TIPS from Photographers AND what to ask them! "Image" & Musings for the Bride

(excerpts from “A Brief History of Wedding Photography” by Don Emmerich www.emmerichphoto.com)

(Courtesy of Don Emmerich) Daguerreotype c. 1850

Wedding photography had its origins in the 1840s. A bride or a bride and groom would go to a “photograph parlor” for a portrait sitting. Their wedding photography would typically consist of a single daguerreotype portrait on a thin, 3¼ by 2¾ inch copper sheet.

Over the ensuing decades the technology of photography changed. Photographs were produced on glass plates, tin sheets and then paper. After 1908 it was technically possible to have a color wedding portrait made, but the chemistry was unstable and the colors faded over time.

Photographers continued to do wedding portraits in black and white, although a trend to color tint them appeared every now and then through the years. Even though we see examples of “on location” wedding photographs, what remained typical from the 1850s for almost 100 years was that wedding photography meant going into a studio to have wedding portraits made.

Photograph on paper, c. 1890s	(Courtesy of University of South Alabama Archives) Studio setting, c. 1900	Early 1920s couple pose for a studio portrait.	Art Deco studio setting c. mid-1930s

(Courtesy of University of South Alabama Archives) On location shots, c. 1950

This changed immediately after World War II during a three year “wedding boom” when a surge in the number of weddings created a profitable opportunity for shooting weddings “on spec.” Photographers not under contract to the wedding couple would show up at the wedding event with their new smaller roll-film cameras and flashbulb lighting. They would then try to sell their "on location" wedding photographs to the wedding subjects.

This new competition forced the professional wedding photographer out of his studio and into "on location" wedding photography. But he brought his bulky studio camera and cumbersome lighting equipment with him to the wedding, so shots still had to be posed.
(Color film was introduced again in the early 1960s and
began the trend away from black and white photography.)

Around 1977, a sports photojournalist in Atlanta, Denis Reggie, began shooting weddings the same way he did football games. (Denis became famous as the Kennedy family wedding photographer, including John Kennedy, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.) Denis, who came up with the phrase “wedding photojournalism,” and several other American photographers concurrently had a strong role in breaking free of the limitations imposed by the traditional wedding style. The rigidity of the interior shots and the clumsy pace of the traditional wedding were replaced with a freer and more adaptive approach, made possible by advances in the technology films, cameras, lighting, and other photographic equipment.

(Courtesy of Lisa and Harvey Tipler) c. 1995

The time was also ripe for change for sociological reasons, thanks to the fabled “baby boom” generation and the “wedding seen round the world” of Princess Diana in 1981.

Today, the predominant approach to wedding photography (photographer Don Emmerich calls the style “postmodern”) blends the free-form nature of photojournalism with the posed traditional shots around certain rituals with the photographer playing some active role in directing events. The wedding couple can enjoy their wedding at its natural pace, with limited “staging;” however, for better or worse for the wedding guests, the roving photographer has become part of most wedding ceremonies.

Priscilla Wannamaker On location shots, c. 2005