Do Your Photographer And Videographer Have Similar Styles?

Say it’s your wedding day. You’ve hired a top notch photojournalistic photographer; someone whose work spoke to you in the un-posed emotional moments you saw in their portfolio. You want your wedding photos to represent the story of the day with minimal posing and prompting from the photographer, you want the real life stuff, and not the cheesy bridesmaid’s bouquets on the train from the 1980’s. You want to live your day, not spend it posing and mugging for the camera and have your photos represent the love and emotion that you felt on your wedding day. You’ve hired a wedding photojournalist, and I am proud to say that’s what I do. My clients hire me for my unobtrusive, “fly on the wall” coverage. Certainly, the style is not for everyone; if you visualize your wedding photography to be full of glamorous and romantic “fashion-y” type photos then you would not hire a wedding photojournalist.

If this sounds like what you envision for your wedding photographer then congratulations, you are my perfect client. So why oh why, my perfect client, do you hire a videographer who does this?

Not exactly “unobtrusive” would you say? Notice that the location where he is standing could be directly blocking the view of family members in the front row. As was his style, the videographer wanted to stage everything and recreate things. This caused some stress to the bride and groom, who were unaware of the style of this videographer before they hired him. They had assumed that all videographers were pretty much the same, and having him follow them around “paparazzi-like” was not at all what they wanted which caused some awkward exchanges between them and the videographer. He later grumbled to me “I don’t even know why they hired me; they won’t let me do my job!” It was simply a mismatch of his style and how they wanted their wedding day to be captured.

If you are considering hiring a videographer, here is some advice. Find out how the videographer works and ask to see a demo of their work to get an idea if they are the right vendor for you. Ask questions! Find out how they conduct themselves during the ceremony as far as where they stand, what kind of equipment will be setup (tripods, lights, etc.), how they capture the audio, and if they like to setup and recreate scenes in order to get different angles. Ask your photographer for recommendations of videographers they have worked with and who’s style they know to be complementary. Ask the videographer for references of former clients that you can contact to find out how they liked working with the videographer and how their video turned out.

Ideally, your vendors should work together seamlessly on your wedding day. It’s why you hire professionals, so that you can enjoy your wedding day and leave the details of capturing the moments to us.

Kim Bednarski Anderson has been delivering documentary style wedding photography in Wisconsin and the surrounding area since 1996.