Wedding Photography Styles and Types You Should Know Before Hiring a Photographer

Your wedding date is fixed, you’ve booked your dreamy venue, while you shop for you wedding outfit, you’re pondering upon which vendor will picture-perfect your wedding day. Finding a caterer, mehndi artist or decorator might be easy, but when it’s a wedding photographer you’re considering, added time investment and extensive research is a must.

Why?!

Just have a dekho at some our real weddings and you’ll get exactly what we mean. For upbeat brides and grooms traditional wedding photography where one instructs the other follows is just passé. With pre and post wedding shoots, candid photography, photojournalistic styles and many more taking wedding photography by storm, it’s essential for you as a couple to know what style best reflect your personality and that’s exactly what you’d want to display in your wedding album, true?

You could opt to stick to one style or try on combinations for different functions, but don’t end up having a mismatch of your final photos. Before you interview your photographer, know about the different wedding photography styles, collect a few samples (you’ll find a lot them on our ideas and inspiration section) and ask your photographer if he knows and can replicate the style for you.

Not all photographers practice all styles. While some may have their expertise in artistic, another’s forte might be photojournalistic. But it always helps to be well-informed of the all the styles, so that you can easily pick the right one amongst the best wedding photographers out there.  

Let’s quickly give you a brief idea of what are the different wedding photography styles you should know and what you can expect from them. But before we get on to the styles, know the different types of wedding photography.

Wedding Photography Types

Photo By: The Creative Lens

Regular Wedding Photography and Videography: This covers your entire marriage ceremony and reception. All the highlights, from the band baaja to you bridal outfit, the rituals to decor, food to bidai, all that you can think of in a wedding is shot and filmed to store timeless memories.

Photo By: The Cheesecake Project

Pre and Post Wedding Shoots: Pre and post wedding shoots are rather intimate focussing mainly on the bride and groom, and their immense love for each other. These are the photo shoots modern couples are much more tickled about rather than the entire marriage ceremony and reception. As this one is more relaxed and lets the couple be their natural self. True emotions of all the stored up wedding jitters are perfectly captured in this type.

Drone Photography: This type of photography gives you an aerial view of how the God’s must be watching you union from up above. With GoPro making passionate photographers run wild with imagination, drone photography too is soon catching up and being happily accepted by many adventurous couples, who are all game to pose on a high mountain at the edge of the rock, if need be, to get unusual clicks.

Now that you know the types of wedding photography, it’s time to identify the styles

Wedding Photography Styles

Photo By: Camera waale baraati

Classic or Traditional Wedding Photography Style: We all are well aware of this style of wedding photography. We thought it would best to start the listing with this oldest form before we move on to the fun and contemporary favourites of many recently hitched couples.

Providing a stiff and formal feel, the traditional style is one that takes us back in the days of our parent’s and grandparent’s wedding. These include all of those formal poses in an old and classic form. Even though contemporary styles are taking over, traditional poses do somehow make their way into your album. Whether you have a big and happy joint family or a small and nuclear clan, there is no way you can conclude your wedding without having that one family photo with everyone perfectly aligned within the frame as per their height.

What to Expect: a timeline oriented process, clean and classic compositions, relying on directions from your photographer, lots and lots of stiff posing and smiling, pictures that make all the elderly happy.

Photo By: Bosco’s Photography

Photojournalistic Wedding Photography Style (A.K.A. Candid or Documentary) : One of the most sought after styles by soon-to-wed couples, the photojournalistic wedding photography, also referred to as candid or documentary styles, is the one that captures perfect moments of the day through a watchful eye. If formal and structured kind of photography makes you yawn, then a photojournalistic style is definitely for you. The photographer expert at this style doesn’t let you feel his presence yet captures the most beautiful moments of your big day, which can be easily missed. These photographers are also flexible taking traditional shots. However, while interviewing get their confirmation on the same. 

What to Expect: Relaxed approach, realistic and fun captures of the day, out-of-the-box (as we like to call them “hatke”) images.

Photo By: Amour Affairs

Lifestyle Wedding Photography Style : Redefining photojournalistic approach, we have lifestyle wedding photography that basically captures candid moments with minimal directions and styling. This style photographer knows what look and settings he wants to achieve, yet lets you do it as per your discretion.

