Different styles of wedding photography

Traditional –v- Modern

Cambridge wedding photography

At Angle Photographic we believe that wedding photography is the communication of the emotions of your day with pictures.

How we communicate your emotion is up to you but we realize that without knowing what your options are that you can not make a choice. The purpose of this blog is to show you the differences between traditional and modern styles of wedding photography and to explain how these differences will effect your wedding day. These two styles are not mutually exclusive so the differences between them do not have to be as pronounced as they will appear in this article but to give you more of a choice I will make the differences seem greater.

With a traditional approach to wedding photography you will be much more aware of your photographer throughout your day as the majority of the pictures will be posed and will be taken using a flash. This will make the pictures look like they were taken in a studio with your venue as the backdrop. The experience will be much more like a fashion shoot as people will be carefully positioned for the portraits. For larger groups it will be necessary to use portable portrait lights with umbrella attachments which will make the photographic experience much more formal.

With both the traditional and modern styles of wedding photography I ask the couple for a list of group portraits to make sure that we don’t miss a crucial picture. With a traditional wedding this list of pictures can be extended to other pictures taken during the day such as bride on her own with the bouquet at the door of the house, bride with Dad at home and in the car etc. This way I can make sure that there is a posed picture for every portrait that you want.

This does not mean that I will only take the pictures that are on our agreed list and that every picture that I take will be done using a flash. What it does guarantee is that every picture that is particularly important to you, will be done in this way.

In contrast to the posed method of traditional wedding photography is modern wedding photography which frees you to fully enjoy your day with your guests. Using this approach the photographer is an unobtrusive observer of your wedding day capturing your emotions as they emerge. The photographer will still be conscious of taking certain classic pictures but he will and take them naturally without the use of a flash so that there is no disruption to your enjoyment of your day. If this is not possible then he will engineer a result to make sure that you receive the best possible memory of your wedding day.

The more you enjoy yourself the greater the difference between modern and traditional wedding photography as there will be no need for the photographer to disrupt your enjoyment for some pictures. If people are freely moving and laughing and joking with each other then the photographer can easily remain unnoticed to enable him to naturally capture the key moments of the day.

I hope that you now see the differences between traditional and modern wedding photography. There will be overlap in both directions as the people who opt for the modern packages often want some formal group portraits and the people who want traditional wedding photography also want some spontaneous pictures to remember key moments. I hope that this will enable you and your photographer to gain a greater understanding of the type of wedding pictures that you are looking for. If the photographer has a clear understanding of what you want then he can make sure that he delivers your pictures taken in the way you wanted.

Pictures that promote your business

Cambridge commercial photography

The promotion of your business with pictures is only possible with images that communicate ideas.

Pictures are immediate and eye catching. It is pictures that stop people flicking through a magazine to read the headline and hopefully the rest of the article. For this reason alone striking pictures that communicate what your business does and how it does it are crucial for the promotion of your business.

This blog will detail the promotion of the services of Leisure Support Services in pictures. Leisure Support Services provide cleaning, maintenance and security for different sporting venues. To show what they do I wanted to show their staff working in the different venues that they cover. To show how they achieve their results I wanted to make their business personal. To clean the Oval at the end of a test match requires a team of people so it is easy to think of them collectively as Leisure Support Services. What I wanted to do was to bring it back to the individuals who do the work. To show the attention that they give to what they do. This personal promotion of Leisure Support Services makes it easier for the viewer or prospective client to relate to what they do.

To emphasise the Leisure Support Servies brand I wanted to show the staff in clean pressed uniforms. I took several different types of picture of the same person performing the same task, some to show what he was doing and others to show how he did it. For example to show the electrical maintenance that they do I took one picture that clearly showed the electrical cupboard. To show that some work is being done you can see a hand and screwdriver but this is the limit of the human involvement in this picture. For this reason it is not a picture that people can easily relate to as it only details what they do. I then took another picture where you can see the face of the workman making the electrical repairs. It is the combination of the detailed picture showing what they do and the personal picture showing how they do it that promotes Leisure Support Services in pictures.

To show the experience of Leisure Support Services I wanted some pictures that were very obviously taken at the Oval. To do this I photographed their staff cleaning some conference rooms overlooking the members stand. This makes the pictures immediately striking. Your eye is drawn to what you recognize, the Oval stand, and you can see their staff demonstrating their brand message.

