I absolutely love this photo by the way. But let me tell you why it’s pointless.
I don’t think anyone other than me will ever do anything with this photo. I don’t think the bride and groom will look at it much in time, let alone frame it or display it in any way – I bet they even scrolled past it pretty rapidly when viewing their photos for the first time.
It won’t represent them or their wedding long term. Nobody they love is in it. One of their guests hands is in it but the other people in the photo are just foreground blur.
It’s a very nicely lit, intentionally abstract photo of a waitress serving champagne upside down but it’s totally pointless as a wedding photo, isn’t it? If we are talking about the long term value of an individual wedding photograph to our clients, this arguably has none. Zero.
Pointless.
Over my time running conferences and attending workshops and conferences I noticed a trend. It goes something like this:
“I used to take photos like [a] but now I only take meaningful photos like [b], and we should all take only meaningful photos like [b]. Photos like [a] are just pointless for our clients and only seek to serve our personal ego.”
[a] would usually be accompanied by examples of something unique, arty, weird/unusual or abstract maybe, or god forbid – a flash-lit portrait or a tiny couple silhouetted on top of a hill or a detail shot.
[b] would usually be accompanied by slides of emotional moments.
As an aside, it always felt like a bit of a let down because I often knew people for their [a] photos which they were now telling me were pointless.
Anyway, I’d say this was the ‘party line’ I heard most in the last 6 or 7 years, so you’re led to believe by the industry that there are certain photos you shouldn’t be taking and certain photos you should.
Let’s kibosh that myth together right now. Because it’s BS. And I’ll tell you why I think pointless photos are vital to your business and creative soul.
You can and should take the photos you want to take at weddings. There are honestly no rules.
Weddings, in my humble opinion, are a hybrid of a personal art project and a commercial commission and I believe our individual style as photographers lives in the personal art we create at a wedding.
Also known as the pointless photos.
Remove the pointless photos from your work, and we all just kind of blend in to this sea of same-ness because there’s nothing there to hold our collections together. Pointless photos are style-glue.
Each of us has our own kind of pointless photos. It could be shoe shots or dress shots or ring shots or room shots, or dark moody portraits, or portraits in general. It might be tiny-people-big-landscape photos or venue details or extreme compositions, arty shoot-throughs or anything shot with a flash…
I say this with a dose of trepidation but it could even be spot colour or composites or other digital art techniques. No judgement.
Of course there’s a personal photographic style to the way we each capture real moments, but it’s difficult for non-photographer clients to see the subtle differences we all have there.
The personal art we create, aka the pointless photos, will always stand out to a client. Always. It might not be what they want in 20 years that’s true, but it’s what they’ll book you for right now, and potentially for a higher price because your pointless photos will differentiate you and help you stand out from the frankly massive crowd.
My pointless photo above has got me loads of bookings despite its pointlessness.
Creating personal art will also fulfil you creatively because you’re building an ongoing body of work in and around the weddings, and maybe even able to transcend the genre, if that’s important to you.
So embrace your personal art projects, embrace the pointless photos and let them sing loudly and proudly in your portfolio too.
And let’s all stop listening to the industry when it tells us what’s right and wrong or good and bad in wedding photography. Let’s just do our thing.
Thanks for reading,
Adam
PS – Pointless is my favourite TV game show.
PPS – Kibosh is a great word. I’m gonna kibosh more things in future emails.
PPPS – I released a new episode of The Positive Creatives podcast this week. 12 minutes about how we can use The Law of Attraction in our creative businesses and lives.
