Wedding Photography Trends

7 Creative Wedding Photography Trends That You Should Try

In a time where short-form digital content and AI-generated images and videos pervade almost everything we consume, the wedding photography industry seemingly hasn’t embraced modern trends the way other industries have.

The gold standard of wedding photos remains the iconic ‘still’ – the happy couple, perfectly in focus, perhaps with a blurred background church or scenic view. Don’t get me wrong, these photos are gorgeous, and there’s a reason that traditional wedding photos are still the industry standard. But with the multitude of ways that modern technology can spice up your wedding photos, surely there are modern trends that you and your partner could embrace to make your wedding snaps that much more exciting and original.

Let’s toss out the old and the boring and step into the age where your wedding photos can be as original, fun, and creative as you are.

Aerial Photography

Aerial photography has been growing quite popular and has continuously become an essential element of wedding photography these days. This trend, through the use of drones, can capture sweeping aerial shots of the venue, the ceremony, and group photos from high above, which provides a dramatic quality and increased visual storytelling to the images. This innovation highlights the beauty of the entire setting in ways that ground-based photography cannot.

Documentary/Photojournalistic Photography

One of the latest trends in wedding photography is the documentary or photojournalistic style. This approach focuses on capturing candid, unposed moments throughout the wedding day, telling a genuine and emotional story through the lens.

Instead of staged shots and formal portraits, this style aims to document the real interactions, and emotions during the event. If you prefer an authentic and natural representation of your special day, the documentary or photojournalistic style would be a trend to adopt.

Minimalism

Less “noise” means bolder focus on the subject; this applies to capturing minimalist wedding portraits. The more your photographer strips away distracting elements, employs just the right composition, increases white space, and applies proper colour management, the cleaner your photos will appear, highlighting only the pure joy and the intimacy of the moment.

Light Painting

Light painting has been one of my creative outlets for a number of years now and I’ve been very privileged to host training classes and speak in the United States about light painting. Light painting is a photographic technique of moving a light source while taking a long exposure photograph, either to illuminate a subject or space, or to shine light at the camera to ‘draw’, or by moving the camera itself during the exposure of light sources.

Recently, light painting has evolved with the creation of such tools as the Pixelstick, Lumibrush, light tubes and even a fibre optic whip. What was previously drawing things with a torch, or sparklers has now grown into a world-wide obsession with amazing patterns, colours and designs now possible and quite easily achieved with a small amount of practice.

Light painting can be done with or without using flash, but the outcome very much depends on the skill of the photographer and your ability to remain very still throughout the exposure.

The Motion Blur Trend

While it can sometimes make photos look like an unintentional mistake, motion blur, when done purposefully and creatively, can help enhance visual storytelling. This technique captures dynamic movement and delivers a sense of energy and emotion. The motion blur trend can make you feel as though you’re still there in that moment.

The wedding photography trends today encourage you, as a couple and your chosen photographers to experiment with new styles, adopt new techniques, and push the boundaries of traditional expectations. Aside from drawing inspiration from the trends above, exploring Instagram, Pinterest, and other wedding resources can help make your wedding photos be captured in ways that highlight authenticity, creativity, and personal expression.

Black & White

While you might not consider it to be a creative trend, black & white photography, when used correctly and deliberately can really enhance and showcase a moment. The reason for this is that when we as humans look at a photo, we see colour first. Upon seeing this colour our brain automatically makes a determination of the mood or vibe of the photo based on the colour our eyes see. Vibrant and colourful might mean happy, conversely dark and moody might mean serious or sad. Its all very subjective!

This all changes when it comes to black & white photos. With no colour to assist us making our “vibe determination”, we need to look deeper into the photo and as a result we are drawn to the expressions of the subjects to get the vibe. This is why some black & white photos seem so powerful to the viewer and why a skilled photographer should use black & white photos when they deliver yours. Black & White will amplify the feeling of the moment and take your attention to it with no colour distractions.

Vibrant Colour

Creatively, vibrant colours is one of the best possible ways to grab attention, ever stopped to think why the McDonalds arches are bright yellow or the casinos in Las Vegas have bright colours and flashing lights on their signs and billboards? They grab your attention.

The clever use of vibrant colours as photography backdrops like graffiti walls, coloured signs or coloured walls will always produce a striking photo, even more so if you photographer knows how to use flash as this will amplify the colour.

Want to make a statement and get noticed go for vibrant colours.