Black and White Wedding Photography
Notes from a wedding photographer based on Exmoor
A good share of the photographs I deliver are black and white, and couples sometimes ask why. The honest answer is that black and white is how I see a lot of a wedding: it takes away the colour of the bridesmaids’ dresses and the carpet and the exit sign and leaves the thing that matters, which is the expression on someone’s face and the light that falls on it. Every wedding gallery I deliver has both; the black and white pictures are chosen because they’re better that way, not to fill a quota.
It’s also a documentary tradition. The photographers I learned from, the ones who photographed life as it happened rather than as it was arranged, worked in black and white because it was what there was, and it taught a discipline about light, timing and gesture that I still work by. Film is part of that for me too; I shoot film at some weddings alongside the digital cameras, and the film page explains why.
When black and white works
Faces, hands and moments: the groom’s expression as the doors open, the grandmother at the ceremony, the speeches, the dance floor at eleven. Hard light, which colour struggles with and monochrome loves: a midday ceremony on a beach, a window with the sun behind it. And anything where the colour was a distraction: a lot of marquees, a lot of hotel function rooms. When it doesn’t: flowers, a dress with colour in it, a golden-hour sky, the view from the venue you chose for the view. Those stay in colour, always.
In black and white
How I decide
I edit every picture individually and make the call one at a time; nothing is batch-converted. If you’d like more or fewer black and white pictures than I’d naturally choose, tell me before the wedding and I’ll edit accordingly. And every black and white photograph in your gallery can be supplied in colour if you ever want it, so nothing is lost.
See more
The documentary page explains the way I work; the wedding stories show it, wedding by wedding, in colour and in black and white.
Taking a limited number of weddings for 2027 and 2028
If my way of working sounds like your kind of thing, I’d love to hear about your plans. Drop me a line with your date and venue and I’ll tell you straight away whether I’m free.
