Why You Shouldn’t Hire a “Wedding Photographer”

It may seem strange for me to write a blog post entitled “Why you shouldn’t hire a ‘Wedding Photographer’, since on this website I promote my Documentary Wedding Photography. So am I not contradicting myself with that statement? If I want people to hire me to shoot their wedding, shouldn’t I be encouraging them to hire a wedding photographer?

Not exactly.

A few years ago, I was part of a seminar run by the amazing John Dolan and Holger Thoss, titled “How Not to be a Wedding Photographer”. You know those times when you meet a group of people and you feel like you’ve known them forever, even though you just met? Yeah, that was me that week. The people I met in that seminar, and that includes John and Holger, felt like family right away. I never imagined I would meet 8 other people, all at the same time, who believe that to be a truly great photographer you shouldn’t just do ONE thing, and that no matter what you should stay true to your own style.

So when I say you shouldn’t hire a Wedding Photographer, what I mean is you shouldn’t hire a photographer who only shoots weddings. Why is that?

If you really start looking, you’ll notice something about many, many wedding photographers. Their photos all look the same. The same poses, the same angles, often the same locations (or locations that look similar because the photographer seeks them out). These photographers shoot a LOT of weddings, and that’s all they do, and they’ve gotten really good at churning out the images. And the images may be pretty, and technically good, but do you really want photos that look like every other wedding the photographer shoots?

This is why documentary wedding photography is, in my opinion, a cut above the rest. Most documentary shooters limit the number of weddings they take on each year, because they also shoot other things, either personal projects or other events, like bar/bat mitzvahs, reunions, families, etc. The photo you see above is from a bat mitzvah I shot earlier this year. If you look at my Instagram feed, you’re going to see a lot of non-wedding related photos. This is intentional on my part. Documentary Wedding Photography, because there are no posed shots, is less susceptible to the cookie cutter images you see on so many traditional Wedding Photographer’s sites, but if you do over 12-15 weddings a year it’s very easy to start looking for the ‘easy’ shot - the moments you’ve seen before that looked good. And I never want to get to that point. I want to approach each wedding with absolutely no preconceived notions about what the resulting photos will be. Only then will they be 100% genuine, documentary, candid photos.

Of course I hope that if you’re reading this it means you’ve seen and love my images and are considering hiring me to shoot your wedding. But even if you stumbled upon this post by accident, I hope you’ll think about what types of photos you’d like to look back on, years from now. Spend some time searching wedding images on Google. (Do a search for “documentary wedding photos” and then click images) and see what you’re drawn to. Then go on the photographer’s website and look at their gallery, or their portfolio or blog. See if they do anything other than weddings, and do you like those photos, too? Your wedding photos are the one thing you keep after the wedding day, besides your spouse and the rings. Make sure they’re photos you’ll be excited to look at for years to come.