Dan Johnson Photography Blog » A blog offshoot of www.danjohnsonphotography.co.uk mainly relating to weddings in England with the emphasis on handy hints, pertinent observations about weddings in general and stuff like that plus the occasional rant, but also including things we think are worth sharing because they’re cool or they’re just plain weird. All site content © copyright Dan Johnson Photography

This is one of those pictures which looks a lot better as an A3 size print than it does this size on a monitor.  I found it yesterday whilst thinning out some folders on one of the external HDD’s, and was reminded that when we used to schlep a big printed portfolio around, most people who saw this photo seemed a bit bemused by it.  Hence the idea for a series of occasional postings of the story behind some of the pictures we’ve used  in our portfolio …

This is in London, on Tower Hill, four years ago.  It’s the front of the old Port of London Authority building near Trinity House, at which Judith and David have just got themselves married.  As soon as we’ve finished the group shots outside Trinity House, Judith points to this building and says “Can we do some pictures over there with those columns?”.  “Of course we can” says I “It’s your day so we can do whatever you want!”.  So off we trot over the road.

It’s about 3.30 on a Friday afternoon, and no sooner have our couple got to the top of the steps than two blokes come out the door, walk between them and down the steps on their way home.  I’m still changing my lens, so I miss that shot, but I’m back in business by the time they get to the bottom and the one on the left shouts “Are you in Monday?” to his mate, who obligingly turns round in almost exactly the right spot …

That’s a long shot from the back of the ceremony room at Syon Park a couple of years ago, and shows left to right a registrar, me, father of the bride and the videographer.  I’m being as unobtrusive as it’s possible to be whilst still getting the shot I need, in a situation where it’s not exactly easy to be unobtrusive

Wedding photographers like the word “unobtrusive”.

They like it very much.  A lot of them make a big thing of it in the blurb on their websites, and they do this in order to make it clear that they are not what’s known in the business as “all pink tie and tripod”.  Some couples do indeed like their photographer to be the centre of attention on their wedding day and are happy to risk being upstaged by Cheery Charlie Snapper and his incessant banter, but thankfully many are not, and unobtrusiveness is generally considered to be a Good Thing.

It’s also one of those things about which wedding photographers love to argue.  In the red corner we have those who are unobtrusive by virtue of the fact that they work alone and shoot in a very considered “decisive moment” style à la Henri Cartier-Bresson, though mainly on relatively long lenses, mainly from the sidelines and without the benefit of being French.

These guys (and the exponents of this style of shooting a wedding invariably are guys) usually deliver much if not all of their output in black and white, and tend to dismiss use of wider-angled lenses as generally far too in your face for comfort.  To their way of thinking, a photographer moving about working fairly close to their subjects is anything but unobtrusive, and must consequently both vex the couple and have a considerable impact upon their wedding.

Opposite them, in the blue corner, are those whose way of working is pretty much the exact opposite, in that they rely on working faster,  closer in when appropriate, and on keeping moving if necessary, particularly during drinks receptions.  To them, the “decisive moment” guys are at best insecure about what they’re doing and at worst elitist, but either way are guaranteed to spook the guests by sniping at them from the sidelines.  Blue-corner people tend to see red-corner people’s conversion of most if not all of their pictures to black and white as a cop-out too.

So are Ann and I “unobtrusive”, and if so – how?  Well, we certainly don’t make a big marketing thing out of being unobtrusive, but we think we are.  Pretty much.  At least we keep getting emails from clients saying they hardly noticed us when we were photographing their wedding, so I guess we must be.

One thing we’re not though is sideline snipers, although I must confess that actually, we used to be.  When we first started out shooting weddings.  Because we thought it was cool.   And besides, we couldn’t see how else you could photograph a wedding unobtrusively.

Then we found that we were missing shots.  And getting lots of backs of heads.  And creeping out the guests who noticed us trying to be unobtrusive like that.  So we learned, and we worked on finding our own way of being unobtrusive, which is all about shooting quickly and smiling and moving and anticipating and tuning into situations and stuff like that.

So yes, we too are unobtrusive.  We really are.  Even though there’s two of us.  And neither of us quite knows how we be unobtrusive …