We love to see written feedback, wether it is by email, google plus, twitter or facebook. Just got this note from Zaira and Daniel after their wedding at London’s Dorchester hotel last month: “We would like to thank you very much for the pictures and DVDs. They are really great! You did an amazing job covering our wedding and we are very happy!” Lovely couple, lovely day.
The internet is full of lists. We haven’t seen one for best London wedding photographers, but we are guessing it is probably something couples looking for great imagery for their big day may well type in when they search. That got us thinking, what makes anyone the best wedding photographer in any particular area. Well to cut a long blog post short, and the conclusion we came to, it is very much in the eye and intuition of the beholder!
For instance if you value a particular style of photography over another, chances are you will have a natural and understandable bypass towards that image genre. Websites are full of buzz words trying to describe their owners varying approaches: reportage and documentary style, fine art, dramatic, classic, natural and spontaneous, unobtrusive, and so on. What does all this mean, does it make the photographer stand out from the rest? How much of this is just something that reads well on a site. There are definately some brilliant wedding photographers out there in the big wide world, and obviously some are more affordable than others. The general rule of you get what you pay for on the whole seems to us pretty accurate in this industry though.
Some are good, some are great, some are way better at marketing than others. Perhaps they live on page one of Google or Bing or whatever search engine is used. The emerging genius may well be on page five and no one ever finds them. Undoubtedly that happens and all the current research shows that people rarely look past the first two pages. Are the best wedding photographers on page one? No, but we suspect the busiest are! So what should a prospective couple look for. Well, firstly something that appeals to your gut feelings, and we are not talking food here! If the images you see move you, excite and inspire you, then you are probably more than half way there. As long as the images were shot at real weddings in realistic time scales with no models involved. Unfortunately that sometimes happens. Not with us though!
Next, are these people within your budget, or if they are not, would you mind finding the extra money to make sure these are the ones for your big day. Are they flexible style wise, or only shoot one way. For instance, if you value a reportage style would the photographer be comfortable capturing more formal or traditional portraits during the day. Would they recreate a photo idea you had found somewhere else for example on a popular site like Pinterest. Would they be amenable to shoot for you in a variety of different genres. Being open minded to these factors could contribute to them being deemed “the best” certainly for your needs. That would be way more relevant than a third party list or a search engine placing, or certainly one of those pay per click ads that appear at the top and side of every page you look at.
Other things to think about could be, have you met the person? Some London wedding photographers are much more relaxed with people than others. They really need to not just get on well with yourselves, but also ALL of your guests. Sometimes that “unobtrusive” documentary style advertised could be the carefully chosen words of a socially awkward but well-meaning person who loves playing with cameras! Of course there are folks that tick all the right boxes in all image styles too.
If possible we will always recommend meeting your wedding photographer in person, as this could be the final deciding factor in who is best for you. And that really is the essence of what makes for the title of this piece “Best London wedding photographers.” There is no definitive impartial list, it is about what is ultimately right for you and taking into account some of the areas we have mentioned here.
We hope it is us, but as always of course, the choice will be yours and yours alone. To read a little more of our personal approach to the big day take a look at the section here: David and Joanna
To get a feel for the variety and style of imagery we can produce you can either search further on the blog. or check out our dedicated image galleries here: Wedding Galleries
Images shown here are really the tip of a very large ten year iceberg! There’s the Gherkin building at the top, Smithfield market, a bus stop in Richmond, Lord’s Cricket Ground, a bit of rundown Hoxton at night, London Zoo, The Dorchester Hotel and St Pancras Station, to name just a few of the venues we have done recently in and around London.
You can read about some of these London weddings featured here in a group of previous blog posts listed below:
Weddings at the Gherkin: Gherkin wedding photographer
London Zoo celebrations: London Zoo wedding photographers
St Pancras: London St Pancras wedding
Dorchester Hotel weddings: London Dorchester Hotel wedding
Lord’s Cricket Ground: Lords Cricket Ground Wedding
Smithfield Market: Smithfield Wedding Photographer
By David Green
Once again we wanted to give credit to another great wedding supplier that we have worked with regularly, and feel would be worthwhile for couples to take a look at. Here is a wedding film produced by Martin at Special Occassion Videos who shot alongside us recently for Ankush and Nikki’s big day at the iconic London Gherkin Building.
We documented this special day previously in a related blog post that can be read here: Gherkin Wedding Photographer
It still makes us smile how hard it was to get into the building through security, even though we were the official photographers! Take a look at the film and you can once again see myself and Joanna hard at work – we are the good looking ones…
Martin’s company website: Special Occasion Videos
By David Green
As well as getting to work with some fantastic couples and exciting and varied venues as London wedding photographers, we also get to work with other great professionals in the industry too. We wanted to give a “heads up” to couples looking for videographers and cinematographers with a couple of recommendations for other suppliers we regularly shoot alongside. One of those is the man and wife team of John and Rachel De Rienzo of De Rienzo Films in London. You can find their website here: De Rienzo Films
We photographed together recently at the famous Italian Church in Clerkenwell, then around central London and finally finished up at the world renowned Landmark Hotel for Giulia and Antonio’s wedding and reception. A truely special and traditional London Italian wedding day. Watch the movie and you will be able to see myself and Joanna hard at work on the big day. Our related blog post and photos can be accessed here: Landmark Hotel Wedding Photographer
By David Green
Very happy to say we had a call from a London museum asking permission from us to use a couple of images for their year long exhibition “Just married 150 years of Enfield weddings.” This particular image is actually a few years old but still makes us smile, especially as we had no idea before the big day that Becky and Ben seen here were such big Star Wars fans. This was shot on the helicopter landing pad at the Royal Chase hotel in Enfield with rain clouds fast approaching. The civil ceremony was held earlier in the Manderville Suite of the hotel and there’s an image below of the moments right after the happy couple had been pronounced man and wife. Information about the museum’s exibition can be found here: Enfield Museum
We have worked in and around Enfield many times, and also photographed the first official gay wedding in that area of North London. The museum wanted to feature those images too as a landmark occasion, but understandbly that particular days couple wanted to keep their image and identity private.
See our related post about choosing Enfield wedding photographers here: Enfield Wedding Photographers
by David Green
Copyright BIG DAY WEDDINGS 2024. Author David Green
