Wedding photojournalism, but do you really know what it means?

There is a vast difference between “candid” images, and images captured and crafted by a trained photojournalist, Wedding photojournalism is applying professional skills and honed talent to tell the story of a wedding.

Is Wedding Photojournalism a trend?  “Real life , real moments, if that ever goes out of style, we’re all in trouble,” says WPJA member John Webb.  “A beloved family member wiping away a tear during the ceremony, a bride comforting a grandmother who arrived too late for the ceremony, a beautiful bride, fighting back the tears and feeling the beauty and enormity of the moment, when is that ever going to go out of style? Real moments – you can’t fake them.”

Webb argues that when people look back at their wedding photographs, they’d like to remember what they felt at the time, not just what they looked like, which is surely to be out of date 20 years later. What really matters, he says, is the actual experience and moments the photographer is documenting.

“I think people want to experience real life as it happens. They want to remember their wedding day, without someone asking them constantly to move or stand a certain way,” he says. “They don’t want to remember the photographer making him dip her back like that. They want to remember the spontaneous moment — the real moment.

“Then they can say, ‘That’s what I look like when I’m really living my life. That’s who I really am,” he says. “And it’s not easy. You have to show up the day of the event and you have to be “on”. There are no do over’s. My job is to show up with a good eye, an open heart and a very quick finger on the shutter”. “It requires for you to be “in” those moments, to know something about your clients and to have a mentality that there is no such thing as a perfect picture, but a wedding is packed with perfect moments”.

It’s that observing eye that captures the reality of a wedding — the real moments that you’ll remember years later when flipping through your photos. Does he think that’s a trend? “My belief is there is beauty and art in reality by design and it‘s my job to document it,” he says simply.

Fad?

“It is a fad no more than a mother breaking out in tears as she puts on her daughters veil, in awe of her daughter’s beauty, no more than a tearful father walking his daughter down the aisle is a fad, no more than real life is a fad.”

For more information, call 770.321.4350 or visit John and Tamera Webb in their studio at 31 Mill St. in Historic Downtown Marietta.