Black and White Wedding Photography - A Little Insight Into Speaking Without Colour

As you've probably noticed, I dabble a lot in black and white wedding photography. At least I hope you've noticed, because that means you've looked at my photographsand not reading my ramblings on here.. :D

Up until a few years ago I worked almost exclusively in colour, with only the odd photograph being produced in black and white for a wedding album or occasional print. Not that the couples whose weddings I was photographing didn't want black and white wedding photography, but to use a phrase bandied around a lot among photographers - I sold what I showed. I showed colour, and a lot of it. When I made the switch to digital photography I stopped photographing with a view to producing black and white photographs. I was in love with all the mucking around with photographs that Photoshop offered. Shooting with black and white film was a conscious choice you had to make when you loaded the camera, but with digital that decision was removed. So, for various reasons I fell out of love with black and white wedding photography.

I'd been brought up on black and white photography. My whole first year in Photoschool we photographed exclusively in black and white. Most of my favourite photographs of all time are black and white. So why had I pushed black and white aside like an annoying cousin?

This isn't to say that black and white wedding photography is the only way to go, but I'd totally chucked it out of my visual dictionary.

I like to see photography as the language of speaking with visuals. Like any language there are rules like grammar, spelling, verbs and the like. It was like I'd taken all the nouns and thrown them away. How could I really create a beautiful story with no nouns? It was time to rebuild my vocabulary and fill in those blanks in the story of the weddings I was photographing. To fully express all the colour of a wedding I had to cut the amount of colour!

Ever read a book and the author is using such flowery language that you just can't get your head around the plot, or the point they are trying to make? Terry Pratchett is like that for me. I'd rather prefer if he used less verbose language and just tell a good story. The words get in the way. It's like that in photography. I'm here to tell the story of your wedding day using all the words in my vocabulary - but the trick is the use the right ones at the right time. Use colour at the wrong time and the colour itself becomes the focus of the image, or tries to muscle in on the action. Emotion is just a fleeting soft gentle thing, so she doesn't like it when colour starts pushing her around. Sure sometimes she is big, brash and in your face and loves having a confrontation with red, yellow and orange, but for the most part she likes to be by herself.

For me wedding photography is about telling a story. Emotion is the biggest part of a wedding story and choosing the right way to express that story is paramount. Black and white wedding photography allows me to let all those emotions shine through so that in ten, twenty or thirty years you can look back on the photography and remember things, emotions, places, feelings as there were and not being influenced by the colours in the photography.

I still include colour photography in the story, but it's there for a purpose, a reason - not just for the sake of being in colour.

I love black and white wedding photography and if you also love it - give me a shout, I'd love to hear from you and show you some of my beautiful stories..

Alex Kilbee Photography