Formal Wedding Portraits

Eia · March 18, 2013

OK – so I view the sample images of all the wedding photos and personally speaking I love the mood, feel, comp and processing from all you guys. I JUST LOVE IT and appreciate the photography/photographers. However, when I showed a few of these kinds of wedding shots to my Mother-in-law and a few Aunts and a few ummm…. older relatives -- they gasped when they didn’t see any formal portraits except ‘snapshot’ like photos!
I can understand their point of view to an extent - so I was wondering… does this type of wedding photography exist anymore. (yea… I’m from that ‘formal’ generation but if I had this option back then I would have loved what I see now.) So all I can do is rely on snapshots poorly taken! LOL…

Please know this is not a debate type of question...

heatherfeather · March 18, 2013

I always make sure to do both. Gramma needs those "proof we are all alive at the same time" photos, though they are rarely portfolio photos.

Though last month, I did shoot some formals that will likely end up in my portfolio somewhere.... It was awesome that they would still play outside with the snow coming down like it was. (I LOVE my Alaskan brides.)

Mallory%20259-XL.jpg

p27rpy · March 19, 2013

heatherfeather wrote: »

I always make sure to do both. Gramma needs those "proof we are all alive at the same time" photos, though they are rarely portfolio photos.

Though last month, I did shoot some formals that will likely end up in my portfolio somewhere.... It was awesome that they would still play outside with the snow coming down like it was. (I LOVE my Alaskan brides.)

love this shot! super clean editing as well. very, very nice!

nicoleshilliday · March 20, 2013

If this was in NJ they would all look blue and would have no necks because they would be shivering so bad! love it!

nicoleshilliday · March 20, 2013

Eia wrote: »

OK – so I view the sample images of all the wedding photos and personally speaking I love the mood, feel, comp and processing from all you guys. I JUST LOVE IT and appreciate the photography/photographers. However, when I showed a few of these kinds of wedding shots to my Mother-in-law and a few Aunts and a few ummm…. older relatives -- they gasped when they didn’t see any formal portraits except ‘snapshot’ like photos!
I can understand their point of view to an extent - so I was wondering… does this type of wedding photography exist anymore. (yea… I’m from that ‘formal’ generation but if I had this option back then I would have loved what I see now.) So all I can do is rely on snapshots poorly taken! <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/Laughing.gif" border="0" alt="" >…

Please know this is not a debate type of question...

and to answer this question...yes they do and 9 times out of 10 they are all in a parent album

Matthew Saville · March 22, 2013

Formals are for family reunions. I shoot them at weddings, but I don't blog them and I don't put them in my portfolio, and I make every effort to convince the couple to avoid an excessive number of them in their albums. Sometimes the parents do want their own album, and yeah we usually re-design the album to contain more / all formals. It's annoying from a creative standpoint, but at the end of the day this is just a business and you're selling a product to a customer, so why not just give them exactly what they want?

=Matt=

jasonscottphoto · March 23, 2013

Matthew Saville wrote: »

Formals are for family reunions.

=Matt=

For many people, a wedding IS a family reunion...

Eia · March 23, 2013

so I have to laugh at some of your comments...funny...I can totally understand! Just for clarity...the formal I'm talking about is where the bride/and or groom is in a studio - proper poses, proper lighting and all that... think Jackie-O and maybe the Royal family -

. In all fairness I came across a few stunning formal studio portraits that honestly -- are just gorgeous. And I found some vintage formals that really were 'timeless'. But, too much of that is soooo boring! I sure would like to see some of your work for formal portraits.... I'm really intrigued. Gads I think about mine...the late 70's and 80's had to have been the worse fashion era even with bridal wear!

coolpinsky · March 29, 2013

love love ! one of the best formal wedding shots I've ever seen I think . good job !

Matthew Saville · March 31, 2013

Eia wrote: »

so I have to laugh at some of your comments...funny...I can totally understand! Just for clarity...the formal I'm talking about is where the bride/and or groom is in a studio - proper poses, proper lighting and all that... think Jackie-O and maybe the Royal family - . In all fairness I came across a few stunning formal studio portraits that honestly -- are just gorgeous. And I found some vintage formals that really were 'timeless'. But, too much of that is soooo boring! I sure would like to see some of your work for formal portraits.... I'm really intrigued. Gads I think about mine...the late 70's and 80's had to have been the worse fashion era even with bridal wear!

Thanks for shedding some light on your original question!

To answer, no, I think that in-studio wedding portraiture is not very common, at least not in certain areas including here where I live in Southern California. Partly because the weather here is so nice that we can shoot outdoors any time we want almost, and partly because the "lifestyle" portraiture is just popular these days. And partly because so many photographers just don't know how to shoot in a studio anymore,

.

There are plenty of areas where in-studio portraiture is still common, probably the areas where horrible weather is a little more common, among other reasons involving trends etc...

So my question for you is, ...why are you interested? Do you really wish to go in this direction? Or are you just wondering if there was a reason for such a situation? Because depending on where you live, I might advise against venturing in such a direction, or if so I would say it'd take a long, long time to build up an established in-studio wedding portrait aspect of a business...

=Matt=

Eia · April 3, 2013

My qr. was just curiosity after looking through some old wedding albums and my mom in law asked. I remembered when there was a bridal portrait in the newspaper announcing a marriage. Now that you mentioned it - I do remember someone else saying that most wedding photographers just don't know how to do formal portraits. Thanks for the info.....

daniel212 · April 9, 2013

Nice sharing........... Thank you for the starting this post. This post is really informative for all wedding photographer and formal portraits. I totally agree with Eia some of wedding photographer doesn't know about formal wedding portraits.

Formal Wedding Portraits

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