What to Expect: Relaxed atmosphere, amazing images.

Photo By: Amour Affairs

Vintage Wedding Photography Style : Vintage photos can really make you feel all mushy and romantic. Photographers create this effect by either using a film, medium format camera or the trick called “Photoshop”. If considering this style, ensure that your pictures are mostly naturally rustic rather than created as you would not want your album to be filled with fake effects. Insist your photographer to use a film to achieve this effect if possible. Since these camera equipment don’t come cheap, be ready to shell out some extra bucks as creating the effects too could burn a hole in your pocket.    

What to Expect: A setting that makes you time-travel to a different era and photos that looks nostalgic and romantic.

Photo By: The Cheesecake Project

Fine Art or Artistic Wedding Photography Style : Art in itself is quite subjective. When art is mixed with photography what you get is a subjective style, which only when you see, you understand. Artistic wedding photography includes the use of artistic props and smart play of lighting. An artistic photographer has a keen eye and understanding of artistic elements and knows well how to use them to make you look like no one has ever seen you before. Communicating your requirements to an artistic photographer can be difficult, as there might be clashes between your vision and his perception, as well as execution. It’s best to simply surrender yourself to them if you want to achieve that “wow” factor in your wedding album.

What to expect: unique approach, slightly time-consuming, beautifully captured timeless photos that could leave your eyes numb.

Photo By: Dilli Wale Weddings

Editorial or Dramatic Wedding Photography Style : Ever wished to be on the cover photo of a magazine? Then the editorial or you can call it dramatic wedding photography style that is inspired by modern fashion photography is what you should go for. This style involves dramatic props, lightings and set-ups that make the final photos look simply extraordinary. However, this style is extremely time-consuming. Finding time between all the wedding festivities is highly unlikely. But now that you’re simply in love with the idea and want to have this style incorporated to store your wedding memories, then it would be best to devote a day after your wedding for this type of photo shoot.

What to Expect: Fantastic high-end images, not organic includes set-ups, time-consuming.

“Trash the Wedding Dress” Wedding Photography Style : Speaking of keeping a day aside for certain styles of photography, next on our list is “Trash the Wedding Dress” photography style. Yes! Literally! I know it comes as quite a shocker. But this style is becoming quite a hit thing internationally as post wedding shoot. As part of their post wedding shoots, brides are opting to destroy their wedding dresses, which otherwise one would simply keep packed away in the trunk. If you love your wedding outfit a little too much, skip this one. But if you’re a fearless bride up for a whacky adventure, then do give it a shot. You photos will be the talk of the town for days, months or even years to come. 

What to expect: Watch your lovely dress get majorly destroyed, have fun doing it, daring and crazy pictures that will garner pleasant and unpleasant comments.

Photo By: PK Suri

Destination Wedding or Adventure Wedding Photography Style : Destination weddings have become extremely popular these days. Modern couples are opting to frisk far away from home to celebrate their union. Destination wedding photography style is a mix of fine art and documentary styles, which candidly captures the beautiful moments of the couple along with the landscapes, architecture, culture, religion and natural elements of the destination. Whether you have an intimate beach wedding in Goa or an elaborate affair in Jaipur, the images will clearly reflect the destination through the fine details captured in the images. 

What to Expect: Scenic and beautiful images, achieve the aim of capturing the beauty of the destination you’re and save it for a lifetime.

Photo By: The Cheesecake Project

Wedding Cinematography Style : Photos that tell a story, your love story, are compiled together in a cinematic style filming. This is the most beautiful way in which photographers work their way out through all the larger than life images captured pre, during and post your wedding to tell the story of your personalities, how you’ll met, your fairytale wedding come true and your possible great future together.

What to Expect: A magical memorandum of your beautiful journey together till date.

Liked what you just read? Share it with your friends and help them plan their wedding better too.

Remember, the style doesn’t matter as much as the competence of the wedding photographer does. Even if you’ve decided the styles, it’s imperative to check the portfolio of the photographer before hiring one.

For starters, you can browse our website to take a look at the work of some of the best wedding photographers in your city.