“It’s our wedding and you’re invited!”
You scroll through your Facebook feed and you see a colleague or a relative’s post. You’re excited for them, you’re invited, and what’s even better is that you’re a part of the wedding entourage! Come the wedding day, you’re all dressed to slay, and suddenly, you’re being ordered by a person with a camera to do a “blow-hold-release”, a “mermaid pose”, and a “turtleneck”, and you’re like – what the heck is a turtleneck? You cooperate and the person with a camera takes a photo. You’re curious about the result, so you decide to ask the person with a camera if you can take a look at the photo. You look at the camera’s LCD, and you’re awe-inspired with what you see and you say to yourself: “Damn, that turtleneck really goes a loooooong way!”. That’s when you begin to ask: how did he / she do that?
Wedding Photography, is something perceived as easy, quick and instant these days – technology has made this possible. But have you ever asked yourself, with all the social media uploads you see, day in and day out, and with all the latest camera upgrades, both mobile and digital; Is Wedding Photography an Art or a Science? And how relevant is the difference between categorizing wedding photography as an art and as a science?
Wedding Photography as A Science:
Learning a skill is a process, and everything that follows a process is science.
I took up Electronics Engineering for my graduate studies. Yeah, I know what you’re probably thinking – “Oh, a man of science, so that’s where this article will point out!”. Hear me out first: Wedding Photography is indeed a SCIENCE!
You purchase a camera, unbox it, read the f*cking manual, go out and shoot. You learn the exposure triangle, you learn how to light, you learn the in’s and outs of what makes a good photograph. You develop your style as time goes by. You get paid with your first gig, you save up for another piece of gear, or you invest it in marketing, or you attend another workshop. You learn how to tame a wild heart to be able to get that genuine portrait. You learn how to deal with clients. You learn that photography is a business. And, you continue to learn, learn and learn more. Ever heard of the 10,000-hour rule, wherein, to master a skill, you need at least 10,000 hours of doing it? That’s what you do. See, it’s like the Scientific Method with a lot of stages dealing with a lot of Sciences like Machine Learning, Physics, Psychology, Business, Marketing, Accountancy, Human Anatomy and others.
Learning a skill is a process, and everything that follows a process is science. Wedding Photography, for us, has it’s core in finding solutions to problems we might encounter during the wedding day, with the tools that we have, namely our camera equipment and our years of experience. This mental state was built on a method which favors and balances what the clients need, and what we, as photographers need to do about it, and even more (the extra mile).
Wedding Photography as an Art:
Being an artist means having a vision, having an intent, and having the ability to translate these two into something tangible that gets a message through.
I’m bad at freehand drawing. When I was young, I used to draw Megaman in a bond paper, and I swear, it was bad. My dad’s my only fan and critic, telling me whether the head’s bobbed or too elongated. Hand me drawing instruments like t-squares, triangles, a compass and the like and it’s going to be a masterpice. I’m sort of a musician myself as well; a drummer in our college band and our band Halfway There. My best art form is writing (next to photography, of course!). With this in mind, who am I to say that Wedding Photography is an artform, if I sound like someone who’s bad at art?
The thing is, no matter what art form we might be talking about – music, drawing, dance, writing, acting, visual, etc. – everything is about expression. Being an artist means having a vision, having an intent, and having the ability to translate these two into something tangible that gets a message through. Imagine having an idea that’s open to interpretation by anyone: how do you get that idea understood, across different people who have different life experiences, failures and victories? No right or wrong answers. What’s the common denominator for every audience who receives this piece of the idea? Emotions – what people feel about the idea is how they interpret it. Does it make them sad, or happy, or afraid, or disgusted? That’s why we have the so-called followers and bashers – those who agree and disagree, to the idea you put out to the world.
Art is subjective and is very much free to be understood. What defines us as an individual is what defines how we feel about a certain piece of art, whether it has meaning or not. Art in wedding photography comes with every moment we see our couples taken aback by the photos we made for them, barely remembering anything until they unfold the pages of their wedding albums. The permanence we give them for the moment they gave us a chance to shoot is something you cannot explain but something you deeply feel and understand – just like art. Bringing them back to the FEELING when they we’re drunk with bliss and with tears of joy is life imitating art for us. Human Emotion, for us, is the core of Wedding Photography, in becoming an artform.
The Resolve:
Wedding Photography, both the science (technical, analytical and problem-solving aspect) and the art (emotional and psychological) of it, is some sort of a love-hate relationship for us, for it defines the over-all style for any wedding photographer. Technology has come and gone, and has made our jobs as photographers easier, but that doen’t mean that you should not learn the fundamentals of creating a decent photograph. Validation is no longer a thing for the modern creator since social media has begun to take over the titans who tell what’s good and what’s not, which is why artistry has become more and more subjective, but that does not mean that we should neglect what’s visually appealing versus what’s trending.
From our standpoint, science and art should be as balanced as it can be for everything to work, especially as a wedding photographer. Not only will the balance stabilize the style of photography and the consistency of the ouput, but it will also give the situation a moral compass. You cannot always insist a hero shot to a couple that doesn’t fit the personality – nor get that money shot while risking the couple’s welfare. And this is probably the hardest part of being a wedding photographer, the part where you need to achieve the balance between being scientific and being artsy.
For Soon-to-weds: Future Brides and Grooms:
For couples and soon-to-weds, it’s one of the things you might want to consider in choosing your wedding photographer. There really are certain types and styles of wedding photography, and once you get the hang of asking what your wedding photographer’s style is, that way, you’ll get a better view of how they make those portfolio-worthy images, and what they truly value when it comes to making wedding photos. For us, it’s a healthy balance of technically-sound portfolio images, and moments that matter, both in amazing light and the Truest of the Truest Colors – photos that the clients truly deserve.
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