Photography that allows you to spend precious time with your loved ones.
What is Documentary Wedding Photography?
Capturing the beautiful and true story of your wedding day, just as you and your guests will remember it.
Documentary wedding photography is all about blending in as one of the guests and capturing the best moments of your day.
What I often hear about my style of wedding photography is that, the moment you look at a photograph, you can feel the exact emotion as the people in it. There’s no doubt that what you’re seeing is real and honest.
Documentary wedding photography - also known as reportage wedding photography or wedding photojournalism - is an approach that captures your wedding as it happens, without forced poses or scripted moments.
Rather than directing you or your guests, a documentary wedding photographer blends into the background, observing and capturing candid moments as they naturally occur. This style of photography is perfect for couples who want their wedding photos to feel genuine, rather than a collection of stiff, posed images.
Every wedding has its own rhythm and personality. Documentary photography embraces this uniqueness, ensuring that your wedding album is one-of-a-kind and deeply personal.
Documentary wedding photography doesn’t just show how your wedding looked - it reveals how it felt. It celebrates the messy, unplanned, utterly human moments that make your story unique.
The moments that matter
Documentary wedding photography, also known as photojournalistic wedding photography, is a style that aims to capture the real moments.
Free from staging and awkward posing
A documentary wedding photographer portrays the raw emotion felt on your beautiful day.
It means you can spend your day making memories with friends and family, not taking precious time away from them for unnatural posing or hours of formal group shots.
Why Choose a Documentary Wedding Photographer? The Honest, Unfiltered Story of Your Day
When it comes to planning a wedding, choosing the right photographer is one of the most important - and often most stressful - decisions a couple can make. Your wedding photos are more than just images; they are a visual legacy, a way to relive one of the most meaningful days of your life for decades to come.
Yet, with so many styles and approaches to wedding photography, it’s no surprise that many couples feel overwhelmed. Among the most common choices are editorial photography and documentary photography. While editorial photography focuses on carefully posed, fashion-inspired images, documentary wedding photography captures your day as it genuinely unfolds.
But what makes documentary wedding photography so special?
The challenges you might face when booking a wedding photographer
1. Finding someone you trust
Your photographer will be with you for your entire day, often closer to you than anyone else. It’s essential to find someone whose presence feels comfortable and reassuring.
2. Worrying about looking "perfect"
Many couples fear they won't look their best in photos, worrying about angles, lighting, and posing. The pressure to look like a magazine spread can overshadow the actual joy of the day.
3. Overwhelm from endless choices
There is an endless sea of portfolios online - each promising beautiful photos. It can be hard to tell what style truly fits your personalities and the story you want to tell.
Why Choose Documentary Wedding Photography?
It’s about real emotion, not perfection
Documentary wedding photographers don’t spend time directing or staging shots. Instead, they focus on capturing real, fleeting moments: a nervous laugh before walking down the aisle, the tearful hug from your grandmother, the stolen glances between you and your partner.
These moments can’t be planned - and that’s exactly why they’re so precious.
Your story, as it really happened
Documentary photography tells the full, unfiltered story of your day. Instead of a series of posed portraits, you receive a rich, authentic narrative. Years from now, you’ll look at your photos and feel transported right back to how it felt, not just how it looked.
You can truly be present
When you aren’t stopping every few minutes to pose for photos, you’re free to enjoy the day as it unfolds. A documentary approach allows you to focus on your partner, your guests, and the experience rather than worrying about looking "camera-ready" at every moment.
Being a great documentary wedding photographer is about being a chameleon and blending in as one of the guests, in the most non-obtrusive way.
It’s not just being a fly on the wall, it’s about being in the middle of what’s happening without being noticed.
My main role is to tell the story of the day from start to finish, from the little details that tell you where you spent it, to the people you shared it with.
It’s not just the laughter, but the tears too; everything that we feel when two people in love and their families come together.
For me, a wedding day is so full of happiness and emotion that it doesn’t need direction to capture the pure magic of it.
The Wedding Diaries
But what about classic group shots?
One of the biggest hesitations couples have about documentary photography is missing out on those timeless family portraits.
Although I am a documentary wedding photographer, I understand that some weddings require some traditional group photos. I encourage you to have no more than three to five group shots, and with the aid of one of your wedding party, we will do these very quickly and professionally.
Guests usually do not want to be standing around waiting for a photographer to direct them, so I will organise this section of your day quickly and then move on.
If you require many more “formal photographs”, to allow me to continue to create the storytelling-type images that you see on this website, I can arrange for a second shooter to be on hand specifically to cater for the formal shots.
In the end, it’s about your legacy
Your wedding photos will become part of your family history - shared with children, grandchildren, and those who couldn’t be there. Choosing a documentary photographer ensures that what you pass down is an honest, heartfelt story.
So, if you’re searching for photos that are more than perfect poses - photos that breathe, laugh, and cry along with you - documentary wedding photography might be exactly what your heart is looking for.
The main benefit of this style of photography is that you can truly enjoy one of the most special days of your life, a day that will go by really quickly and you’ll want to cherish every second of.
Having me there as your wedding photographer will give you this chance to make the most
of every moment, and for those moments to be captured truthfully.
Interested in learning more? Let’s chat - I’d be happy to help you discover if documentary wedding photography is the perfect fit for you.