You can see also see in these pictures that they were taken on a match day. This is to show that even with the added time pressure that comes with a match day that Leisure Support Services can deliver what they promise quickly and professionally.

These pictures were supplied to Leisure Support Services on CD which is what you would expect from a photography business. However Angle Photographic is more than a photography business. Our designers can use our pictures to their fullest potential to promote your business in bespoke brochures. They can work within the constraints of your brand colours and fonts to produce a bespoke brochure that eloquently and effectively promotes your business.

Making black plastic look good

How to photograph geosynthetics

For all of the scientific benefits surrounding geosynthetic plastic it is still black plastic, which as you can imagine, makes it very difficult to photograph. I am going to tell you about the work that I did for GSE to produce their new sales brochure. This work included product photography, production photography and ideas photography or to describe this another way it is photographing unique selling points.

GSE produce three different types of geosynthetic plastic: smooth geomembrane, textured geomembrane and geo net. I will begin by telling you about the easiest product to photograph, textured geomembrane. Although this is one piece of plastic it has two different surfaces which reflect light to varying degrees. The splattered plastic that produces the textured surface reflects more light than the smooth underlying sheet. This means that you can shine an even light across the sheet and the resulting image looks like a black and white Jackson Pollock. To describe this another way, the picture is subtle but accurate product picture of textured geomembrane.

Smooth geomembrane is much more difficult to photograph because you can not put any texture or depth into a smooth surface. This means that any accurate product picture of smooth geomembrane will have to be achieved with a creative use of lighting. I used a snoot (an attachment that narrows the spread of a flash light) to shine a beam of light across the smooth geomembrane and varying the angle of the light changed its spread. The resulting picture is an accurate product picture of smooth geomembrane that has movement and direction which makes it dynamic.

The photographic dilmemmas surrounding geomembrane do not exist with geo net because it is not a solid surface. This means that it is very easy to clearly show the product. However with everything creative to merely show something is very simple but to produce a creative product picture of geo net is much harder. Unlike the gemembrane pictures which were taken in the studio the geo net pictures were taken in the factory. Showing the product in situ brings the manufactured reality to the pictures.

If you photograph the geo net coming onto a silver chill roll stack the light will reflect off the chill roll stack clearly showing the black geo net. If you shine one light above the net then you will get a shadow in the chill roll stack but the remarkable thing is that the shadow is a red orange colour and not the black that you would expect it to be. This gives some colour to an otherwise very black and white image.

Another way to photograph the geo net coming onto the chill roll stack is to fill only half of the frame with the chill roll stack. This results in a very striking picture with one half black and the other white. On the white side of the frame you will clearly see the black geo net product. On the black side of the frame you will only see glimmers of the geo net where the net is reflecting the light. The resulting picture has a very immediate appeal because of the obvious black and white divide. It also very clearly shows the product but it also has a subtlety that you only see upon closer inspection.

In addition to product photography this job involved photographing GSE’s unique selling points. This process began with a general conversation about the fact that GSE are the only international producers of geosynthetics. This was distilled down to the phrase unique global coverage. So how do you photograph something global. Partly because of the word I initially thought of a globe so started thinking about photographing something spherical. As I developed this idea further I thought of photographing something round. Sheet geomembrane comes on a roll and so to bring the picture back to their product I shot the end of a roll of plastic. To indicate that this round product represents the world I wanted to show the sun rising above the horizon. This was very difficult as you have to shine a light directly into the camera. To make the light refract and spread to look like the sun rising as opposed to a single beam of light also caused a lot of problems. The resulting picture showed their product with the rising sun but it does not clearly say global coverage. To make it clear that the roll of plastic represents the world I dropped a map of Europe over it. So why you may ask did I drop a map of Europe over the roll of plastic and not a map of the world. The reason is that this image and the resulting brochure will only be used by their European offices.

I hope that I have made it clear how it is possible to photograph something as challenging as black plastic. This product does not naturally lend itself to photography which is a blessing in disguise because it forces you to think creatively about the best way to show the product. Similarly photographing unique selling points will always be about the communication of ideas with images.

Portrait Photography Before The Day

Portrait photography is the communication of your personality in your appearance. This is influenced by three things: the location of the shoot, the clothes that you wear and how you interact with the camera.

Environmental portraits tell the story of who you are and what you are doing in a single image. These can be taken candidly so the where you are and what you are wearing just happen by chance but it does not have to be this way.

