With spring coming “wedding season” will shortly be upon us as well. Around this time every year I start looking for inspiration for this year’s weddings. The magazine racks are filled with “Wedding Issues” in the photography section, and these always offer a breath of fresh air after the winter slow season. I also have *tons* of books. I love looking through books, especially vintage wedding books, to see what I can dig up and reintroduce. I was looking at a book today called Capture the Moment: A Brides’ and Photographers’ Guide to Contemporary Weddings and was struck by how quickly things have changed.
For starters, everything back when this book was published was shot on film. This in itself is neither good nor bad. Looking at the pictures a bride today wouldn’t be very happy with them. Most of the images were shot on 400 speed film. This is neither fast nor slow, but it’s generally too slow for indoor available light and too fast for a sunny outside. There was a lot of image softness due to a combination of slow shutter speeds and large apertures. Why he didn’t use a 1600 speed press film indoors is beyond me. Also, most of the indoor images were very orange toned, this is because common indoor lights are tungsten and tungsten lights are actually orange compared to day light. This was actually very common back when this book was published, there just weren’t any fast tungsten films and even if there were you probably wouldn’t use them (because if you used flash or went outside everything would turn blue). People generally look better warm than cold.
Which brings us to the real point. When was this book published? 2002! Technology and client expectations have changed so much in less than a decade. Now it’s possible to do relatively complicated lighting, mix lighting, low light, and bright outdoor sunny pictures all within moments of each other. Exposures are better, sharpness is better, noise/grain is better, colors are more accurate, it’s astonishing! It’s not you’re parents’ wedding photography any more. Heck, it’s not even your older cousin’s wedding photography. The game has changed, definitely for the better!
There’s still wisdom to be gained from these arcane tomes. Poses, insights into wedding photography, shots to look for, etc. From a technique standpoint, we’re in a totally different place today, and our clients are better off for it.
