record the events of the day, telling the story of the event--with some added semi-formals. Finding out what they meant by 'different' was critical were I to provide what they wanted.

Almost all of them wanted the same "different" things, And most of them were fairly traditional kinds of things.

Fashion images are dated in 2 ways: the clothing and makeup of the subject, and the styles of photography. Someone in that field can probably narrow down a shot within a few years even if there's no human in it just from the style of the image.

Wedding images aren't supposed to be so dated. The trade-off is that the styles move much more slowly.

Check with the photographers in your area. Find out two things: what are their customers ASKING for before they buy; and what to they ACTUALLY BUY. You will probably find out that they're very different things.

-- Kevin Connery (connery@keradwc.com), May 07, 2000.

A friend who actually makes a living shooting mostly weddings told me that everyone says they want candids, everyone says they want something different, everyone says they don't want the posed group shots but 90% of her sales are still non candid, traditional posed group shots. She shoots the candids, the "photojournalist style" photos while she is there and bills for the film but people ALMOST NEVER buy them.

Her gold mine, she says, is to take a really portrait of all the older people there. Every bride, it seems, wants a picture with her grandmother taken on her wedding day and these pictures, as much as the traditional poses, are guaranteed sales.

I find it interesting -- the more people say they want something different, the more it remains the same.

-- gleep (gleepw@hotmail.com), May 12, 2000.