In the early days of wedding photography, there was just no issue, no Cornelian choice to be made (ha good old days…), it was B&W and that was it, OK sepia toning maybe…
The couple’s picture was posed, most of time in a studio, then printed. Given the quality and stability of both chemistry and paper, those are the pictures we can still admire today.
Things later changed as colour film was introduced, B&W went out of fashion in an instant as color film became readily available, providing customers with colour prints was a Must.
Question is: How many of you remember seeing a color print more than 40 years old and still in good condition?
Fortunately, things improved quickly and the mid 80’s saw the emergence of “reportage style” wedding photography. A more natural way to take picture and “capture the moment” (wish I could copyright this one! been used a million times already). B&W became fashionable again (at least in Europe and the US), as the style changed, so did the equipment, exit the bulky medium format camera and welcome fast 35mm SLR. Yes it had an effect on pure quality, a 35mm negative just cannot compare to the quality of a 6*6 (I just love my Rolleiflex), but what a change: no more static shots, at last some emotion into the pictures.
The late 90′ saw the appearance of the first “professionally usable” DSLR (please do note the brackets…), an arm and a leg for a 3 million pixel DSLR! but still, some did wedding photography with those (no I won’t give you names!!!).
Nowadays, most wedding photographers use DSLR, shooting as many as 2000 shots in a wedding. They later edit the whole lot and and convert some in B&W, thinking they got the best of both worlds. I couldn’t disagree more (unless they told me my president is a good one!).
Traditional B&W film and print just cannot be reproduced using a digital camera. Yes, I will admit (under torture…) that the customer might not see the difference, but so what? Why sacrifice the quality for the sake of convenience? Aren’t we passionate anymore? Do you remember the first time you hold a B&W print in your hand? Where is this pleasure of taking and hand-printing B&W? Gone because your customers don’t appreciate the difference, why not showing them then?
There is a niche here, for traditional B&W wedding photography services to be offered alongside colour pictures, but more than this, it is because I love what I do and the sheer quality of a hand-print that I still to that day carry a second camera, loaded with Tri-X when shooting at a wedding, and my customers love it.
Give it a try!
Nico
