Preparing To Photograph A Wedding
Wedding of Charlotte Rampling
and Jean Paul Jarre
Ali Abi was married a few days ago. If there’s anything more nightmarish than chasing after wild boar with a camera at 3 AM it must be attempting to photograph a wedding and please everybody. It is possible to achieve this and have a good time if you have a plan, and keep your cool.
I will reveal the rules of classic wedding photography in tomorrow’s post.
The most important thing to remember is that you aren’t taking pictures to please yourself, you’re taking them to please the families attending the ceremony. Even the great commercial and artistic photographers tend to take contrived set photographs at weddings.
If you’re a guest of course it’s different. The photograph taken at the wedding of Charlotte Rampling and Jean Michel Jarre was taken by the irrepressible David Bailey over 30 years ago yet is as fresh as ever. The old chap in the background is also a photographer, he’s Jaques Henri-Latigue better known for his childhood pictures of cars, boats and planes.
Bailey says that Latigue had the simpler picture in the cake cutting picture above. He only had to consider two people as subjects, whereas Bailey wanted to also get Latigue in the frame for his informal shot. Latigue is taking a portrait picture with the camera upright whereas Bailey uses the more familiar landscape frame.
Remember if you’re going to mount these pictures in an album the album must comfortably accommodate landscape and portait pictures. People don’t enjoy constantly rotating their wedding album to keep the subjects upright. Find out how your wedding photographer intends to present your prints.
Fortunately I was just a guest at Ali Abi’s wedding, even though I took my camera. Even so I had just as a good time as I enjoyed at Evren’s wedding in Ankara a year or so back.
Stephen Gets A Hug From Evren
At Evren’s Wedding
Own A Camera?
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Kindly note: The picture of Charlotte Rampling and Jean Paul Jarre is copyright David Bailey and used here as ‘fair use’ under U.S.C. Section 107 for news reportage purposes only, to illustrate various points made in the article. Text and images available over the Internet may be subject to copyright and other intellectual rights owned by third parties.
