For decades wedding photographs have been infected by the centuries old curse of the overly posed shot. The origin of this goes back to the mid-19th Century when early cameras required very long exposure times, so subjects had to stay very still in order to get a clear photo. This necessitated rather wooden posing and facial expressions that could be held for as long as 20 seconds in bright daylight. Some particularly squirmy children were even put in restraints for their family photos (I’m laughing while typing this).
Did you know that because of this, smiling (just in photos I hope) only came into vogue in the 1920s when cameras were capable of faster exposures?
As you might have sussed by now, such posing is no longer necessary and in fact is undesirable for most customers these days, we enjoy more candid, authentic moments, and I’ll get onto how they work in a future blog post!
I want to use this opportunity to show some examples of posed work I have taken at weddings over the years, that I still like, and can make the most of if requested, but prefer more creative approaches.
