What Is Perfect Wedding Photography? Is There Such A Thing?

That’s a tough one. What’s a perfect photograph? Does your wedding have to be perfect to make perfect wedding photographs? There’s quite a lot of debate on the subject, and with photography becoming more and more accessible, there are more people weighing in all the time.

What Is Perfect Photography?

If you Google ‘how to take a perfect photo’ you get a lot of advice. A lot.

The University of Arkansas is at the top of page 1 and says:

Understand the rule of thirds.
Eyes should always be in focus.
Pay attention to the background.
Understand the exposure triangle.
Be careful with your on-camera flash.
Invest in a tripod.
Shoot in the early morning and evening.
Learn from your mistakes.

#2 Best Buy says:

Invest in quality equipment
Pick your focal point
Use the rule of thirds
Change your angles
Pay attention to framing
Use ideal lighting
Use filters and settings
Take lots of shots
Use simple backgrounds, especially when taking portraits
Take your time when editing

#3 Format (professional portfolio website) says:

Master the Fundamentals of Composition
Make Sure You Have Good Lighting
Get Some Lighting Equipment
Learn How to Edit Photos Like a Professional
Learn Your Camera's Settings
Pick Up a Tripod
Upgrade Your Gear
Show Off Your Shots Like a Pro

And finally, Adobe says:

Understand the ins and outs of exposure.
Learn your equipment
Take lots of pictures
Find the light that works for you
Experiment with composition
Try different styles
Focus on your artistic vision
Experiment with presets

Apologies for the long-winded examples, but I think it’s interesting to see what the cream of the internet offers as the answer to a ‘perfect’ photo. On the whole, these pieces of advice are basically instructions on how to take a correctly exposed photo of the thing you want to take a photo of and not mess it up. There are, of course, biases towards editing from Adobe, or towards buying more stuff from Best Buy (who would’ve thunk it), but all the lists are pretty similar.

But consider this: What do you see when you look at photographs? I’d be willing to be big that you’ve never said anything like “phwoar, look at the composition in that one” or “wow, her camera must have been so expensive” or even “I love the orange and teal tones” (which was a hugely popular colour scheme in action films and then on Instagram).

The Rise of Digital Perfection

The advent of digital cameras and the surge forward in camera technology means that almost everyone with a mobile phone has a camera, and people who then invest in digital cameras have the technology to be able to take really great photographs relatively easily. Gone are the days of 36 shots on a roll, keeping film in the fridge, and not being able to instantly see the photo you just took. There are plenty of advantages to digital image making - instantaneous review, almost limitless low-cost storage, technical flexibility, automatic assistance in the cameras themselves, and a huge amount of latitude when digitally processing your photos. All of these elements make it pretty easy to capture a very good image technically speaking.

When added to our ability to now publicly send, share, and view hundreds of images a day a sort of perfect storm of technology and scrutiny, we’ve started to demand absolute technical perfection from our digital images.

New lenses, more megapixels, and AI editing tools created a sort of cult of camera bros focused entirely on technical perfection, and an endless stream of wedding images on social media produced a strange perfection anxiety around the whole wedding day. It felt as if there was any slight hiccup or imperfection during the day, especially if that was reflected in the photos, then it was a disaster.

But is that really real?

The Counter-Rise of Imperfection

Very recently, even as close as last year, film photography has started to make more and more of a comeback. Film and camera companies have even released new film stocks, such as Phoenix, Pentax released the all-new Pentax 17, and Leica re-released new models of the legendary M6 film camera.

Film seems to be making a comeback, despite the astronomical costs of film stocks and developing and scanning the negatives, largely because it is rarely technically perfect. In essence, using film is more limiting than digital because the sensitivity of the film can’t be changed, and because the individual colours of the film are set. The new Harman Phoenix film has a lot of red tones, for instance, and black and white film will only make black and white photos.

These limitations mean that photos are often slightly blurry due to movement, or maybe imperfectly framed, or maybe all the lighter parts of the image have turned completely white because there was too much light. As an answer to social media perfection, many are turning to film as an answer and as a way to find built-in imperfection, and a more honest way to create images.

During a wedding day, in my opinion, it’s very unusual for everything to run completely smoothly and to perfection, but this is precisely what makes each and every wedding day special. Often an imperfect snatched photograph of a fleeting imperfect moment can create an image that contains an ocean of emotions and stories about the couple and their families and loved ones.

Wedding Photography is Frozen Emotions

The photographs of your wedding, or any wedding, shouldn’t be just a perfectly constructed visual record of the wedding day, or worse, a carefully edited narrative that makes your wedding seem like something it wasn’t. Wedding photography, after all, shouldn’t be about carefully making every wedding look picture-perfect as if it were all staged. In the Instagram era, I feel like we have gotten really good at making everything look cool and aesthetic. Somehow everything has become a chance to look great while doing whatever.

In my opinion, wedding photography that is made by trying to force the wedding to be a perfectly-composed-everyone-is-smiling-and-handsome-all-the-time is not successful wedding photography, regardless of the style. Striving too hard to create set up idealised wedding postcards with you and your family in them means I would miss tiny, astonishing, beautiful moments throughout the day. As wedding photographers, especially documentary wedding photographers, we are there to bear witness to your special day exactly as you wanted to celebrate it. I believe that a wedding can be photographed in an honest, empathetic, and beautiful way that is above all a believable record of the full emotional rollercoaster the couple went on together, and with their families and friends, during their wedding day.