Together we can think of a location that is significant to you or what you want to say about yourself. For example if you would like a picture of your son, and his thing at the moment is skateboarding then if the picture was taken where he skateboards then the picture captures a moment in time. Your son at this age doing what he loves. The picture says much more than, this is your son at age 11.

Similarly a corporate portrait needs to say something about your company. For example a company like Leisure Support Services provide maintenance and security for different sporting venues. Using these venues as the location for the shoot made the resulting pictures instantly recognizable to people while at the same time making reference to what they do.

The location of a family portrait needs to be somewhere that is personal to you. This will give the picture a weight and significance that only you will know. If it’s an outdoor location such as a favorite park or by the seaside then the portrait session becomes an experience and the pictures will capture a moment in time.

Rightly or wrongly people are judged by their appearances. Similarly the clothes that you wear for your portrait can make or break the picture. Let us return to the picture of your son by his skateboard ramp. If he is wearing brightly coloured, baggy sports clothes then what he is wearing gives an explanation to where he is standing. His clothes do not have to be complete with their normal dirt and rips, when he comes home but they must be clothes that will make the picture believable. If he was wearing a suit then it would be quite a surprise to see an 11 year old dressed like this but it would also make an incongruous image. A strange dichotomy between the boy in the suit and the skate park. This might be a picture that you would like to take in 15 years time but as a portrait of your young son you want his clothes and the location to tell the story of his interests at this age.

The same thing is true for corporate portraits. Returning to the pictures for Leisure Support Services. They do provide maintenance and cleaning at different sporting venues so I could have asked them to dress in boiler suits. However the resulting pictures would not have made them look like a trustworthy, professional company. You do not have to wear a suit for a corporate portrait but as a first impression a suit provides a professional feeling.

To drive this point home I would like to talk about a family portrait. If the portrait was taken by the sea I would expect you to be wearing different clothes and shoes to a portrait taken at the Ritz Hotel. What I am trying to say is that the choice of clothes that you make for a particular location should be the same clothes that you would normally wear. As a group it will give a sense of unity to the picture if you all wear similar clothes. This can be as subtle as everyone wearing jean. If everyone is dressed identically then you can loose the different personalities.

So two thirds of the picture has been agreed. The final consideration, which is the only thing that will haven on the day of the shoot, is how you interact with the camera. This sounds like something that you have to do but it isn’t. This is the photographers responsibility. He will explain to you what he would like you to do in a given space and all you have to do is enjoy it. A photographer can not make you have fun and he can not make you smile. He can help you to relax in front of the camera but the genuine smile has to come from you. If you have enjoyed your portrait session then you will be pleased with the pictures.

So just remember that on the day of your shoot two thirds of the work has already been done. All the decisions about what you will wear and where we will take the picture have been agreed so all you need to do is enjoy the experience.

Unique pictures in unique albums designed to your specification

Upon your return home from your honeymoon you will find a CD of pictures and a series of contact sheets waiting for you. As you look through the pictures and will undoubtedly start forming an impression of your picture selection for your album. The picture selection for our traditional album is a straight forward one. The album holds seventy prints so all you need to do is choose seventy pictures, let me know the order that you would like them displayed in and then I will make your album to your specification.

Please ask me if there are any pictures that you would like to see in black and white and if you would like some writing on the first picture in the album. If you let me know what you would like written on the picture then I can design the page and email it to you for your approval before the picture is printed. This enables me to present you with a unique album designed to your specification.

The multiple picture prints of the modern and unique packages offer a plethora of choice for the album design as it is not only a choice of pictures that you have to make. The design of each page is completely bespoke. You can choose the number of pictures and the position of each picture for each page. In addition to this you need to make decisions about the background colour for the pages.

There are those who welcome this amount of choice and there are others who find it daunting. To make this an enjoyable experience for everyone we ask you to make your decisions at a later stage. We will design all of the pages for your album and email them to you for your consideration. We ask you to make your choices at this stage because we have found that couples find it much easier and more enjoyable to make decisions based on something that they can see.

We are more than happy for you to make a change, see the results and then change your mind again or choose the original design. There is only one consideration that we ask you to make when changing the pictures. The pages were not designed in isolation but with the thought of how they will look as a double page spread. This does not force you to keep your picture selection in the same design that we have provided but it might cause you to make more changes than you thought.

This method of visual story telling does requires more decisions and input than a traditional album but your effort will be rewarded in a stunning album that is as bespoke as your wedding. Our combined effort will enable us to deliver our promise of unique pictures in unique albums designed to your specification.