Who wouldn’t want to post this wonderful photo on social media?
Photo by Gold Grid Studios
Among my clients, the one thing everyone wants is a good photographer. (Fortunately, I know many wonderful photographers!) Because I’m not a big photography person, myself, this has gotten me thinking about how wedding photography has evolved over time–and why it has done so.
A few years ago, I saw my parents’ wedding photos for the first time. They got married in the 1950s. Think about it: I had never seen those pictures growing up and only saw them when I was an adult, and then it was almost by accident. There were a few dozen (because film was in rolls of 12) small black-and-white photos. By today’s standards, they really weren’t very good! The only wedding photo I had ever seen before of my parents’ was the one taken of my mother in her wedding dress in a photographer’s studio. As I recall, that was the picture that was used with the engagement announcement in her hometown paper. I had heard lots of stories about the wedding, but really had no visuals.
I have exactly one photograph from either of my grandparents’ weddings in the early 20th century. There’s a wonderful 8×10 black-and-white photo of my grandmother in her wedding gown and full-length veil flanked by her two bridesmaids (her sister and future sister-in-law). This was also pretty clearly a staged photo taken before the wedding.
Fast forward to my own wedding about 15 years ago. Maybe it’s because my parents’ photos (or lack thereof) had set up this expectation for me, we didn’t have a wedding photographer. (Remember, I hadn’t even seen my parents’ wedding photos then.) We had a couple of guests who were excellent amateur or semi-professional photographers who were happy to take a lot of photos for us, and we got some nice shots. They gave them to us as prints, negatives, and/or slides. We got maybe 150 photos total. I made a little album and I haven’t looked at it in a decade.
When I got married, digital cameras were pretty new, and most people still had film cameras. In the ensuing years, 95% of photography has gone digital. And what this has done is made it possible to have 1,000 or more photos from every wedding. Digital photos also mean that people are much more used to both being photographed and seeing themselves in the photo immediately. The result is that people in general are much more practiced at being photographed. And they seem to like it more, too. So, wedding photography has exploded, and getting good photos is one of the goals of a good wedding.
And then there’s social media. Having the ability to share your photos immediately with your friends or your world makes having them ever so much more valuable. And weddings–well, what could be more beautiful, exciting, or Instagramable than your wedding?
The other thing that has happened due to this change in photography is the increased demand for professional hair and make-up services. After all, if you’re going to be photographed all day for public consumption, a lot of people want to put their best face on. I’m pretty sure my mother and grandmother did their own make-up before their weddings. Today, that’s almost never even considered.
So, in my lifetime, wedding photography has gone from being a sort of a nice luxury that resulted in a small handful of photos to an absolute necessity so that the people getting married can have 1,000 gorgeous, artistic photos to splash all over the internet. I have to wonder what is next. Whatever it is, I know that wedding photographers are going to be right there in the middle of it.
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