Reportage Photography

How many times lately have you seen a photographers website claiming to be a ‘reportage’ photographer, or claiming to have a ‘photojournalist’ approach to wedding photography? My guess is quite a lot.

I recently saw two complete weddings by fairly local photographers, who are making such claims, and also who are charging a considerable sum for this product. Having seen complete weddings by them, I can only say I was not only disappointed with the standard of their work, to be honest I was shocked. On an average wedding I would say about 80% of what I shoot could come under the reportage banner. i.e. Unposed, natural shooting. Most weddings I do, I am told that for the most part nobody even knew I was there. That is how I see the reportage photography thing being done. Quite how these people can claim this when they are blitzing everything that moves or doesn’t move with megawatts of on camera flash, I have no idea, but I don’t think discretion is high on the list of priorities!

Reportage Photography has become a myth, one of these terms you read about in wedding magazines, and think is some really cool trend. There are very few around who actually shoot it the way it should be. From what I have seen, apart from a few of the very best shooters, the rest are using this genre of photography to allow them to shoot weddings with no training, no knowledge of lighting, flattering posing or any other of the core skills required to be a photographer.  The worrying aspect is, that people seem to be booking them, clearly with no knowledge of how it should be done, merely falling for some tags and keywords on these guys websites.

My own personal approach is that I will observe people all day watching for the right moments, and 99% of the time capture the moment without anybody noticing. The rest of the time I am directing people into positions and situations where I can create great images. This is where these people all go wrong.  Most of the time when a ‘moment’ happens, the lighting or background will not be right, so we need to help people understand that you cannot shoot an entire wedding without direction, as we will end up with the kind of rubbish I refer to from these two and people like them, with bad backgrounds, and compensating for lack of ability by blasting everything with flash, which is rarely flattering unless done properly.

The next time someone tells you they shoot ‘genuine unposed moments’ or they are a ‘specialist reportage photographer’, ask them to see a whole wedding. Ask them why they shoot the entire day ‘unposed’ and look for the things I mentioned before. I will guarantee in most cases they are doing it because it is an easy way to take your money without doing the work. If you have convinced yourself you want ‘reportage’ on your big day, have a chat with myself, or other photographers and understand that everybody needs to have some direction and input from their photographer if they want quality.

I have attached a few genuine moments I have captured at recent weddings. All taken discretely but obviously not perfect images as you have no control over backgrounds in many cases, but this proves my point. The last image is, in my opinion, still a reportage image as it is natural and unposed but I directed them into a position that worked for composition and lighting.

‘Photojournalism’ is often referred to as ‘PJ’ photography. I think the nearest the two in question will get to that is if they start shooting in their PJ’s