True documentary photography is, in essence, the art of photographing things spontaneously without altering the scene in any way. No asking people to move or adjust their behaviour, no tidying the landscape except through composition. There are times, of course, when this might feel counter-productive – if something in the background is distracting or you think the light could fall more beautifully with a slight tweak of somebody’s position then why would you not interfere? Why tie one hand behind your back and make the scenario potentially more difficult for yourself?
Well there’s a very long answer to this (in fact there’s a roughly 306 page, 48,000 word answer in the form of our book “Is This Something?”) but we’ll try to keep this brief with just a few important points to consider …
First is the issue of precedent. Capturing true spontaneity relies on our couples investing in the moment and learning to ignore our presence. The moment we ask them to move or alter their behaviour even subtly, we break them out of the moment and set a precedent that they should consider the camera before any action they take. That’s not to say that you can’t get great photographs that way – placing someone in a soft pool of light, for example, might create a beautiful, dramatic portrait. But allow them to continue, to stay immersed in the moment and who knows what might happen?
Which brings us to our second consideration. By refusing to interfere and make a determination as to what the scene “should” look like, not only do we allow our couple (and guests) to stay engaged and enjoying the natural flow of the day, we also force ourselves to stay engaged and working moment to moment. There’s nothing wrong with staging a scene, but to us there is no greater creative force than spontaneity. By staying in the moment and allowing the action to simply unfold before us we have consistently been presented with opportunities greater and more powerful than we could have artificially created.
Take our featured image (above). Our groom and ushers got dressed for the wedding in a room that was small for the number of people involved – always a difficult scenario to photograph due to the limited positions we can get into. Our options were further impeded when the groom hung his jacket in the entrance to the room – the easiest angle to photograph from.
We could have moved the jacket, of course, but by investing in the moment and seeing potential obstacles as possible gifts, we instead see an unusual opportunity. As our lovely groom Tom has his tie adjusted to the left of our view, a groomsman pauses, momentarily in line with the hanging jacket, creating an image with an air of humour and serendipity. Could we have gone to the trouble of posing this image? Perhaps. But to us the humour comes from the surprise synchronicity of the scene – the very fact that the moment was not posed is what, to us, makes it work.
And with couples as fun, engaging and free as Shannon & Tom, if we stay in the moment and just concentrate on creating great photographs from what we see in front of us, spontaneous magic can’t help but be created in every part of the day.
